Day after day we watch the pulverising of Gaza as deaths reach more than 8,300 according to the Hamas-run health ministry; thousands more are certain to die. Photographs of dead Palestinian children with their names scrawled on their legs by their parents lest they die unidentified are beyond horror.
It’s unbearable to witness. Call for it to stop. Stop it now. Even if what we say has no effect, at least raise our voices against the butchery of people with nowhere else to flee. Absolve us from collusion.
A ceasefire sounds like the right idea, followed by a negotiated two-state solution, Israelis and Palestinians at last in their own self-governing homelands. What harm can it do at least to call for it? Yet Labour is in danger of tearing itself apart over something an opposition party can affect barely at all.
That word “ceasefire” has become a symbol and a semantic roadblock, as events rush on and words get left behind. “Ceasefire” has become an ideology rather than a practicality. If Keir Starmer stood accused of calling for far too little, events have overtaken his critics. Now Labour is calling for a “pause” and a “humanitarian corridor” to allow “immediate unimpeded access for food, water, medicine and electricity in Gaza” which it says would be a breakthrough. It may even be a first step to stilling the Gaza slaughter, to Hamas releasing the 229 hostages, to no more rocket attacks on Israel, to Hamas releasing the hundreds of foreigners it keeps shut in Gaza, including 600 Americans and 200 British people.
Attempts at the UN founder along the usual lines: it’s just possible Monday’s emergency UN security council meeting requested by the United Arab Emirates will have found acceptable ceasefire words. But words are dynamite: hard to spot the difference between Israelis insisting their offensive into Gaza is an “incursion”, not an “invasion”. Each day President Biden’s warnings to Israel grow sterner: remember Hamas is a legal target but civilians are not, he says. Each day the formula that Israel has “the right to self-defence” clashes with the incompatible mantra that it must “obey international law”.
Where’s Israel’s plan, ask the Americans and everyone else. Wiping out Hamas without mass slaughter is impossible. Even if Hamas’s capability is devastated, some other jihadist eruption will arise among the 45% unemployed people in Gaza avenging this legacy. Benjamin Netanyahu’s destruction of any two-state solution, planting settlements as facts on the ground, has led to war, not security.
As for murderous Hamas, coldly careless of its own citizens, Israel has again helped summon some sympathy for its cause. Like all terrorists, Hamas holds power by terrorising its own people, its popularity in Gaza measured at a low ebb: with no elections, opinion relies on Arab Barometer – a nonpartisan research network that provides insight into the Arab world – whose findings are reported in a US thinktank magazine, Foreign Affairs. “The vast majority”, it says, are frustrated by their disaster government, don’t share Hamas ideology to destroy Israel and want a two-state solution. But in the past, it says, Israeli attacks drove them back to Hamas, and will again. The clash between two atrociously led peoples strews bodies now and embitters future generations for a never-ending war it continues. Both sides suffered deep historic injury, both inflict deep wrongs. “From the river to the sea,” beckons Israel’s surrounding enemies to obliterate the country, Israelis like Palestinians have nowhere else to go.
Starmer stays in step with Biden, the EU and Nato calling for a temporary halt, hoping it lasts longer. As opposition leader, Starmer backs the government of the day in foreign policy crises, as in a pandemic, despite Rishi Sunak crassly telling the Israelis “we want you to win”. “Winning” is no long-term option: a Northern Ireland-style brokered difficult peace may be some day.
Starmer is not playing politics with this – unlike Tory backbenchers howling gleeful accusations that if any Labour MP makes a “ceasefire” call it will revive Labour antisemitism. Lib Dems likewise use their “ceasefire” stance for gain, suddenly appearing in force in Labour seats with significant Muslim communities, according to some Labour MPs. Starmer’s blunder, telling LBC “I think Israel does have that right” to cut off power and water, went viral, taking an unforgivable nine days to correct, followed by a disastrous mosque meeting, for which Labour will pay a price. Calling for a “ceasefire” would have been his easier option. But as he expects to be prime minister next year, breaking ranks with all Britain’s allies would be frivolous for the brief gain of posturing for something unachievable. Most Britons want the UK to take a mediator’s neutrality.
Here’s the harm if Labour broke ranks with its allies: demanding a ceasefire without precise conditions asks Israel to abandon its hostages, taken amid atrocity. Swap them for 5,000 Palestinian prisoners – many of them Hamas leaders of the kind who devised that massacre? No country could turn the other cheek to an enemy holding its hostages. Nor does Hamas call for a ceasefire that stops them shooting rockets into Israel from behind civilian hospitals.
Decent people call for a “ceasefire” because the bombing is unbearable, including MPs representing some with Palestinian families in mortal peril. But among those Labour people who inflicted the shame of antisemitism on the party, watch out for disingenuous “ceasefire” calls failing to damn Hamas. That’s the dividing line, says Labour’s leadership: there’s leeway for frontbenchers to call for an end to the horror, if their language stays within the broad framework of Labour policy. It’s a linguistic tightrope. For Labour’s mayors and Scottish leader, without foreign policy responsibilities, “ceasefire” is an easy choice.
What an irony if Labour damages its election chances by falling apart over something an opposition can’t influence. Because no one can influence these events, it’s easier to land the moral blame closer to home – so Labour is the useful punch bag for the Gaza tragedy. All 20 of the parliamentary constituencies with the highest proportion of Muslim voters are held by Labour. In addition, in blue wall marginals a few defecting Muslim voters could also prevent Labour winning seats.
But Starmer’s dilemma is far deeper than callow electoral calculation. He once echoed Harold Wilson’s famous dictum: Labour is “a moral crusade or it is nothing”. Starmer was referring to its mission on inequality, but the sentiment applies to whatever Labour does: no one has moral expectations of Tories. That precept is hard to apply to foreign policy, as Labour soon found after proclaiming an “ethical foreign policy” 10 days into power in 1997. Diplomacy, commerce, complexity, alliances and trade-offs made that a moral over-stretch, long before the Iraq war catastrophe blew it away altogether.
A Labour government will confront endless moral controversies at home and abroad, where there is no good choice. Some Labour people are all too quick to get their disillusion in early. This is an early warning of what is ahead for Starmer’s team, but also a trial of the seriousness of all who want and need a Labour government that will be bound to make compromises.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
