Lies, damned lies and Gaza

The tragedy of Gaza has reached a point where suffering has almost lost its meaning: millions living in a broken world, a hell on earth, while cadaverous hostages emerge after nearly 500 days of sub-terrestrial captivity. Horror on our screens has become commonplace.

But the agony of the innocent caught up in this cataclysmic war is made immeasurably more painful by uncertainty and two, alternative versions of what happens next.

In the first, more hopeful version, the three-stage agreement signed by Israel and Hamas last month to end the war moves along in fits and starts, beset by the inevitable delays, misunderstandings and duplicity, to an eventual conclusion.

In the second version one side – or both – throw enough spanners in the works to blow up the deal. This is not as improbable as it sounds. Whatever their differences Hamas and the present Israeli government appear to share a common interest: to crush hope once and for all and make it impossible for people on either side ever to believe in peace let alone co-existence.

This was clearly the intention behind the atrocities on October 7. It is now equally clear that this is the central aim of the present Israeli coalition led by Benyamin Netanyahu and his messianic partners.

The upshot of version two is a resumption of the war. I say a war but it stopped being a war in any conventional sense some months ago. Hamas is still standing but, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, it’s a spent force, its grotesque display handing over skeletally thin hostages notwithstanding.

Israel’s aim now, it would seem, is to make Gaza unliveable, clear it out of surviving Palestinians and re-occupy it with Jewish settlers or, fancifully, hand it over to a US-backed consortium to develop as a new Riviera.

A resumption of attacks on Gaza by Israel – or what little is left of it – could be a death sentence for the remaining living hostages taken on October 7. So much for Israel’s cardinal rule of war: no man left behind.

This scenario also sinks, for the foreseeable future, the chances of a broader accommodation between Israel and other Arab states, notably Saudi Arabia. No Arab regime would survive turning its back on the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia has been unequivocal on this point. The Middle East, the world’s richest oil-bearing region, would remain a powder keg with the fuse still burning.

Which is to be? The short answer is we simply don’t know. It could be either or it could be both. On Saturday when the next group of hostages is due to be released or later. There are so many moving parts in this drama, so many players with their own agenda anything could go wrong at any time.

The fact that we now have a US President who throws out ideas that are both naïve and ill-informed, instead of providing steady, thoughtful leadership, complicates matters immeasurably.

Is he serious when he says the US will “own” Gaza and turn it into a luxury marina? Or is he just shaking things up to see where they fall? Maybe he’s just having fun.

I do not subscribe to the view that Donald Trump is either stupid or mad. And he speaks the plain truth when he says that Gaza is a hellhole and that the Palestinian refugee problem has been used as pawn by Arab states to further their own interests. Something different needs to be tried.

But I do think he’s dangerously irresponsible. He doesn’t think things through. His view of the Middle East seems to be filtered through Netanyahu, his ultra-nationalist coalition partners and American evangelicals.

Expecting either Egypt or Jordan to take in a million Palestinians would be like asking them to take in a million Trojan horses. Have his advisers reminded him of Black September 1970? Jordan then nearly succumbed to a takeover by the Palestine Liberation Organisation, before it was driven out in a short civil war led by the present King’s father, Hussein.

Cleansing Gaza of Palestinians —  because that is what it would amount to – would place an intolerable burden on Egypt and Jordan. This, in turn, would backfire against Israel, with whom they share a border, threatening the existing peace agreements. Jordan and Egypt would have to contain Hamas. The whole sorry saga would start all over again just a little further away from Jerusalem.

It would also be deeply, morally wrong, as well as contrary to every international law passed since the creation of the state of Israel. The Palestinians exist. Palestine – its homes, its traditions and its olive groves – is a historical fact. They have as much right to a homeland in Palestine as does Israel. The sins of their leadership do not change that.

Treating them like a non-people, like so much disposable garbage, is something which, of all people, Jews should understand won’t make Israel safer. Dialogue and patience are the only realistic options.

Trump’s arrival in the Oval Office has the world running scared. He’s throwing out executive orders like firecrackers on Halloween night. His hit-squad led by Elon Musk is cutting a swathe through Washington like an invading horde, sowing fear and confusion.

How much of it is legal, how much of it is sabre-rattling, how much of it is based on evidence and how much of it is made up, we just don’t know.  And herein lies the problem for anyone trying to make sense of this nightmare.

One of the things that terrorism and a certain kind of confected populism have in common is the intent to silence the voices of reason, of empathy and of dignity. One by using violence, the other through lies and deceit.

Netanyahu signs an agreement agreeing to end the war, without having achieved any of his proclaimed aims. At the same time, he tells his supporters who oppose the agreement that he has no intention of keeping it. Hamas says it wants a deal but puts obstacles in its way. Trump meanwhile says the first thing that comes into his head.

I n a 1974 interview Hannah Arendt, the German-Jewish philosopher, perhaps the most astute observer of authoritarianism, said: “ If everybody always lies the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but that nobody believes anything any longer. … a people that no longer can believe anything is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”

That risks making suckers of us all.

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