Donald Trump claims to have brokered a 60-day “ceasefire” between the warring parties in Gaza. If it works, a two-month suspension of the bombing of the territory, and of killings at human feeding pens, would be welcome. But it will solve nothing, because both Israel’s rulers and Hamas are committed to their core belief in a saying that begins “From the river to the sea ...”
How the phrase ends, though, is the point of contention: “Israel will be sovereign” – or “Palestine will be free”. The former version, in so many words, is part of the founding documents of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party; the latter is a chant often taken to mean that Israel, along with its population, should be extinguished.
