Mood shifts on Israel-Gaza, but will it bring change?

RTÉ News​

2 days ago

There's no doubt the mood has shifted on the Israel-Gaza war.
In the past week, three powerful G7 nations - France, the UK and Canada – announced their intention to recognise the State of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
That means four of the five permanent members of the Security Council - the UN's highest decision-making body - will join the more than 140 member states that already recognise Palestine, leaving the United States diplomatically isolated on the issue.
With pressure mounting over starvation in Gaza, the United Nations held a major conference this week aimed at reviving the "two-state solution" for Israel and Palestine, a decades-old idea favoured by most of the world, but largely written off as dead in the water - until now.
Boycotting the two-day event, the Israeli ambassador called it "a circus" while the US State Department said it was "unproductive and untimely".
But even here, in the US, where support for Israel has been an unshakeable article of faith across the political spectrum, but especially in the Republican Party, key allies of President Donald Trump have begun to dissent.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the MAGA congresswoman from Georgia, took to X to voice her opposition to American policy on Israel.
"It's the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza," she wrote.
That made her the first Republican in Congress to call Israel's actions in Gaza a genocide.
A handful of Democrats have already used that term.
Previously, Ms Taylor Greene introduced an amendment to cut funding for Israel's missile defence system – although that failed to garner any real support in Washington.
But outside of Congress, fellow MAGA leaders - including the former White House strategist Steve Bannon and the right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson - have been damning of US policy in the Middle East, seeing it at odds with their "America First" doctrine.
Mr Bannon – though still a staunch supporter of Israel – has little time for the current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he once called a "bald-faced liar".
Mr Carlson criticised US aid to Israel, arguing the money would be better spent at home to tackle the opioid epidemic, among other domestic crises.
He also slammed the recent Israeli airstrike on a Catholic Church in Gaza City.
"They're not allowed to use my tax dollars to bomb churches," he told a US podcast.
"I'll put up with a lot of stuff, but I don't understand how any Christian leader in the United States can sit by and not say something about that," he said.
Scepticism of American involvement in "forever wars" is certainly a hallmark of the MAGA movement.
Indeed, last year, ahead of the election that returned Mr Trump to power, I reported from his rally at New York's iconic Madison Square Gardens.
During an Israel-focused speech beamed onto the giant outdoor screen, a man in the crowd shouted, "why are you talking about Israel – what about America?".
In another post on X this week, Ms Greene pressed that case.
"Most Americans that I know don't hate Israel and we are not antisemitic at all," she wrote.
"We are beyond fed up with being told that we have to fix the world's problems, pay for the world's problems, and fight all the world's wars while Americans are struggling to survive even though they work every day".
Then there is President Trump himself, who this week made headlines when he contradicted Mr Netanyahu's denial of starvation in Gaza.
Asked if he agreed with Mr Netanyahu's assessment, Mr Trump said: "Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry".
"They have to get food and safety right now," he added.
The following day, a UN-backed report found that the "worst-case" famine scenario was unfolding across Gaza.
Mr Trump dispatched his Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff and Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee to inspect aid distribution sites run by American contractors under the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
The GHF sites, set up to replace UN aid distribution networks which the US and Israel said were hijacked by Hamas, have become the scene of near-daily mass killings of starving Palestinians, prompting international outrage.
The French Foreign Minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, co-chairing this week's conference, called it a "bloodbath".
Last weekend, a group of Democratic senators wrote to the US Secretary of State Marc Rubio urging him to "immediately cease" all US funding for GHF and resume support for UN-led operations, with increased oversight.
Adding to the pressure, a former US contractor with GHF gave an interview to the BBC saying that in his entire career, he had "never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population".
Anthony Aguilar, a United States Army veteran, dismissed by the GHF as a disgruntled ex-employee, continued to speak out on US and international media platforms.
Gaza aid today, he said, was like The Hunger Games.
'Turning point'
With the mood apparently shifting in Washington and across the world, diplomats gathered for the UN's two-state solution conference this week feeling like the momentum was behind them.
"It can and must serve as a decisive turning point," the UN Secretary General António Guterres said in his opening remarks.
"One that catalyses irreversible progress towards ending the occupation and realising our shared aspiration for a viable two-state solution," he said.
The sentiment was echoed over the following two days and the conference's final declaration won more support than diplomats initially expected.
