War on Gaza: European leaders are stoking the flames of a Middle East inferno

Their wilful blindness to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, and their refusal to hold Netanyahu to account, could sharply escalate the conflict

In the 10 months since the latest war in Gaza erupted, European leaders have produced an astonishing deluge of statements, which reflect disturbing cognitive dissonance and outrageous bias.

Like a broken record, they incessantly repeat the mantra that “Israel has the right to defend itself”. They parrot this when compelled to proffer any criticism of the Israeli excesses that have so far caused more than 40,000 deaths in the Gaza Strip.

Even when their spokespersons issue standard statements mentioning civilian casualties, the first sentence is usually: “Israel has the right to defend itself.” The message is unequivocal: Israel’s right comes first; everything else is secondary.

It is hard to believe that, over the last 10 months, Europe’s decision-makers have not been briefed by their aides about the legal realities of what has been happening in Gaza and the West Bank before and since 7 October.

If they had received an honest briefing, they would know that there is no Israeli right to defend itself against violence deriving from its status as an occupying power in the West Bank and Gaza.

This status began on 6 June 1967 and has not ceased since; certainly not when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Almost all air, sea and land access to the strip is still controlled by Israel, along with supplies of water, electricity and food.

In terms of legal consistency, denying Palestinians the right to resist Israeli occupation would equate, in historical terms, to denying French partisans the right to resist German invaders during the Second World War.

To give a contemporary comparison, it would be like denying Ukrainian troops the right to resist the Russian invasion by attacking Russian soil, as is currently taking place in the Kursk region.

European leaders support Ukraine’s right to resist Russian occupation by taking the war to Russia, but they do not extend that right to Palestine and its inhabitants.

Deep trouble

Of course, in resisting the Israeli occupation, Palestinians should be bound by the international covenants covering armed conflict.

It is precisely for this reason that the leadership of Hamas (Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, Qassam Brigades chief Mohammed Deif and political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh) were facing an indictment from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Unsurprisingly, Israeli “justice” has been faster and more decisive than the ICC’s as far as the last two are concerned, with Haniyeh killed by an Israeli strike in Tehran on 31 July and Israel claiming to have killed Deif in an air strike in the southern Gaza Strip on 13 July.

If this is the concept of the rules-based world order held so dear by European leaders, they – and all of us – are in deep trouble.

But nothing could have challenged the rest of the world’s common sense more than the joint statement issued by the UK, France and Germany on 12 August concerning the situation in the Middle East.

The crucial passage noted: “We call on Iran and its allies to refrain from attacks that would further escalate regional tensions and jeopardise the opportunity to agree a ceasefire and the release of hostages. They will bear responsibility for actions that jeopardise this opportunity for peace and stability. No country or nation stands to gain from a further escalation in the Middle East.”

In a 10-sentence statement dedicated to the necessity of avoiding an escalation in the Middle East, they did not once mention Israel.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government has repeatedly sabotaged its own proposals to reach a ceasefire and secure the release of Israeli hostages. It has done so by systematically bombing schools, hospitals and UN facilities, and by killing on Iranian soil the political chief of the entity with which it is supposed to be negotiating.

Did European leaders really believe they could persuade Iran and its allies, Hamas and Hezbollah, to avoid retaliatory action with such a biased, mendacious and detached-from-reality statement?

By failing to re-establish a modicum of fairness by stating the obvious – ie, that the Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu has systematically escalated the conflict over the last 10 months – they missed another golden opportunity to stabilise the situation.

‘Mein Kampf in reverse’

The aides of French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer could better serve their leaders by drawing their attention to the recently published interview with former Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon.

Yaalon is hardly a dove in the Israeli political and military establishment; indeed, he has at times been considered a super-hawk. Nonetheless, he felt the need to deliver a stern warning about the terrifying Israeli drift towards a sort of Jewish supremacy, which he chillingly described as a “Mein Kampf in reverse”.

“When you talk about [Israeli ministers Bezalel] Smotrich and [Itamar] Ben Gvir, they have a rabbi. His name is Dov Lior. He is the rabbi of the Jewish Underground, who intended to blow up the Dome of the Rock – and before that the buses in Jerusalem. Why? In order to hurry up the ‘Last War’,” Yaalon said.

“Do you [not] hear them talking in terms of the Last War, or of Smotrich’s concept of ‘subjugation’? Read the article he published in Shiloh in 2017. First of all, this concept rests on Jewish supremacy: Mein Kampf in reverse,” he added. “My hair stands on end when I say that – as he said it. I learned and grew up in the house of Holocaust survivors and ‘never again’. It is Mein Kampf in reverse: Jewish supremacy. And therefore [Smotrich] says: ‘My wife won’t go into a room with an Arab’. It is anchored in ideology. And then actually what he aspires to – as soon as possible – is to go to a big war. A war of Gog and Magog.

“How do you start the flames?” Yaalon said. “A massacre like the [1994] Cave of the Patriarchs? Baruch Goldstein is a student of this rabbi … Ben Gvir has hung up Goldstein’s picture [in his house]. This is what goes into the decision-making process in the Israeli government.”

These are the Israeli decision-makers allegedly blackmailing Netanyahu – and the people whom Macron, Scholz, Starmer and, of course, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, are either ignoring or tolerating.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/war-gaza-middle-east-fanning-fire-europe-leaders-much-blame