Pickthall House believes the pattern of successive escalations in the Israel-Gaza conflict can now only be halted by the diplomatic intervention of external actors. The belligerents involved directly have no incentive to de-escalate, and so the West along with trusted regional actors must act to end the cycle of increasing violence.
A careful evaluation of the Netanyahu government’s actions in this conflict indicates that it has little interest in compromise, even at the expense of its own stated war aims. It has wavered on this very little despite some signals from the international community, including its own allies who have otherwise remained largely supportive of Israel’s actions. The warnings from many different analysts of the serious risk of regional spillover in the Gaza War, have gone unheeded, and there has been a series of worrying escalations in recent months.
The seemingly immovable stance taken by Israel, and its insistence on maintaining the current trajectory is a major factor, and may become a determining one, in facilitating a regional war. As a country with close historical and diplomatic ties to the Israeli state, Britain is well positioned to play a role in preventing this.
Israel’s stated aims
Since the events of 7th October 2023, in which 1200 Israelis, most of whom were civilians, were killed by Hamas and other armed militias in a shocking and bloody attack, much public debate has taken place with a variety of perspectives on what an appropriate response from Israel should have been. Leaving aside the understandably intense emotional reactions from all participants in this debate, there are objective questions we can ask to make sense of the situation and guide future policy and diplomatic efforts:
- Has the last one year resulted in progress towards Israel’s stated aims? i.e.
- Returning Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas
- Eradicating Hamas
- Preventing future terrorist attacks against Israel
- Have war crimes been committed and will any parties be held to account?
- Has the approach taken by Israel and its western allies so far prolonged and/or exacerbated the conflict?
Considering these questions produces a sobering outlook on the likely future of the conflict and its implications for regional stability.
The fate of the hostages
The first of these concerning Israel’s war aims is most stark. Israeli hostages, like the Palestinians are enduring the abysmal humanitarian conditions in Gaza. Since the war began, only eight hostages have been returned home by means of Israeli military operations. 105 hostages were released as a direct result of a ceasefire agreement in November 2023, out of the 154 who have been freed as of October 2024.
Several Israeli hostages have died in captivity, though the causes of death remain unclear. Some have been killed by Hamas, others as a result of injuries sustained on Oct 7th, and at least three have been killed by the IDF accidentally.
The evidence therefore suggests that continued military force is highly unlikely to result in return of Israeli hostages. By Israel’s own standards, one of their most central aims is seemingly being discarded altogether, with the eradication of Hamas taking precedence over all other human considerations. There continues to be no political will from Netanyahu in particular to pursue another ceasefire agreement or to facilitate another prisoner exchange.
The November ceasefire itself followed several unequivocal oppositions to a ceasefire not just by Netanyahu and his cabinet, but by most Western heads of state, including then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, US President Joe Biden, and German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
Today, Israel’s blanket refusal to consider a ceasefire – despite a softening of the Western position on the issue with both Kamala Harris and Keir Starmer recently calling for one – remains the primary impediment to its own stated war aim; the release of the remaining hostages.
Defeating Hamas
The question of whether Hamas can be eradicated, even in principle has been met with scepticism by many observers, the argument being that the ideology of armed opposition to Israel will only be strengthened by Israel’s heavy-handed strategy, which has caused such a significant number of civilian casualties. However, Israel claims to have killed almost 20,000 Hamas fighters and that this entails a significant blow to Hamas’ ability to sustain a military presence. Even if Israel’s figures are accurate, there are reports in the Israeli press that areas of Northern Gaza, which the IDF believed to have been cleared, have once again become areas with active Hamas militia presence, and Hamas’ popularity in the West Bank has only grown over the course of the war. Israel must consider a situation in which the Hamas ideology metastasises into the West Bank, and this then becomes the source of future conflict. Beyond the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), Hezbollah and Houthi forces have acted in solidarity with Hamas from the early days of the conflict, Hezbollah in particular being substantially better armed and better organised than Hamas.
Therefore, Israel’s goal cannot be achieved in practical terms, unless it can also eradicate Hezbollah, which, as we have seen recently, requires them to extend the arena of battle to include Southern Lebanon. Israel has previously tried and failed to secure a military foothold by occupying this region in both 1982 and more recently in 2006, when Hezbollah was a much weaker opponent. Given the already extensive military resources deployed in Gaza, it is unlikely Israel can achieve now what it failed to do under relatively much easier conditions in the past.
The protection of Israel
Whether Israel is now safer than it was before the war began is clear for all to see; it is militarily stretched and facing attacks on multiple fronts, including serious unrest within the West Bank from fringe militia groups who have become emboldened and provided with impetus both by the attacks of 7th October and by the wanton destruction caused by the IDF in Gaza in response. There are tens of thousands internally displaced in the North due to rocket fire from Lebanon and major population centre, Tel Aviv, has been targeted by Iranian rocket fire due to the presence of Israeli military installations in the city.
None of Israel’s stated war aims appear likely to be achieved and so either Israel is guilty of a sunk-cost fallacy, doubling down on their mistakes, or they may have additional aims beyond those explicitly stated. It is rational and necessary for Israel to prioritise self-preservation over all other considerations, given the enormous antipathy it has accrued from its neighbours in the region as a result of its occupation. It appears to be the case that in its strategic calculus, certain elements in Israel’s government, military and intelligence services consider the transfer of Arabs from the occupied territories to be the most effective way to achieve this self-preservation.
