London is, at last, beaming Israeli flags onto its most recognisable buildings. This is an improvement on how some of the city’s residents have been marking the mass murder of Jews but beyond that it’s empty symbolism, as these flag projections always are. They’ve become the most visible – and often the most substantive – western response to terrorism in the past decade or so. Perhaps it’s comforting, as you bleed out in a bullet-riddled Paris theatre or under the wheels of a truck in a Berlin Christmas market, to know that your country’s national standard will soon adorn the White House and the Palace of Westminster, but I doubt it.
Rather than a light show, I would prefer a display of gumption. That should begin with unambiguous resolve on the part of the Prime Minister. Reports say that at least ten Britons have been killed or are missing amid these attacks, which have so far claimed the lives of 900 Israelis. Hamas must suffer severe consequences for this. Rishi Sunak is not a security or foreign policy Prime Minister. With the Defence Secretary left to shoulder most of the burden on Ukraine, his nerve and his stomach have yet to be tested. This is not the kind of challenge Sunak is comfortable with. It can’t be solved with a calculator or an algorithm or a meeting. He will have to get comfortable with it, quickly. They have seemingly murdered and maimed our citizens. They must pay an excruciating price. Otherwise, we will send a message that terrorists can kill Britons anywhere they find them without repercussion.
We will leave aside considerations of hard power for now and focus instead on how Britain can use its soft power to punish the perpetrators of these atrocities. In deciding on a suite of sanctions, we should bear in mind the political realities on the ground in Gaza. Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections and gained a majority of seats in the legislative council. It did so as an open terrorist organisation sworn to the extermination of Israel. Though no legislative elections have been held since, the most recent polling shows Hamas 12 points in the lead among residents of Gaza and roughly neck-and-neck with Fatah when West Bank Palestinians are included. When all Palestinians are asked their preferred president, Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh enjoys a 21-point lead over Fatah incumbent Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas are hardly shining examples of democratic legitimacy but they are who the people of Gaza have chosen to lead them and would choose again if asked tomorrow. When it comes to culpability for these attacks on Israel, there is a clear legal and moral distinction between between Hamas terrorists and Gazan civilians. When it comes to political sympathies and ideological worldview, the gap is not as wide as Gaza’s western apologists would have you believe.
A failure to update our foreign policy to punish Palestinian terrorism would be a reward to Palestinian terrorism
The UK cannot go on as though the weekend’s events never happened. A failure to update our foreign policy to punish Palestinian terrorism would be a reward to Palestinian terrorism. That punishment should reflect the Palestinian Authority’s response to these terror attacks — Abbas greeted the news by touting the Palestinians’ right to self-defence — and the realpolitik that when 87-year-old Abbas goes, Hamas is likely to take control of the PA too.
There are three meaningful diplomatic penalties we could impose tomorrow. The first would be to recognise Jerusalem in its entirety as the capital of Israel and move our embassy there. Our currently policy of pretending Israel can share a capital city with the Palestinians is a deadly delusion. The second would be to withdraw our support for a Palestinian state within the 1949 armistice lines. Under these arrangements, Israel would be just nine miles wide at its narrowest point and, as we have seen, readily overrun by its enemies. Our support for a two-state solution should be predicated on realistic, defensible borders for the Jewish state. The third sanction would be to suspend all UK aid to what Whitehall calls the ‘Palestinian territories’. This year, we sent £17 million in development aid and next year we’re budgeted to send £29 million. If a single penny of that money leaves the Treasury after the murder of our citizens, it will be an act of pathetic, cowardly masochism.
In taking these steps, we would not be dictating the status of Jerusalem or future borders to the parties on the ground. Nor would we be opting out of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians in perpetuity. Rather, we would be putting in place policies to govern how we interact with this part of the world that reflect our values and national interests.
More useful than flag projections would be going to the origin of Hamas terrorism, which is the political, financial and weaponry support it receives from Iran. Hardening our position on Iran should be an easy call for No. 10. This is a regime that kidnaps British citizens and holds them to ransom, seizes British military and diplomatic personnel, and where crowds gather to burn our flag and chant ‘Death to Britain’. Ian Acheson asks why the UK still hasn’t proscribed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. For the same reason that Britain keeps trying to revive the dangerously naive Iran deal and pretends Iran is a regime with which we can have dialogue.
That reason is the Foreign Office. Every country needs an organisation that will project its interests on the world stage. Unfortunately, when they were being handed out, the UK seems to have been at the back of the queue. The Foreign Office bureaucracy aren’t a bad lot, really. They’ve just never been able to shake the belief that rewarding Britain’s allies and punishing its enemies is somehow unsporting. That makes it all the more commendable that James Cleverly, 13 months into an indeterminate sentence as Foreign Secretary, issued an early and unequivocal statement of support for Israel on Saturday. I doubt civil servants will allow him any further statements quite so morally clear-headed.
Moral clarity is what is required now. The malice, sadism and savagery Hamas has shown cries out for retribution, especially when it comes to the murder of British citizens. The Prime Minister must not be weak. He must display leadership and resolve. He must show the world that murdering Britons carries a heavy price.
Comments