The ambitious seven-page document called for an immediate ceasefire, the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, recognition of Palestine by countries that have not yet done so, normalisation of relations with Israel, the disarmament of Hamas, and a commitment to a political solution with the Palestinian Authority, subject to major reforms in control of Gaza and the West Bank.
Significantly, it was the first time a UN document, signed by Arab nations, officially condemned the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on 7 October, 2023.
But two critical players – Israel and the United States – were not there.
In their absence, was this a case of the UN shouting into the void?
I asked Mary Robinson, former president and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at a news conference on Monday.
She said that she felt real pressure in the conference room that the world had to move forward.
"I think that can't be ignored, even by a powerful United States supporting Israel, the current Israeli government," she said, adding, "they particularly can't ignore the widespread sense now of an unfolding genocide and the starvation of children, of women, pregnant women".
This could be the point of realisation, she said, that the US "is becoming complicit in a genocide".
"That could be enough," she said.
It is certainly true that Americans' support for Israel's military campaign has waned.
A recent Gallup poll showed just a third of US citizens polled backed Israel's actions in Gaza – the lowest since November 2023.
It is also worth noting, as an aside, that New York could be on the brink of electing as mayor Zohran Mamdani – an outspoken critic of Israel's military assault on Gaza, who has said he would arrest Mr Netanyahu were he to come to the city.
On Monday, the UN conference's co-chair Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, was upbeat about the prospects of finding common ground with the White House.
After all, it was Mr Trump who brokered the Abraham Accords during his first term – a deal to normalise relations between Israel and the Arab states of United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.
"I think we've all heard President Trump statements on many occasions that he is a man of peace, that he is someone who opposes war, and he is a humanitarian," Mr bin Farhan Al Saud told reporters at the conference.
He said he believed US engagement, especially the engagement of President Trump, could be a "catalyst for an end to the immediate crisis in Gaza and potentially a resolution of the Palestinian Israeli conflict In the long term".
Saudi Arabia's eventual sign-up to the accords was always the big prize for Mr Trump.
But the Saudi foreign minister made it clear this week that there would be no negotiation on the matter, without an end to the war and the establishment of a Palestinian State.
The Saudis certainly have a good deal of leverage in Washington.
But then, so does Mr Netanyahu.
Some experts remain sceptical that the shift in mood will yield any real change.
"I think we've reached a turning point in terms of perceptions of the war, and I think a tipping point in the coverage of the catastrophe," Michael Hanna, US Programme Director at the International Crisis Group, an NGO aimed at conflict prevention.
"I'm not yet sure that that is going to fully translate into a change in policy," he added.
He said there was always a gulf between public opinion and the political class in the US.
"That gap is shrinking in some respects - we see a rise in criticism," he said.
"Again, criticism is not the same as policy shift".
Ms Greene, for example, was largely alone in Congress on the Republican side, he said.
Indeed, while the week started with Mr Trump sympathising with the plight of hungry Palestinians, by Thursday, he was issuing barely veiled threats against Canada over its intention to recognise a Palestinian State.
The State Department also announced sanctions against the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian Liberation Organisation on Thursday, which means members will be unable to travel to the US for the UN General Assembly in September.
As for diplomatic isolation at the UN, that is something the US is prepared to bear, Mr Hanna told RTÉ News.
"It is notable when the isolation also encompasses other Western members of the permanent five, UK and France, so maybe it's magnified isolation.
"But the US has been willing to endure that isolation for a very long time, so it's not clear that that is particularly uncomfortable," he said.
A lot hinges on President Trump's own views of course, and it is anyone's guess what he will decide next.
His approach to the Middle East has been "all over the map," Mr Hanna said.
There have been moments of tension between Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu, he added.
"There were direct contacts with Hamas, which I think shocked the Israelis," he said, "then the U-turn on the Yemen campaign".
Mr Trump abruptly declared an end to the bombing of Houthi rebel group positions in May.
"And then, of course, then another big shift on intervention in Iran," he said in reference to the US joining Israel's bombing campaign of Iran's nuclear sites in a surprise move in June.
The flip-flopping continued this week, when President Trump initially said he had "no view" on the matter, when the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the UK's intention to recognise the State of Palestine.
But within hours, Mr Trump had labelled recognition "a reward for Hamas".
Amid all the rhetoric and noise, Mr Hanna said, the point is that there is "still no ceasefire in Gaza".