Editorial | Pull plug on Netanyahu

It must now be clear to Israel’s friends in the West that Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t interested in ending the war in Gaza, or in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian question, and that it is long past time for them to continue placating and enabling Mr Netanyahu’s far-right regime.

Those countries, including France, Britain and Canada, that have announced their intention to formally recognise a sovereign Palestine, must proceed. But that is insufficient to alleviate the immediate suffering of the people of Gaza and the hostages being held by Hamas, the radical group that controlled the territory.

Even at the price of deepening rifts with the United States and incurring Donald Trump’s anger, Israel’s friends must impose meaningful sanctions against Mr Netanyahu and his regime to end their systematic starvation of Gaza, and the planned expansion of the war on the strip.

Indeed, the Gaza war has evolved into the moral issue of the times, against which many of today’s western leaders – like their predecessors who watched with contrived impotence while Hitler’s Nazis cowed Germany then marginalised Jews before launching his genocide against them – will be judged.

MORAL LEGITIMACY

Mr Netanyahu’s actions may bring Israel territorial gains. Yet, increasingly, he undermines people’s sense of moral legitimacy, which, along with its military capabilities, has underpinned the existence of the Jewish state since its post-World War 2 creation.

Since Hamas’s cross-border incursion of October 2023, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking 200 others hostage, Israel has engaged in a war in Gaza. That fight, however, has long since crossed from legitimate self-defence to acts of cruelty and collective of Gazans.

The narrow, flat, featureless strip is now largely a moonscape of concrete rubble. The place has been flattened. Few buildings exist. More than 60,000 Gazans have been killed since the war began. More than twice that have been injured. Hundreds, if not thousands, of bodies are believed to be beneath the rubble.

Further, the Netanyahu government has effectively banned the United Nations and independent international agencies from delivering food and other relief to Gazans. They have little food, little water and little fuel,

The food distribution system cobbled by Mr Netanyahu and the United States is not wholly inadequate. When Gazans turn up at its chaotic centres, they are fired on by the Israeli military, supposedly with the intent of maintaining order. Hundreds have been killed or injured.

Predictably, famine has set in in Gaza. Increasingly, images emerge from the territory of people, mostly children, with skeletal frames and distended stomachs.

Last week, Mr Netanyahu’s security cabinet approved his proposal to expand the war in Gaza. He initially intended a complete occupation of Gaza. For now, that is to be limited to Gaza city, with the possible displacement of over million people.

DEATHS OF MORE GAZANS

This escalation, as several world leaders have warned, will likely mean the deaths of many more Gazans, and, as Ed Davey, the leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, put it a policy of “ethnic cleansing”. It will also endanger the remaining Israel hostages held by Hamas.

What is required in Gaza is an immediate ceasefire, the release of the hostages, and an unrestricted flow of food to the territory.

But it is not only in Gaza where Mr Netanyahu is engaged in provocative behaviour with respect to the Palestinian question. Military activity has increased in the occupied West Bank where settler violence has increased and Israel has also sanctioned the building of more Jewish settlements.

Clearly, Mr Netanyahu is in expansionist mode and seems keen to finally bury the two-state solution, with Israel secured behind borders that existed up to the 1967 war.

The developments have caused much hand-wringing in the West. Chancellor Fridriech Merz, the German chancellor has said that he will halt the supply to Israel of weapons that might be used in Gaza. That is likely, at this stage, to be of little consequence in the larger scheme of things.

Antonio Costa, the European Council president, has said Mr Netanyahu’s plan to expand the war should have “consequences for EU-Israeli relations”, which was for European leaders to decide.

Words, though, are not enough. They have to translate to effective action, felt by Benjamin Netanyahu.