The Prime Minister adopted a carefully undramatic tone yesterday as he delivered his statement about Iran’s attack on Israel.
We can be horrified by October 7th, loathe and fight antisemitism, and make clear our opposition to Iranian aggression. But we cannot aide and abet the mass death of civilians, especially after the killing of three of our own.
Only 34 per cent of Palestinians want a two-state solution. We may recognise Palestine, but the vast majority of its residents will never recognise Israel. The cycle of violence will continue.
The danger is that the conflict slowburns into a wider one, with hostilities between Israel and Iran’s proxies accelerating, and knock-on consequences for inflation and Putin’s war in Ukraine.
It pulled out of Gaza previously for a reason. Yet it will have no alternative but to stay there, if it is unwilling to hand over control to either foreign peacekeepers or the Palestinian Authority.
It can’t create the conditions for stability in Gaza and work towards a two-state solution with the present Prime Minister in place.
Perhaps most importantly of all, a carefully calibrated and adaptive approach by the UK to Israel could help constrain the cycle of escalation that is all too familiar in the Middle East.
The Prime Minister said that the events over the last few days have “shocked us all”, particularly those at the Gaza hospital where hundreds of people were killed.
Netanyahu may have said: how would you feel, were you lectured by countries without an independent judiciary, let alone the free press, minority rights and fair elections that we have in Israel?
For all the thunderous blow-back that is undoubtedly coming, Hamas has already got what it wanted, both domestically and strategically.
During the half century since the Yom Kippur war took place, conflict abroad has increasingly meant consequences here.
These disputes between the executive, legislature and judiciary are normally settled by a codified constitution, but Israel, like the UK, is unusual in the modern age in not having one
Although support for Netanyahu and his ministers, already unpopular before the war, has dwindled since its start, this has not impacted the nation’s resolve.