A pivotal point has arrived in the cataclysmic six‑month war in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces’ killing of seven foreign aid workers and their Palestinian driver has spurred the US, the UK and other European allies to draw the line that they should have established long ago. On Thursday, Joe Biden called for an immediate ceasefire and told Benjamin Netanyahu that future support would depend on Israel taking steps to protect civilians and relief workers.
These warnings come too late for tens of thousands of Palestinians, mostly women and children. But they could now protect others from the continued offensive, the threatened ground assault in Rafah, and the famine setting in: Oxfam says that people in the north are consuming on average just 245 calories a day. Faced with the prospect of sanctions or a halt to arms deals, Mr Netanyahu’s war cabinet agreed to the opening of the Erez crossing and temporary use of the port of Ashdod in southern Israel. But as the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said, “the real test is results”. The US government wants to see them within days.
A massive scaling-up of aid must be matched by a dramatic reduction in casualties. The killing of the World Central Kitchen staff highlighted not only the desperate need in Gaza but also the IDF’s conduct of the war. It has now sacked two senior officers over the “grave mistake”, but these deaths were not an anomaly; they underscored the hollowness of its claims to minimise civilian casualties. That is made even more starkly clear in testimony from intelligence officials over the use of artificial intelligence to identify targets and the “very lenient” rules on how many civilian deaths were permissible.
Mr Biden’s call came amid growing pressure. The US president had looked not only complicit but weak, as the Israeli prime minister ignored pleas and criticism alike. On Friday, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. The public sympathy and support for Israel engendered by the Hamas atrocities of 7 October were immense. Yet more voters in the US now disapprove than approve of its conduct of the war. Most UK voters want to stop arms sales. This is not just a moral issue but a legal one. Hundreds of legal experts, including four former supreme court judges, have warned that Britain is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel.
Even if the war in Gaza stopped tomorrow, the toll of the dead, wounded, orphaned and traumatised ensures that Palestinians will pay the price throughout their lifetimes and over generations. Mr Biden’s embrace of Mr Netanyahu was supposed to prevent regional escalation, yet there is growing concern about an all-out conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel is on high alert amid fears of Iranian retaliation for the killing of Revolutionary Guards commanders in diplomatic premises in Syria.
The opening of aid corridors following Mr Biden’s call only reinforces the fact that Israel’s allies should have acted decisively earlier. Instead, the US allowed a critical UN security council resolution to pass, then called it non-binding; the president spoke of red lines, then erased them moments later. What is needed now is what was needed months ago: a ceasefire in Gaza, the release of hostages, and a massive, sustained humanitarian relief effort. Nothing short of that will do.
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