The Palestinian dream is dead, and we helped to kill it.

Legendary Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once quipped about the Palestinians, "they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". That was 1973. US Middle East envoy Dennis Ross expressed similar sentiments following the almost-but-not-quite Wye River Accords of 1998 which could have led to an imperfect but comprehensive peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, and which was scuppered more by Yasser Arafat's intransigence over Jerusalem than anything done by Ehud Barak's moderate, centrist Israeli government [how quaint that designation seems now]. It may also be argued that  Palestinian political ill-wisdom produced a terrorist government in Gaza, and a corrupt, sclerotic Palestinian Authority government on the West Bank, neither of which have served the interests of the Palestinian people.

All of that is true, at least to some extent.

The tragedy is Palestinian political disfunction and the murderous nature of Hamas – culminating in the atrocities of 7 October 2023 – have toxified the Palestinian brand among the political leadership of the United States and the United Kingdom. Quite rightly, of course, there could be no mealy-mouthed equivocation or punch-pulling about what happened in October 2023. It was not a guerrilla attack by resistance forces on an occupying army. It was the cold blooded slaughter of wholly innocent civilians, carried out with a chilling heartlessness that robbed the victims not only of their lives but also their humanity.

But this toxification of the Palestinian brand has also meant that the fundamental justice of the Palestinian cause is now largely lost to a narrative firmly casting the Israelis as the occasionally overzealous "good guys" fighting for their survival against the obscurantist hordes of Islamist radicals. That narrative is one actively promoted by the Israeli government, and happily echoed by the European radical Right, which has de-emphasized its historical antisemitism in order to make common cause against Muslims with Israeli ultra-Zionists.

In the October 2023 attacks, some 1,200 Israelis were killed, among whom were 800 civilians, many of them young people enjoying a music festival, a place as far removed from the brutality of the conflict as one can imagine. But since then, in response, some 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza as the Israeli army pursues its publicly stated objective of destroying Hamas and removing forever its threat to Israeli national security.

Forty five thousand deaths versus 1,200 deaths. That figure alone should at the very least raise questions about the proportionality of Israeli actions, a concept which has been a key element of just war theory since the days of Saint Augustine. Carelessness by the Israeli military plus the cynical use of Palestinian civilians as human shields may account for some portion of the 45,000 deaths. But those things cannot account for all, not even most, of those deaths.

It is now increasingly clear that in addition to the legitimate goal of destroying Hamas, Israeli policy is also "sweep it all up together, and change the facts on the ground" [to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld in 2001 when he used the 9/11 attacks to justify the invasion of Iraq]. Prime Minister Netanyahu's ultra-right wing Kahanist allies frequently allow the mask to slip, especially in Hebrew-language social media. It is clear their policy is to wreck Gaza, make life as intolerable as possible for the resident Palestinians, and force their mass exodus to Egypt, thus at once "solving" the Gaza "problem" and renewing Israeli settlements which were removed in 2005. The fact that the Egyptians – and other Arab countries – have said that they will not absorb almost two million Gazan refugees is evidence those countries understand Israel's real endgame, albeit a policy which also contributes to the immiseration of Gaza. It has also allowed disingenuous far-right commentators like incoming US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckerbee and British provocateur and pro-Israeli polemicist Douglas Murray to claim the Palestinians are so beyond the pale that not even their Arab brothers and sisters want them.

Evidence of Israeli actions which amount to acts of genocide have been documented by United Nations agencies and by the UN Special Rapporteur. Their findings were, of course, immediately and reflexively dismissed as "antisemitic" by the Netanyahu government without any shred of evidence that hatred of Jews played any part in those findings. No doubt, a similar dismissal will be levelled against Human Rights Watch [HRW], which today published a report evidencing deliberate Israeli action to block water supplies in Gaza, and the killing of at least 500 Palestinian doctors and nurses since October 2023.

Sadly, the charges of antisemitism, and baseless allegations that the figures are bogus, will find their echo in the American and European radical right. The fact that so-called progressive governments such as the UK's Labour government will be conspicuously silent on the matter only compounds the injustice. At this point one might say thank God for the moral clarity and humanity of the Irish, Norwegian and Spanish governments.

Add to all of this the entirely predictable response of the Netanyahu government to the International Criminal Court [ICC]'s issuing of arrest warrants against him and former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes in Gaza. Again, Netanyahu ascribed simple Jew-hatred to the ICC's actions, forgetting of course that similar warrants were issued against Hamas leaders too. But his rejection of the warrants was given various degrees of support in Washington DC, London and Paris. One would almost think the ICC is endorsed by the West when it puts on trial genocidal African warlords or Balkan ultra-nationalists, but is shunned, undermined and denigrated once the indictments come closer to home.

What do I make of this? The only thing for sure is that the Palestinian people will continue to pay a terrible price for the poverty of their leadership, the indifference and open hostility of the radical and even moderate Right in America and Europe, and – of course – the actions of an Israeli government which ever more openly acts in accordance with Kahanist ideology and an assurance of impunity. I find it ever more difficult to see how the two-state solution, that is, a secure Israel living peacefully alongside an independent and viable Palestinian state is possible now. Might has definitely replaced right when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian question.

Maybe it was ever thus, but what now seems increasingly likely is the illegality of Israeli actions in Gaza and the illegality of its occupation of the West bank will eventually move from de facto acceptance to de jure recognition. The Israeli far right and its Western enablers are hoping those "facts on the ground" will bring "peace". For that to happen, the Palestinians will have to be destroyed and displaced. Whether that will end their dreams of statehood and human dignity remains to be seen.

Sadly, I feel it is necessary to add a disclaimer here as an epilogue, purely for the sake of clarity. In no way do I condone the actions of Hamas in October 2023, or any previous occasions in which they have killed Israeli citizens and brutalized their own people. I hold no brief for their obscurantist, intolerant ideology and I will not justify their murderous actions against innocent people. I also recognize, and wholly support, Israel’s right to exist, and the rights of its people to live in peace and prosperity. I also recognize those rights for the Palestinian people. I am just increasingly weary of the formulaic justification of the unjustifiable when it comes to current Israeli policy, and the reluctance of my own government to take any meaningful moral stand against it.