Gaza: Is British Policy ‘Morally Indefensible’?

August 06, 2014, 11:41 AM GMT+0

John Humphrys asks: Should Britain have taken a stronger stand over Gaza?

The scenes of carnage and destruction in Gaza over the last month have horrified everyone who has witnessed them. Apportioning blame, however, has sharply divided opinion. Some condemn Israel for military action they consider to be brutal, indiscriminate and disproportionate; others blame Hamas, the militant Palestinian organisation that runs Gaza, for bringing such suffering and bloodshed on to the heads of their own people. Meanwhile, the outside world has been unable to impose restraint on either side. Should Britain have taken a stronger stand?

Baroness Warsi, the first Muslim woman to sit in a British Cabinet, believes it should have done so. On Tuesday she resigned as a Foreign Office minister, denouncing Britain’s current policy on Gaza as ‘morally indefensible’. Her complaint is that David Cameron has been unwilling to condemn Israeli action which has seen 1,800 Palestinian civilians in Gaza killed, a third of the 1.8 million population uprooted from their homes and massive damage done to Palestinian property and infrastructure.

The latest outbreak of violent conflict between Israel and Hamas is the third since 2009. It followed the kidnapping and murder of three young Israelis earlier in the summer, a crime which Israel blamed on Hamas. Subsequently, a Palestinian youth was brutally murdered by some Israelis, apparently in retaliation. This precipitated a resumption of rocket attacks on Israel from within Gaza, initially by groups even more hardline in their opposition to the very existence of Israel than Hamas, which provides the democratically-elected government there.

Although Israel has an effective anti-missile defence system that is largely successful in preventing such rocket attacks from reaching their targets, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu decided to take strong military action to prevent any further rocket attacks being launched and to destroy the system of tunnels between Gaza and Israel used by Palestinian militants to infiltrate arms and suicide bombers into Israel. Operation Protective Eagle was launched on 8 July.

What has angered so many around the world is the sheer force of the Israeli action. The consequences of the heavy shelling have been there for all to see and the number of casualties speaks for itself. But it was what many regard as the indiscriminate nature of the Israeli attacks that has caused most outrage. Although Israel gave advance warning to those neighbourhoods in Gaza it was intending to attack, so giving civilians affected time to leave their homes before they were pummelled into dust, Israel ended up killing children playing on the beach and hitting hospitals and shelters set by the United Nations to protect innocent people fleeing their homes. The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, has been exceptionally outspoken in condemning Israel’s behaviour.

But the British government has failed to join in this condemnation, despite the strenuous efforts Lady Warsi claims to have made while still in government for it to do so. In her letter of resignation she said that ‘our current policy on Gaza is morally indefensible’. She said the government had not done enough ‘to shape events’ and most of all she clearly believes the British government should have joined those who think the Israeli action has been wholly out of proportion to the threat the country faced. One measure of this is that, to date, 67 Israelis, most of them in the military, have been killed in the recent action compared with the 1,800 Palestinian civilians killed.

In his reply, the Prime Minister described the situation in Gaza as ‘intolerable’ and pointed out that his government had expressed ‘grave concern’ over what was happening in Gaza and had called on the Israeli government to ‘exercise restraint’. But his reply simply confirmed Lady Warsi’s point: that the government’s response had fallen short of condemnation of Israel.

Several senior Conservative MPs have come out in support of Lady Warsi, describing her resignation as ‘principled’. Boris Johnson, the Tory Mayor of London, echoed her claim that Israeli action had been disproportionate and the recently sacked Attorney-General, Dominic Grieve, questioned whether it had been ‘reasonable, necessary and proportionate’. Even before Lady Warsi resigned, the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, was arguing that the Prime Minister should condemn Israel.

Within the coalition government there is dissent too. The LibDem Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, has suggested there should be a suspension of arms export licences to Israel, whereas the Prime Minister has authorised only a review.

Lady Warsi’s criticism of government policy extended way beyond the response to the recent events in Gaza. She said that ‘the policy in relation to the Middle East Peace Process generally’ was also morally indefensible. The Prime Minister responded by saying that its support for a negotiated two-state solution to the overall Israel-Palestinian conflict had been strong and consistent.

The trouble is that this policy, advocated by British governments and others for decades, has got nowhere. Blame for this can easily be attributed to both sides but what makes the issue so toxic is that as time passes the predicament of each side changes in very different ways.

For Palestinians, divided between the West Bank and Gaza, life has gradually become more and more intolerable. On the West Bank, the building of the wall between Palestinian-dominated areas and those occupied by Israelis has made it harder and harder for Palestinians to live their lives and especially to work in areas where they used to move more freely. And Gaza has become a virtual prison, blockaded by the Israelis at sea and with virtually all exit routes blocked.

Meanwhile, the Israelis have continued to build settlements on Palestinian land on the West Bank and in occupied East Jerusalem making the political difficulties of eventually agreeing a two-state solution to the problem far greater than they otherwise would be. It’s the failure of the British government and even more the American government to intervene to stop this process developing to the point where negotiation will be hopeless that leads many people to regard western policy as morally indefensible.

Defenders of the British government would claim that publicly condemning Israel for its action in Gaza and more widely might make us feel better about ourselves but would be likely to have little effect. They would dismiss it as ‘megaphone diplomacy’ that achieves nothing. Instead they are pinning their hopes on the 72-hour ceasefire which began on Tuesday and which was accompanied by the beginning of indirect negotiations between the two sides in Cairo.

Few, however, will be holding their breath. Most will suppose that even if this violent episode between Israel and Hamas comes to an end, it will be followed by another and that little progress will be made towards an ultimate solution. Meanwhile many more innocent people, on both sides, will get killed. In the light of this, the question of whether British policy is ‘morally indefensible’ or whether it simply reflects the relative impotence of outsiders to affect events, is one that is bound to go on being asked.

  • What’s your view?
  • Do you agree with Lady Warsi that Britain’s policy on Gaza is morally indefensible or not?
  • Do you think Israel should be singled out for special condemnation after what has happened in Gaza over the last month?
  • To what extent do you think that Hamas also should be condemned?
  • And what faith do you still have that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can still be negotiated?

Let us know your views.

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