With the world’s attention on Greenland, Iran and Venezuela, we are in danger of forgetting that the Gaza conflict remains unresolved and that the struggle for Palestinian statehood stands at a perilous moment.
Donald Trump has declared that the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas had moved to its “second phase” and that a technocratic government for Gaza, backed by an appointed “Board of Peace”, will soon be appointed.
Hamas’s sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is being rocked by a democratic uprising which it may not survive. Meanwhile, calls to “globalise the intifada” are having horrific, stochastic consequences, as in the Bondi Beach terror attack. In truth, there is no intifada.
At some point this year, from its new HQ in Arish, Egypt, a Gaza Stabilisation Force of troops from Muslim countries will move into that meagre sliver of land not occupied by the IDF and attempt to impose order.
Then it will be crunch time for Hamas. Either it disarms, to become a carbon copy of civilian Islamist parties elsewhere, or it goes to war with Egypt, the rest of the Muslim world and the United Nations itself.
If you were one of those people who declared themselves “elated” on October 7, 2023, in the belief that killing and raping innocent Israeli civilians was an act of “decolonisation”, these are the pitiful fruits of that day: Gaza dismembered and occupied; tens of thousands of Palestinians dead and hundreds of thousands traumatised for life.
If, on the upside, Palestine now has embassies in the major capitals of Europe, that is only because politicians the far left calls “genocidaires” – Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Mark Carney and Anthony Albanese – have courageously defied both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu to recognise its statehood.
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, in short, has led to a catastrophic defeat for the Palestinian people. For the people I met during the last Gaza war, which I covered on the ground in 2014, the possibility of exercising “self-determination” within a territory corresponding to the historic boundaries of the Gaza Strip looks remote. In the West Bank, meanwhile, the relentless grind of illegal land occupations by Israeli settlers goes on.
The rational response to defeat is to recalibrate: to ask searching questions about strategy and intent. But self-examination is not the strong point of those on the “actionist” fringe of the Palestinian solidarity movement.
Instead, they have decided to make this all about themselves. I am glad the Palestine Action prisoners on hunger strike have suspended their action – because it was deeply misguided. They are, like all prisoners on remand, innocent until proven guilty. But calls for politicians to intervene over the conditions of their detention and to negotiate with the accused were both unwise and a contravention of the UK’s centuries-old tradition of impartial justice.
I noted carefully the hunger strikers’ demands, communicated via the Guardian before Christmas. They were “shut down the weapons factories supplying arms to Israel”; de-proscribe Palestine Action; end the alleged “mistreatment of prisoners”; set immediate bail and “provide a fair trial”.
Not one of these demands directly concerns the people of Gaza. And – it should be noted – none were met at the point where the strikes were called off.
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For the MPs and public figures who compared Palestine Action’s attacks to those of the Suffragettes, I have nothing but disdain: the Suffragettes were fighting for the vote. We, today, have the vote and have voted overwhelmingly for parties that support the right of Israel to exist, for a two-state solution to the Palestinian question, and for Britain to have a defence industry to secure ourselves against foreign aggression.
Palestine Action urged supporters to commit serious criminal damage in support of an anti-democratic aim. With dozens of its activists arrested, it has moved the focus away from the plight of Palestinians towards that of a bunch of middle-class people in jail, and to the deranged MP Zarah Sultana, who was pictured shouting into the face of a police officer outside the prison in which one of the strikers was being held.
And it is not stopping. On New Year’s Day, supporters of an unnamed copycat group smashed machinery at Bruntons Aero Products, a small engineering firm in Musselburgh, which makes cables for the aircraft industry, has maybe two dozen employees and operates out of a low-security unit on an industrial estate.
But because it supplies the Italian aviation firm Leonardo, and because Leonardo supplies Israel, protesters thought it justified to smash the machinery with sledgehammers, daubing the chilling threat “There’s Only One Way This Ends” on the wall of the factory.
There is a concerted attempt under way to divert the justified outrage and solidarity with the Palestinians felt by millions of British people into a movement against the entire defence industry and what Greta Thunberg calls the “militarisation of Europe” – ie the justified move to re-arm in the face of the Russian threat.
At the same time, the tactics of “actionism” are being proliferated. So let’s be clear on what actionism is: it has nothing to do with the legitimate tradition of non-violent direct action, or peaceful protest – all of which are designed to influence political debate and to dramatise injustice.
Whether it is by hounding a Jewish academic at City University, or picketing a Jewish restaurant in Notting Hill, or storming a conference hosting Ukrainian soldiers at King’s College London, or smashing a Scottish workplace, this kind of “actionism” is about shutting down the normal procedures of democracy and – in many cases – normalising antisemitism.
In a democracy, we settle questions through reasoned debate and voting; we listen to each other’s premises and examine our motivations and our logic. Actionism is about intimidating MPs, shutting down debate, challenging the rule of law and clogging up the criminal justice system. It is about the triumph of disruption over persuasion, and emotion over logic.
Its effect, however well-meaning its supporters may be, is to erode the space for democratic politics, at the very time when figures like Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson are seeking the overthrow of the government.
With the global order fragmenting, the project of a Palestinian state needs the strongest allies it can muster: democratic states with diplomatic power and international legitimacy.
It does not need a bunch of middle-class LARPers dedicated to disarming European democracies in the face of Russian fascism, undermining the rule of law and shutting down debate by wielding sledgehammers.
