For Harold Wilson, a week was a long time in politics. For the Israelis, the one year the Israel-Hamas war has lasted must feel like an age. In that time, their world has turned upside down and they may even have lost their bearings.
What Hamas did on October 7, 2023, was horrific. It was barbaric. It was unforgivable. Up to 1,200 Israelis were killed, possibly 250 were taken hostage and the country was traumatised. At that point, Israel had the compassion of the world. It was the victim of terror.
However, that has paled in comparison to what Israel did in return. Nearly 42,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children, have been killed. Almost 100,000 have been injured. Perhaps the entire 2.3 million population of Gaza has been displaced. The Strip is devastated. Compassion rapidly turned to censorship and then condemnation. Israel was no longer seen as a victim. It was now considered the perpetrator. Benjamin Netanyahu set out to obliterate Hamas and, thus, he thought, resolve the Palestinian issue in Israel’s favour once and for all. Instead, Hamas survives though, no doubt, badly battered. Its ideology is still unvanquished.
More importantly, Netanyahu’s war on the people of Gaza has placed the Palestinian issue irrevocably on the international agenda. Justice for Palestine has become a cause not just for the United Nations, but, more tellingly, in Washington. And it’s voiced most strongly on the university campuses of the western world. That’s not what Netanyahu wanted.
In the last 365 days, Ireland, Spain and Norway have recognised Palestine. Saudi Arabia has openly declared that a resolution of the Palestine problem is a condition for any diplomatic accord with Israel. And talk of a Palestine State is never far from either Biden’s rhetoric or Kamala Harris’.
This connects with the second inversion that’s happened. They’re all talking of a two-State solution. But do they realise it’s probably no longer possible? With 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Netanyahu determined to create a puppet government in Gaza, where would a Palestinian State be created?
A year ago, even six months ago, the Palestinians were still talking of a one-State solution. But now, far more than earlier, that’s completely unacceptable to the Jews. For one simple reason: It would eradicate the Jewish State they’ve always wanted.
So, isn’t this a paradox? Just when the world has woken to the crying need for justice for the Palestinian people, we no longer know what that means. For now, at least, it seems to have passed beyond our political imagination.
There’s a third inversion and, perhaps, for the Israelis it’s possibly the most troubling and, certainly, the most baffling. How the world views their country today is almost the opposite of what it once used to be. And because they see themselves as victims and not perpetrators, I don’t think they’ve understood this.
Before 2023, public opinion in the West admired Israel — its fortitude and resilience, its incredible intelligence services, its judiciary, which has imprisoned former prime ministers, and the chatty informality of its people. None of that is remembered today. Its place has been taken by the brutal relentless “genocide” — and, yes, that word is used — inflicted on the people of Gaza. From being admired, Israel has become a despised, if not hated country.
The Israelis don’t understand this. As victims of the Holocaust, they cannot accept they’re guilty of genocide. They refuse to acknowledge that what they’re doing to the Palestinians recalls what Hitler did to them. But the facts are incontrovertible and ineradicable. It’s just that the mirror Israel looks at shows something else.
No doubt the dramatic killings of Ismail Haniyeh and Hassan Nasrallah has restored the sheen of the Israeli intelligence services — they were left red-faced last October — but the deep red stain of what Israel has done in Gaza is indelible, unforgivable and unforgettable. It has ensured that Israel is seen as a very different country. That’s something Israelis find very difficult to come to terms with.
Karan Thapar is the author of Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story.The views expressed are personal
