Could this new Arab-Israeli war lead to peace?

Sooner or later all wars end. Sometimes what comes after is better and sometimes not. Will the latest conflict between Arabs and Jews lead to a further descent into hell? Or could it conceivably lead to a fresh search for peace in the Middle East? Surely there has been enough suffering.

In the heat of battle, prospects for peace look pretty hopeless. Hamas is killing Israelis – men, women and children — and taking hostages. The sight of an elderly Israeli woman being escorted into Gaza in a golf cart by Hamas gunmen will live long in the memory. Israel will not forgive or forget. Scenes of Jews being massacred or taken hostage inevitably reach back to the Holocaust. It’s in the DNA. It’s also a political fact. It’s the full-stop of every day Israeli policy.

Subduing Hamas will probably take time. Israel’s bombing of civilian high-rise buildings in Gaza probably presages a full-scale ground assault, if not an outright occupation. It could spread.

The attack by Hamas represents a huge failure of intelligence by Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will want to go after Hamas with everything he’s got — not least to forestall a similar uprising on the West Bank – and bolster his own position. He will see it as his Falklands moment.

So on the face of it this latest twist in the most intractable conflict of the modern era feels like more of the same, only worse. It’s a living nightmare for Israelis and Palestinians in equal measure.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has proved relentless, obstinate, merciless, despite numerous efforts to find, if not a solution, then at least settlement, a modus vivendi. Talk of peace now withers on the lips.

The last serious attempt to settle the conflict was the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995, brokered by US President Bill Clinton. Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister, and Yassir Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation shook hands on it. Rabin paid for this act of optimism with his life. Arafat wasted the opportunity, opening the door to a Hamas takeover in Gaza.

Then, if you were a Middle East watcher, the elements of the puzzle fell into place with reasonable ease. The Arab world was divided into moderate and hard-line states. Some wanted Israel driven into the sea. Others saw the futility of such a stance.

Iran, after the Islamic Revolution, sat on the side-lines making mischief. Israel was a robust democracy that alternated between left and right-wing governments with a strong peace movement that favoured a Palestinian settlement.

The political landscape in the Middle East has since been turned upside down. Put simply, the fate of the Palestinians is no longer the casus belli it once was in the Arab world – if at all. Vocal Arab supporters of a two-state solution such as Syria and Libya have imploded as a result of the Arab Spring.

The Gulf states have moved on, leveraging their vast oil revenues and skills to build a future beyond oil. Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait are tying their economies and to a certain extent their cultures so closely to the global economy that funding revolution in the occupied territories seems like a monumentally risky distraction.

Saudi Arabia is emerging as a significant regional power with growing influence on the world stage. One probable motive behind this attack by Hamas is to remind the Kingdom that the Palestinian problem has not gone away.

The timing and execution of the attack, which appears to have completely blindsided Israel, has probably been years in the planning. It was almost certainly conducted with the help of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and secret services.

How else could a ramshackle force plan and execute such an attack, in secret, from a strip of land of barely 365 square kilometres hemmed in by Egypt, Israel and the Mediterranean Sea?

Israel, meanwhile, under its increasingly right-wing governments, has been turning the screw in the occupied territories, authorising ever more settlements, illegal under international law, while restricting human rights at home. The lid was bound to blow off at some point.

The breach of Israel’s fortified border with Gaza underlines how risky it is to place Jewish settlements so close to an implacably hostile entity. Israel could – and may well — build a 50 km wall along the border with Gaza. But that would only serve to emphasize the absence of security.

So what are the chances of a new push for peace?

There are 22 members of the Arab League. Of those, six now have relations with Israel. It has peace deals with Egypt and Jordan and is normalising relations with Sudan, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco.

But the most significant rapprochements are those which Israel is forging in the (largely Sunni) Gulf. There is talk of military cooperation with the UAE as part of the strategic shield against Shia Iran.

Israel agreed to suspend its plans to annexe part of the West Bank in return for normalisation as part of the Abrahams Accords Peace Agreement – not much of a concession but something.

There are immense, perhaps insuperable obstacles to a return to the peace table, not least the ferocity of the Hamas assault from Gaza. Israel is in the grip of a weak, ultra-nationalist government. Its Prime Minister is on trial for corruption.

Successive American presidents have steered clear of trying their hand at peace making since the Oslo Accords. A Donald Trump presidency would bury the idea. Iran will do what it can to upset the apple cart, perhaps through its client in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

Russia is now more than ever a player in the Middle East. It is using Iranian drones in Ukraine. It funds and equips Bashar al Assad in Syria. Vladimir Putin has no obvious interest in a stable Middle East.

But the same impetus that is driving especially the Gulf States to co-exist with Israel could be put to use in giving a Palestinian settlement another go. The peace dividends of an end to the conflict for Israel, the Palestinians and the world are incalculable. The key could lie with Saudi Arabia if it’s prepared to take the risk.

The tragic events in Gaza are a stark reminder that the Palestinian issue has not gone away. There is, simultaneously, increasing violence on the West Bank and in Jerusalem, suggesting the possibility of a third intifada or uprising.

There have been at least six wars between the Jewish state and its neighbours since its founding in 1948. This is the seventh and perhaps the most venomous.

I covered the fourth, the October or Yom Kippur 1973 war exactly 50 years ago this week. I flew to Tel Aviv on the last El Al jet. My fellow passengers were mostly London Jews volunteering to fight. They sang Hava Nagila (“Let Us Rejoice”) as we began our descent into Tel Aviv under curfew. This was the first modern Jewish folk song, composed in 1918 to celebrate the Balfour Declaration, Britain’s decision to create a home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

The Balfour Declaration posited a secure future for the world’s Jews, long before the Holocaust. That argument remains a fundamental pillar of modern diplomacy. But it also confers on the world community an obligation to find a home for the Palestinians. Without that, Israel will be at war forever.

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