Netanyahu may go down in history as founding father of the State of Palestine

During the last couple of weeks, the United Kingdom, Canada and France have declared their intention – albeit with caveats – to recognise the State of Palestine at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in September. It is also likely that Australia and New Zealand will join them in the near future.

Netanyahu’s long-held Euroscepticism now has a response. Israel’s enemies have been joined by Israel’s friends. It is also a measure of the global belief that the current government of Israel regards the continuation of the conflict as more important than its cessation.

Despite a large majority of Israelis calling for an end to this forever war, the Netanyahu government has remained deaf to all entreaties and continued to convert the courageous State of Israel into an isolated Jewish ghetto. It is ironic that Netanyahu may now go down in history as the founding father of the State of Palestine.

There have been many arguments why a Palestinian state should not come into existence, including the questions of its shape, size, viability and composition. These all have a measure of veracity.

Some of the hostages’ families agree: “The abduction of men, women, and children, who are being held against their will in tunnels while subjected to starvation and physical and psychological abuse, cannot and should not serve as the foundation for establishing a state. If the international community truly desires peace, it must join U.S. efforts by demanding first the release of all hostages, followed by an end to the fighting.” (Hostages and Missing Families' Forum, Daily Telegraph, July 30)

However, it is clear that such sentiments have gone unheard and demands for the release of all hostages as a first move have been unsuccessful in almost two years of fighting. Evyatar David has spent 669 days in captivity. Both the Biden and Trump administrations have failed in their deliberations.

A two-state solution is not a gift to the Islamists but a principle held by many Israelis. It is not a sudden gesture but has a history going back to the Peel Commission proposals of 1937. It should be remembered that modern Jewish nationalism and modern Arab nationalism arose at the same point in history – with claims over the same territory. The logic of partition is the only way out of the clash of two national movements.

The Oslo Accord of 1993, signed by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, recognised that the dream of peace was more important than the nightmare of ideology. Neither a Greater Israel nor a Greater Palestine. The rejectionists of Oslo however shared a profound hatred of its proposals. Today these rejectionists rule in both Jerusalem and Gaza.

Jewish organisations which have long advocated a two-state solution were shaken to their core when Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney actually contemplated doing so. Years of astute diplomacy in the corridors of power in preventing recognition of a state of Palestine have come to nought – and in their hearts they blame Netanyahu. They wonder what their weakened position today means for the Jewish future in the Diaspora.

It also represented the failure through a self-imposed restriction to give a meaningful lead to an increasingly worried community in the current crisis. The pointless striving for a communal consensus was often translated into a meaningless static silence.

It reflected a spiritual failure on the part of many rabbis who buried their heads in the sand. As Efraim Halevi, the London-born, former head of the Mossad, commented: “It is the religious public officials (in Israel), the ones who wear kippot, who are refusing to prioritise the release of the hostages despite it being a cardinal commandment in Jewish tradition.” (Ha’aretz, July 30, 2025)

This watershed in Jewish public life came about after repeated scenes of hunger in Gaza. While the official Israeli line attributed it to “the propaganda of terrorists”, many asked why the serried ranks of doctors and nurses, Palestinian and foreign, should repeatedly lie about the situation before the cameras? Why were airdrops necessary? Why should 1,200 rabbis sign a letter of protest?

Many Jews around the world were deeply ashamed at such a spectacle. It went against the very core of their being and their understanding of what it means to be Jewish. Even so, it was due to a combination of factors – one of which was Netanyahu’s policy to achieve his war aims. He stated this clearly on a recent visit to the Ramon Airbase in Southern Israel. Netanyahu said that Israel needed “to continue to allow the entry of a minimum amount of humanitarian aid”. (Ha’aretz, July 27, 2025).

It was not an “adequate” or a “plentiful” but a “minimum” amount. This instrument of control came together with the inability of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to carry out its responsibility. The Foundation had replaced UN and other aid agencies and showed itself to be profoundly incompetent.

Headed by the evangelical leader, Johnnie Moore, a Trump appointee, it was demonstrably not up to the job. Instead, reports of food riots and shootings of the underage filled television screens throughout the world. Netanyahu’s response was denial, deflection and obfuscation. His bungling has allowed Israel’s opponents to play “the State of Palestine” card to great effect. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Netanyahu has shown an indifference to the tens of thousands of civilians killed in Gaza. His attitude towards hunger in Gaza follows this pattern. He believes that all this can be repaired by a slick public relations exercise in the future.

In an attempt to deflect criticism, Netanyahu’s foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, retrieved the slogan that “Israel is not Czechoslovakia”. This was designed to recall the memory of a defenceless small state which was deserted by the Great Powers in 1938 and eventually devoured by Nazi Germany.  This is part and parcel of the inheritance from Menahem Begin.

During the first Lebanon war in 1982, the PLO’s Yasser Arafat, was trapped by an Israeli siege of Beirut, Menahem Begin wrote a letter to President Reagan: ‘Now, may I tell you dear Mr President how I feel these days. I feel as a prime minister empowered to instruct a valiant army facing “Berlin” where, amongst innocent civilians, Hitler and his henchmen hide in a bunker deep beneath the surface.”

Begin further labelled the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla camps by Christian Phalangists as a “blood libel” against the Jews. Amos Oz responded to Begin: “The urge to revive Hitler, only to kill him again and again, is the result of pain that poets can permit themselves to use, but not statesmen … even at great emotional cost personally, you must remind yourself and the public that elected you its leader that Hitler is dead and burned to ashes.”

Amos Oz’s retort is still relevant today to the banal utterances from Netanyahu, Saar and their minions.

History records that the Lebanon war of 1982 was an utter disaster for Israel. A depressed Begin resigned a year later. Then, as now, Diaspora leaders lauded the invasion at the outset and played catch-up as the catastrophe unfolded. Then as now, no songs were written about it.

The war of today was marked last week by a protest of teenagers who burned their conscription papers. Such refusals to serve also happened in 1982. It appears that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it in 2025.