Israel is going too far
I have kept my silence on the Middle East for ten years. I left Israel in 2015, after five years as British ambassador, as the first Jew in the role. Since then, I have turned down every request to be a talking head. Neither the world nor my successors needed another ex-ambassador pundit.
But I now feel obliged to break my silence, just once, to say that the Israeli government's treatment of the Gazan population is both wrong and self-defeating. And that it is not anti-Israel or pro-Hamas to say that withholding humanitarian aid is not the answer.
The situation is the opposite of straightforward. It is not just that there are no easy answers; there may be no answers of any sort. The Israeli position is impossible. Israel has been provoked by her enemies and patronised by her friends in equal measure.
And yet. The right answer is never to withhold humanitarian aid from two million people. The right answer is never to let children become malnourished as a matter of state policy, if not by intent, then by inevitable consequence of intended actions. It is simply wrong to traumatise and retraumatise the people of Gaza by making them flee repeatedly at short notice as part of a military campaign. These are clear, simple truths.
Many of my friends will find this hard to hear. They will have a set of powerful objections.
The first is that the blame for this sits with Hamas, not Israel. It is true that the attack Hamas launched on 7 October was a hideous atrocity, and an affront to humanity.
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