ISRAEL’S invasion of Rafah would not be taking place if its allies, the US and Britain foremost among them, exchanged their hypocritical hand-wringing for action to stop Tel Aviv’s war machine in its tracks.
Joe Biden claims Washington has made clear its opposition to a ground invasion of Rafah but cannot tell the Israeli military what to do.
Nonsense. For one thing, Israel would be unable to fight without a continuous supply of weaponry and military aid from the United States. Even a serious threat to cut it off would be enough to prevent the Israeli government from unleashing what the World Health Organisation predicts will be a “bloodbath” in Gaza’s last refuge, where over half the territory’s population have fled from Israeli troops.
For another, as the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell at least points out, the UN security council has ordered a ceasefire. Israel is in breach of that order, and all UN member states including Britain and the US are obliged to act to force it to comply.
Benjamin Netanyahu is out of control. He has admitted that he would order the invasion of Rafah whether or not Hamas agreed to release its remaining hostages. He stands accused in Israel’s own parliament of sabotaging a new ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian resistance group. Opposition leader Yair Lapid, no friend of the Palestinians, says Israel is now run by “irresponsible lunatics,” and that the fascistic Itamar Ben-Gvir really calls the shots in the Israeli cabinet.
In Israel itself people want him out. Huge protests rock Tel Aviv, demanding the government strike a deal to free the hostages. On Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day today, a heckler called on him to resign as he laid a wreath at Yad Vashem: polls show over 60 per cent of Israelis agree those responsible for allowing the catastrophic security breach of October 7, when Hamas was able to cross the heavily militarised border in force, should resign.
Netanyahu knows a reckoning is coming. He knows that out of office, corruption charges he faces could see him jailed. His answer is to keep the war going whatever the cost: bombing the Iranian consulate in Damascus in a so-far failed bid to start a lengthy regional war; now ordering the army into Rafah in defiance of the entire world.
This makes him a clear and present danger. To the Palestinians, who are being killed daily in Gaza and subjected to a wave of terror and persecution in the West Bank. But to the wider world too.
Britain’s government, which voted for a ceasefire at the UN, can act to enforce one. It can ban further arms sales, given the undoubted use of these weapons to commit war crimes, something leaks suggest the government has been warned of by its own legal advisers. It can block supplies reaching Israel via the RAF bases on Cyprus.
Instead it lines up with Netanyahu. It continues to harass the Palestine solidarity movement, which is still growing, as new peace camps at Oxford and Cambridge universities show. Like Netanyahu, who has banned the Al Jazeera broadcaster for documenting his armies’ crimes, it is prepared to crush free speech to avoid being held to account: the arrests of four people on Sunday under the Terrorism Act for unfurling a banner showing a dove breaching Israel’s apartheid wall follows the earlier disgraceful convictions of marchers for wearing parachute badges.
Solidarity with Palestine is the front line now. It is the political issue that frightens our rulers most: and it is the focus of attacks on our rights to free assembly and expression which, if allowed to stand, will be extended to many other subjects. But we have moved the government already — and for the sake of the desperate residents of Rafah, we must move it again.
