Israel's actions in Gaza put it at risk of becoming a global pariah

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15 hours ago

Israel's parliament — the Knesset — this week voted 71-13 in favour of annexing the occupied West Bank.
It was a symbolic, non-binding vote but one which gives a window into the mindset within Israel that is feeding the humanitarian disaster the world is witnessing in Gaza.
That is a disaster with no end in sight following yet another breakdown in ceasefire talks in Qatar on Thursday night, and despite the escalation in international pressure this week, first in a statement from 28 countries attacking Israel's approach to allowing aid into the strip and, early on Friday Australian time, French President Emanuel Macron's announcement that France would recognise a Palestinian state.
The significance of the French president's intervention lies in the fact that he is the first of the G7 nations to commit to recognise Palestine — a step that many, including Australia, have argued until now needed to await a ceasefire and a clarification that Hamas would not have a role in its governance.
Macron's move was followed by a further ramping up of pressure with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer convening an "emergency call" with France and Germany to "discuss what we can do urgently to stop the killing and get people the food they desperately need".
Starmer said "the suffering and starvation unfolding in Gaza is unspeakable and indefensible".
He hinted that the UK, too, may consider recognising the state of Palestine, calling statehood "the inalienable right of the Palestinian people".
Anthony Albanese joined the chorus with his own statement on Friday, saying that "tens of thousands of civilians are dead, [and] children are starving" (though not going as far as to advocate recognising the state of Palestine).
"Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe," he said.
"Israel's denial of aid and the killing of civilians, including children, seeking access to water and food cannot be defended or ignored.
"We call on Israel to comply immediately with its obligations under international law."
But Macron's statement revealed just how immune to international pressure the Netanyahu government seems to be.
The vote on annexing the West Bank — an idea originally proposed by far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who himself lives in an illegal Israeli settlement — may only have been symbolic, but clearly placed the issue formally on the agenda for the future.
But this escalated rapidly in the wake of the Macron statement with deputy prime minister Yariv Levin immediately saying Israel's response must be to annex the West Bank.
"It is time to apply Israeli sovereignty to Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley [the biblical terms Israel uses for the West Bank]," Levin said.
"This is the response of historical justice to the shameful decision of the French president."
The Times of Israel reports that the Yesha Council, representing West Bank settlement municipal authorities, made the same call after Macron's announcement.
"The Knesset has supported [annexation], now it's the turn of the government," the Yesha Council said.
The active pursuit of the idea of annexing the West Bank does not suggest a mindset which is seriously considering a ceasefire in Gaza, let alone a two state solution.
A two state solution without the West Bank hardly seems a viable proposition.
Equally, the now-deliberate physical destruction of much of Gaza by Israel can only be seen to be directed at destroying its viability as a place for anyone to live.
BBC Verify this week produced shocking pictures of the systematic destructions of large sections of Gaza by Israel — not just buildings damaged by earlier rocket strikes but whole neighbourhoods and villages.
The parliamentary pressure from the far right on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his precarious minority government has been intense, and one of the few positive lights is that the parliament is next week going into recess until October, reducing the threat that it can be toppled.
That's not an endorsement of the government, just an observation that a sense of imminent threat from the far right when the parliament is in session must only intensify the pressure on Netanyahu to up his aggression towards the Palestinians even further.
But none of that pressure can alone explain what the rest of the world sees day by day in terms of the extent of the aggression of the Israeli government's strategy, or how it is prosecuted by the Israeli Defence Forces, against civilians in Gaza, in what Albanese on Friday described as "a humanitarian catastrophe in the denial of aid and the killing of civilians, including children, seeking access to water and food" which he said "cannot be defended or ignored".
The Economist observed this week that the war against Hamas had become "militarily pointless" and is "turning Israel into a pariah".
"The IDF control about 70 per cent of the strip. Hamas is defeated," The Economist editorial said.
"Its leaders are dead, its military capacity is a tiny fraction of what it was on October 7, 2023 and its fighters are contained in pockets making up 10-20 per cent of the territory.
"Hamas's backer, Iran, is humbled. Operations by the IDF are achieving little."
Yet Israel continues to imply that Hamas is the lethal force that it was even 12 months ago, and that it is Hamas, rather than Israel, that is stopping aid getting into Gaza: a proposition firmly disputed and rejected by both aid agencies and the United Nations.
"A large proportion of the population of Gaza is starving," World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this week.
"I don't know what you would call it other than mass starvation. And it's man-made", he said, asserting the man-made cause of the mass starvation is the aid blockade imposed by Israel.
Man-made mass starvation is considered a crime against humanity, as is the forced displacement of people.
The reality of the situation on the ground in Gaza, and the spectre of children dying of malnutrition or starvation, sits at such extraordinary odds with the language of spokespeople for both the Netanyahu government and the IDF.
In the face of growing international outrage about growing signs of widespread starvation in Gaza, Israeli Government spokesman David Mencer, said that "in Gaza today there is no famine caused by Israel".
"There is however, a man-made shortage engineered by Hamas. Now, too often the full story is not being told. The suffering exists because Hamas has created it. The suffering exists because Hamas has made it."
One of the world's most lethal military and security forces — forces that can run operations that wipe out large sections of the leadership of Hezbollah in precision operations in Iran and Lebanon — regularly tell us that their operations in Gaza are planned with equal precision, yet somehow manage to kill and maim thousands of civilians as well as aid workers, doctors and journalists.
The United States and, for that matter, some Arab states that might be able to exert some influence on Israel remain deafeningly silent.
The international community beyond the United States has clearly been trying to coordinate a gradual ramp up in pressure on Israel — and for that matter the Trump administration — on the basis that it needs to have further sanctions in reserve against administrations in Tel Aviv and Washington with little care for what others think.
But the human crisis in Gaza has made such a cautious approach look much too weak.
Analysts watching how Donald Trump has behaved in the various international crises in which he has intervened, or promised to intervene, believe he is happiest when he can make a short, sharp, effective intervention (like the stealth bombing operation in Iran) and can then claim some success.
But they also believe that the US president likes to be seen to be running things.
The question, therefore, is whether the push by other countries to ramp up the pressure on Israel will provoke him to act, lest he be perceived to not be directing events.
Whatever now happens, Israel's actions not only risk it appearing to be a pariah, but potentially a rogue state.
And if that is correct, it implies a very different treatment by the rest of the world than the one it has received until now.
Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.