Occupation is a clear driver of violence against Israel and has necessitated a system of restrictions on freedom of movement, access to legal recourse, land rights and many other asymmetries in laws governing Jews versus Arabs, that amount to Apartheid according to B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and many other human rights organisations. However, ending the occupation by way of a single bi-national state effectively ends the existence of Israel as a Jewish state due to demographic trends. The creation of a Palestinian state requires the surrender of territory, including strategically important areas such as the eastern portion of the West Bank, which benefits in military terms from its elevation above the Jordan Valley, and would create a buffer zone to compensate for Israel’s lack of depth to defend an attack from the East.
For these reasons, it is often said that Israel can only choose two from the original Zionist ambitions of having:
- A Jewish state
- A democratic state
- Territorial control of Greater Israel
Ulterior motives?
The brutal events of 7th October, following a decades-long, slow and steady rightwards shift in Israeli politics may just have provided Israel with the political environment and rhetorical justification to pursue a solution which avoids the predicaments of every other alternative described above and allows it to realise all three ambitions; a population transfer. Within this framing, Israel’s actions in Gaza appear more rational. Almost all the schools have been destroyed and all the universities. Half of all water and sanitation infrastructure is destroyed or materially damaged. 60% of residential buildings have been destroyed. Electricity remains extremely difficult to access in many places. Such scale of damage to civilian infrastructure is not explainable by Israel’s war aims but is clearly consistent with an ambition to make Gaza uninhabitable, which in turn would make transfer not just possible, but arguably necessary on humanitarian grounds.
The West as an Israeli ally must recognise the very real possibility that the brute force used by Israel in its military conduct may have been motivated by the desire to annex territory, and must intervene to ensure that Israel does not pursue this course of action. Doing so would serve only to make Israel a pariah on the international stage, strip Israel’s Western allies of any moral authority, and may motivate even more hostility towards it by regional powers and Palestinian militia groups.
The question of war crimes
The answer to the second of our questions regarding violations of international humanitarian law is also clear at this stage. Many have tried to equivocate on the matter but given Britain’s complicity arising from its strong early support to Israel’s war effort, we must look at the verifiable evidence and make a dispassionate judgment.
The evidence for war crimes on Hamas’ side have been well -documented even by their Qassam Brigade’s own camera footage, which showed graphic violence being perpetrated against unarmed Israeli civilians, however two of the three Hamas leaders named by the ICC as individuals for whom arrest warrants are being sought have already been assassinated by Israel. War crimes committed by Israel have clearly also been committed; we have seen ample evidence of destruction of civilian infrastructure, in the form of buildings rigged with explosives and demolished, to serve no military purpose. There have been multiple instances of journalists, aid workers and civilians being targeted in areas not covered by evacuation orders, as well as the wider accusation of collective punishment by means of the large-scale destruction of Gaza and the withholding of access for humanitarian aid to freely enter the strip. Deliberate targeting of noncombatants seems likely based on multiple reports, particularly worrying was Israeli magazine, 972’s description an artificial intelligence system designed to target Hamas operatives known as “where’s daddy”, named as such because the software could more reliably identify and kill these operatives with airstrikes when they returned to their homes, where they would likely have women and children present.
There have been some attempts to reinterpret international law, such as German Foreign Minister Baerbock’s argument that civilian areas can “lose their protected status” under international law and become a legitimate target “if terrorists abuse them”. This is simply false, and Britain cannot foolishly discredit itself by justifying clear breaches of international law in an attempt to defend an ally. Britain must instead plan for how to insulate itself as much as possible from any liability by association. For example, Britain has wisely dropped its opposition to implementation of any ICC arrest warrants which may be granted in the future for Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and must continue in the same vein. This is not to say that Britain cannot maintain any ties with Israel, however it must at least be clear that its support for Israel’s self-defence will not apply to grossly disproportionate use of force and breaches of international law.
The war has been raging for over a year and so far, while efforts have been made to facilitate another ceasefire, Israel has not been persuaded to de-escalate by its allies. Britain made a small but symbolic gesture by restricting export licenses on arms to Israel (30 out of 350 rescinded), however, the United States has shown unconditional support, even as their own efforts to broker a ceasefire deal have been thwarted by unreasonable or unrealistic Israeli demands and preconditions. Despite this, US military cooperation with Israel – perhaps the only lever it has to influence Israel’s actions – has reached new heights, as American boots will touch Israeli soil for the first time in history in order to operate a THAAD missile defence system on Israel’s behalf. This pattern of continued acquiescence to Israeli requests for military assistance with no guarantees of de-escalation from their side incentivises the Netanyahu government to continue along the same reckless path. One of the most recent, and striking examples of this recklessness was in April of this year, when Israel struck the Iranian consulate in Damascus, prompting a response from Iran of missiles and drones fired at Israel; the first time Iran has ever directly attacked Israel. The response seemed to be highly coordinated with advance warning delivered through back-channels and seemingly aimed primarily at creating spectacle, and the perception that it would not allow provocations to go unpunished. Israel then once again carried out a targeted bombing on Iranian soil to assassinate Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh and then Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike in Lebanon. Iran countered with a ballistic missile strike targeting military facilities in Israel, including Mossad headquarters in Tel-Aviv. Having already launched the largest attack on Iran since the Iran-Iraq war this October, Israel had planned to respond with still greater force. The American THAAD system had been deployed to Israel in the same month, in an effort to further bolster it against Iran and its proxies. Iran has consistently threatened a strong response to attacks on itself, and has in the past threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, which is an essential choke point for global oil supplies, and is used by several nations politically close to the West.
Conclusions
Pickthall House’s view is that these historically unprecedented exchanges of blows between Iran and Israel represent the beginning of a regional war, which can either be ended before a major catastrophe, through a massive, coordinated diplomatic effort by Western and other powers, or it will continue beyond shows of force, into a globally destabilising conflict. Britain must show urgency and do everything possible to contribute to this diplomatic effort which is in its own best interest, but also in the best interest of Israel and other regional allies.
