Time is running out for the west to bring Benjamin Netanyahu under control. After a year of war against Hamas, which has seen Gaza reduced to rubble and Israel’s reputation trashed, Netanyahu chose the path of deadly escalation against Hezbollah.
Israel has decapitated the military leadership of the Shia militia, through targeted strikes and the pager attacks and termination of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, evaporating civilians in the process. Its response to Houthi drone attacks was to destroy the Yemeni port of Hodeidah. Its response to Iran’s ballistic missile strike on Israel last week is awaited as this goes to press.
Options floated by right-wing Israeli politicians range from striking Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, to destroying the oil terminal at Kharg Island, to disabling Iran’s energy grid or even attempting to vapourise Ayatollah Khamenei himself.
At each stage, western leaders have called for restraint and ceasefire. But they are never heeded. So even for the sake of their own credibility it is time for the State Department, the Foreign Office and the Quai d’Orsay to start backing such calls with action.
Make no mistake: Israel not only has the right to defend itself, but to strike Hamas, the Houthis, Iran and Hezbollah in doing so. The problem is that – under Netanyahu – it has no strategy for effective self-defence, other than to hit its enemies hard and then retreat under the defensive shield provided by US, British and other armed forces. In Gaza it has committed gross violations of the laws of war, to the extent that a British Labour government whose leaders pride themselves on support for Israel have blocked arms that could be used there.
Yet there is still no Israeli victory in Gaza. Having chosen neither to occupy, nor to stabilise the territory through international proxies, the IDF is forced to go back and reconquer patches of rubble it fought over months ago.
In Lebanon, having defied advice to call it quits after the pager attacks, Israel is striking targets way beyond the Hezbollah strongholds. Yet there is, and will be, no victory in Lebanon.
Because Lebanon is a fragile and failing state, whose authorities cannot impose order in the Hezbollah-ruled enclaves; and because the other major global powers – Russia and China – are happy to let this last outpost of the old western way in the region shatter into chaos, regardless of the UN resolution that commits them to defending Lebanon’s stability.
The only thing that could deliver an Israeli victory against Iran’s proxy militias would be the fall of the Islamic Republic. Yet that lies beyond the US to accomplish militarily, even if it wanted to, which it does not. So Netanyahu’s strategy is to degrade Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, regardless of the fact that in doing so he kills civilians, inflames the region and undermines goodwill towards Israel.
I am proud that both Britain and the party I belong to, Labour, have stood with Israel since the October 7 atrocity. I am appalled by the rise of left-wing antisemitism, on full display this week as campus activists around the world stage “funerals for Zionism” on the anniversary of the massacre.
But the point is fast approaching where Israel’s allies have to call a halt to Netanyahu’s self-destructive actions. The alternative is getting dragged into a war with Iran, which is not winnable through an Iraq-style invasion even if western populations had the will to back one, which they don’t.
If it is the case that Iran and its proxies really want a war to the death with Israel, and that both Russia and China are prepared to stand by and let it happen, then what we need is a strategy, not an impulse.
That strategy should have as its immediate objectives the restoration of an orderly state in Lebanon; the removal of Hamas and its replacement by a legitimate Palestinian force in Gaza – which means not just a ceasefire but a ceasefire agreement; and the rapid advance towards a two-state solution in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
But none of this is going to happen with Netanyahu in control. His ruling coalition has not only blocked all talk of a two-state solution, it staged a vote in the Knesset declaring any Palestinian state an “existential threat”.
As a result, millions of people in the region, Israelis included, have to live with the daily realities of war: the shattered apartment block, the random pedestrian crushed by falling debris, the civilian mother shot in cold blood.
The Labour government has sought to establish a firm, independent line with Israel’s leaders: it cancelled Tory objections to an ICC probe into Netanyahu; it restored funding to UNRWA, blocked some arms contracts and was the first to demand a ceasefire in Lebanon. But it is time to go beyond expressions of “deep concern”. The west needs to take ownership of a strategy to contain Iran. The old one, of lifting sanctions in return for the demobilisation of Iran’s nuclear programme, is dead. Khamenei’s speech on Friday, which called October 7 legitimate and revelled in his criminal missile strike on Israel, signals that.
A new strategy can only be assembled through consensus and alliance building in the west – and that means gaining the consent of its electorates, including the millions of Muslims in Europe, Canada and the US who are appalled by what’s happening. It must start with Gaza: with an immediate ceasefire, stabilisation programme, the lifting of Israeli restrictions on access and aid and rapid recognition of Palestine as a state.
And while it is one thing to recognise and deal with Netanyahu as Israel’s legitimate leader, no western government is required to refrain from criticising him, let alone to protect him from due process under international law. Likewise with the Israeli far right ministers Bazalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir: given their racist rhetoric, why should western sanctions against West Bank settlers stop at individuals, and not the politicians inciting them?
There are plenty of things western governments can do to compel Israel’s ruling coalition to act in accordance with international law. In doing so, we will be acting in the best interests of its people and the wider region.
