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The sad truth is that 10 months of war may have all been for nothing

Is there hope for Israel and Gaza? I can’t see it

August 27, 2024 16:37
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Right-wing Israelis demonstrate next to the Sde Teman military base near Beersheba, against the detention for questioning of military reservists who were suspected of abuse of a detainee following the October 7 attack in Israel, on July 29, 2024. The military said it has opened an investigation into the "suspected abuse" of a detainee at the Sde Teiman base set up for holding Palestinians arrested in Gaza since the war broke out. (Photo by Menahem Kahana / AFP) (Photo by MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images)
3 min read

The Gaza conflict is destroying one of our dearest beliefs: the delusion that good must come from suffering. The hope that pain is not in vain is so widespread it must be wired into us.

Centre-left commentators like me have been guilty of promoting false hope after the October 7 massacres. We accepted that Israel had a right to defend itself and that Hamas was an Islamo-fascist movement that had to be destroyed. But surely, we kidded ourselves, the Israeli far right would go down with it.

I am just back from my first visit to Auschwitz and it is a sobering thought that the greatest massacre of Jewish people since the fall of Nazism was committed on the watch of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right and far-right government. Not some alliance of bleeding-heart liberals, if one could even begin to imagine such a government coming to power in Israel. But of men who beat their chests and boasted of their patriotism. Their policy of tolerating Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority and its dreams of a Palestinian state had been a palpable disaster. Surely the Israeli public would turn on them?

This wasn’t just how centre-left commentators felt. The Labour Party now in power in the UK, the Biden-Harris administration in Washington and most European governments believed the same. Good would come from the horror as work began on a two-state solution.