Palestinian statehood hangs by a thread. The world must act now to save it

Israel’s announcement on Wednesday that it was taking its first steps towards fully occupying Gaza City – purportedly to seize what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Hamas’s “last terror strongholds” – has spurred a wave of alarm within the international community, to say nothing of Gaza itself.

Earlier this week, the Netanyahu government acknowledged it was reviewing the latest 60-day ceasefire plan proposed by Egyptian and Qatari interlocutors, and agreed to by Hamas, saying it would respond by Friday. Later, however, it publicly rebuffed one of the deal’s conditions: the release of 10 Israeli hostages in Hamas’s captivity. It insisted that Hamas instead hand over all of the remaining 50 hostages.

It is unclear at this stage whether the occupation plan is simply a tactic to force Hamas to concede in the negotiations, or a more permanent move to swallow Palestine’s largest city. Either scenario will have dire consequences, almost certainly extending a 22-month-long war that has claimed the lives of more than 62,000 Palestinian civilians, wounded at least 157,000 Palestinians, destroyed most of Gaza’s infrastructure and caused mass starvation, in addition to the death of more than 1,200 Israelis, and unknown fate of 50 hostages.

As far as pressure tactics go, this would be an extremely callous one, not only to Gazans but to the Israeli public, too. While opinion polls show nearly 80 per cent of Jewish Israelis have little sympathy for the suffering in Gaza, nearly 70 per cent also want the war to end as quickly as possible. Tens of thousands of Israelis have protested the continuation of the war, and they are backed by many former public officials. Calling up 60,000 reservists, as the government has done, to undertake a new offensive demonstrates no regard for this reality.

The Israeli government’s approval this week for a new plan in the occupied West Bank, to build settlements that cut East Jerusalem off from other Palestinian cities, poses a similar conundrum. Some speculate that this, too, is a negotiating tactic ahead of the upcoming UN General Assembly session in New York, in which several western countries plan to recognise Palestinian statehood. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a chief advocate of the plan, has said with glee that it will erase any hopes for future Palestinian state. But tactic or not, the scars created will be very real and may be irreversible. Mr Netanyahu, meanwhile, has spoken of his support for the idea of a “Greater Israel”, threatening neighbouring Arab countries.

In both Gaza and the West Bank, if the outcome really is a permanent expansion of Israeli-controlled territory, then we are at a dangerous precipice, in which Israel’s so-called defensive war becomes an open war of conquest. A greater number of Israel’s western allies than ever are speaking out to condemn such a possibility, but their warnings are treated by Mr Netanyahu with contempt.

Condemnations, however frequent or severe, will achieve little. Recognition of Palestinian statehood is a morally correct position, but also – clearly, given how provocative it seems to Israel’s government – a strategically wise one. Countries who have not yet committed to doing so should. Any erasure of the Palestinian statehood dream on the ground stands a better chance of eventually being undone if it continues to exist in the commitments of the international community.

Even so, the world should not let it come to that. There is still time for the latest wave of Israeli tanks to turn back, if Israel’s friends can summon a tougher line.