Netanyahu is committing a strategic blunder that will alienate the world

Telegraph

7 days ago

By seeking to occupy the whole of Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu takes the war to its logical conclusion. Hamas was responsible for October 7, Israel will never be secure till Hamas is gone, and given that Hamas controls Gaza, why not uproot it from every last inch of territory?
But the Israelis enter without an exit plan, with the mad dream of constructing a friendly civil administration, repeating the exact same mistakes we made in Iraq. Netanyahu thinks he can destroy a revolutionary Palestinian spirit that the war has likely intensified. For a man obsessed with the ancient world, he has a scant grasp of history.
He has also divided his military. He has alienated those hostage families who are frightened their relatives might die. And he will finally, perhaps irrevocably, isolate Israel from world opinion. Even in America, the only serious power behind him, patience and conscience are under remarkable pressure.
Gaza has become the moral test of our times, and European governments suspect they've failed it. Their initial caution was understandable. They didn't want to condemn Netanyahu lest it give courage to domestic anti-Semites and their snowflake enablers – let alone to Hamas, the principal beneficiary were we to recognise a Palestinian state. Journalists, myself included, were reluctant to parrot death statistics that might be inflated by a criminal regime.
But it's now impossible to ignore the evidence of human suffering or the sham of the official Israeli narrative t hat says no one is starving or, if they are, it's because Hamas stole all the food. The latter claim was recently debunked by Israeli military officials – not natural allies of Palestine Action – and Netanyahu finds himself challenged by a rainbow coalition of the United Nations, Germany, China, a former Israeli prime minister, several retired heads of security, the Pope and Piers Morgan (sublime and the ridiculous united at last).
Bibi is reported to have argued with General Eyal Zamir, the chief-of-staff of the armed forces. It seems Right-wing Israelis are more willing to take a stand against Netanyahu than nervous foreign diplomats are. If Zamir is anti-Semitic, the Pope's not a Catholic.
In the United States, the New York Times, hitherto soft on the Gaza operation, has become a forum for dissenting voices, and Zohran Mamdani, the pro-Gaza candidate for New York mayor, leads among Jewish voters. Liberals are rethinking their historical alliances; there is disquiet on the religious Right, too. Evangelicals will always love Israel: it's Jesus's hometown. There's growing concern, however, that Israel might not be so hot on Christians.
In July, settlers carried out an arson attack on the last Christian-majority town in the West Bank. That same month, Gaza's only Catholic church was hit by Israeli tank fire, killing three (Netanyahu apologised for what looks like a genuine accident). 'Desecrating a church, mosque or synagogue is a crime against humanity and God,' wrote the US ambassador, Mike Huckabee, a Christian Zionist. Senator Lindsey Graham, also of that parish, said, 'What's happening in the West Bank bothers the hell out of me.'
A cynic might detect more bother at the damage to Christian property than there ever was at the flattening of Muslim hospitals, a double-standard as old as sin. Why did Britain throw open its doors to almost anyone with a Ukrainian passport yet appears reluctant even to admit children from Gaza? Ethnic preference. On the other side of the fence, Israel can argue that it is a multi-faith society doing its best to protect the Druze in Syria, while Palestine has so few churches for a sinister reason. Christians enjoy far more rights under Israel than they would under Hamas.
Nevertheless, reports of atrocities during the Iraq civil war woke US Christians up to the perilous state of their faith in the Middle East, reduced to a tiny population dependent upon benign neglect within a threadbare ethnic tapestry. Netanyahu threatens to disrupt that fragile order, while his governing coalition imagines a 'Greater Israel' that hints at cultural chauvinism. The regime is overplaying its hand, transforming the civil rights case for Zionism (Jews need a homeland) into an open-ended military endeavour that is infinitely more controversial and expensive.
If Trump is reluctant to bankroll the borders of Ukraine, why would he do it for Israel? The compromise of America's interests and reputation has already begun with the US-backed food distribution programme – accused of gross inefficiency, even of soldiers firing at civilians.
Trump's connection with Israel is heartfelt. It is personal, it is philosophical. Netanyahu's belief that nations have the right to defend themselves, is a Zionist Maga. One of the administration's first acts was to lift sanctions on settlers. Within months, settlers had beaten a US citizen to death in the West Bank; a second died following an arson attack.
The President is no moralist but he has a healthy moral gag reflex, hence when asked if Palestinians are starving, he said, yeah, they probably are – influenced, it seems, by Keir Starmer. Netanyahu demanded a conversation; Trump reportedly disliked being lectured about fake news and shouted down the phone that the hunger is real.
Hail to the chief. His observation to journalists that 'we basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing,' remains the single best expression of global frustration I've heard, worth chiseling onto Mount Sinai. And if Trump is some kind of liberal snowflake, maybe the Pope is a Lutheran.
Trumpism hinges on the strategic realignment: get America out of places it doesn't need to be, let strong allies fill the vacuum. But Netanyahu is forcing upon him the most intractable, expensive problem of all, a humanitarian crisis, and he'll only make it worse if Gaza City is next.
Will Trump really tolerate such an escalation? Will his constituency – starting to contend with its Christian conscience – forgive the bloody consequences? The Israelis have always advised Palestinians that if they don't want to be killed, they should just pack up and move. But as the war completes its hideous march to the Mediterranean Sea, one wonders where they are supposed to go. There's only so much room on Greta's yacht.