“He’ll do whatever I want him to do,” said Donald Trump, addressing his discussions with Benjamin Netanyahu over their illegal war on Iran. The US president said on Friday that he was making his final determination on a deal – of sorts – with Tehran. As chief ally, funder and arms supplier for Israel, the US can rein in its prime minister. But with his hands tied on Iran, Mr Netanyahu seems bent on rekindling war elsewhere. Israel’s brutal escalation in Lebanon may be an attempt to gain ground while it can, or perhaps to destabilise the Iran peace initiative. The prospects for Gaza are grimmer.
As Mr Trump talks up a new peace deal in the Middle East, Mr Netanyahu is trashing Mr Trump’s last effort. Israel this week killed another Hamas military chief, but this war has failed in its stated aim of destroying the group, while visiting untold horror on civilians. Israeli forces have expanded far beyond the half of territory they agreed to hold, attack Palestinians in an undefined zone around their positions and carry out airstrikes deeper into Gaza. Yet Nickolay Mladenov, the top diplomat for the Trump-appointed Board of Peace, has blamed Hamas for the stalling of the purported ceasefire. Now Mr Netanyahu says he has ordered the military to take control of 70% of Gaza. That would force more than 2 million Palestinians into less than a third of what was already overcrowded territory.
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Meanwhile, his defence minister, Israel Katz, has reaffirmed Israel’s intent to expel Palestinians from Gaza. He terms it “voluntary migration”. But if people leave because their homes and essential infrastructure are in ruins, food and medicine are desperately short, and they remain under military assault, that’s not voluntary: it’s ethnic cleansing. A choice between human-made humanitarian catastrophe or exile is no choice at all.
Mr Netanyahu and his coalition partners are watching the polls anxiously ahead of October’s elections. It would be naive to think their remarks are unrelated to courting domestic political support. But given the devastation in Gaza, and Israel’s flouting of the ceasefire terms, it would be naive to regard them as merely rhetorical. Nor should such declarations of intent ever be acceptable.
Yet where is the reaction? Justified international outrage over the treatment of western activists in the Gaza flotilla by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far‑right national security minister, is in grotesque contrast to the silence over the abuse of Palestinian detainees. On Friday, Israel’s ambassador to the UN complained that it had been added to a blacklist of actors credibly suspected of sexual violence in conflict zones. (Hamas was listed last year following the atrocities of 7 October 2023.)
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There is a similar gulf between the anger after Russia struck a Romanian apartment block this week and the silence over attacks in Gaza – where five children were among those killed on the first day of Eid al-Adha. Germany voiced “concern” about the expansion of Israeli military control in Gaza, but Israel is unmoved by toothless criticism. European governments, with little sway over Russia, could put real pressure on an ally and trade partner.
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If Mr Trump wants to be remembered as a peacemaker – admittedly unlikely, given his record – he should ensure that Israel complies with his Gaza plan, that Palestinians can live in peace, and that reconstruction begins. If Europe believes in its frequent invocation of rules-based order and moral decency, it must use its leverage with Israel and end its complicity in these crimes.
