When I posted a tweet condemning the US veto of the UN Security Council resolution that called for a ceasefire in Gaza, one reply was simply ‘no words’.
And in terms of the destruction of Gaza, the more than 17,000 dead, it is hard to find words. So I start this blog with a copy of the words that Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer wrote before he was killed this week by Israeli bombing.
In this Al Jazeera story about Refaat Alareer, there’s a video clip of him giving a lecture. He talks to his Palestinian students about telling stories and says if we don’t tell stories someone else will step into the vacuum.
It is, and has been for weeks, unconscionable that no ceasefire has been called. UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, triggered Article 99 of the UN Charter last week, which led to the UAE putting forward the Security Council resolution on Friday. It called for a humanitarian ceasefire, for release of hostages, for protection of Palestinian and Israeli civilian populations in line with international humanitarian law. It was co-sponsored by almost 100 countries. But the US vetoed it and the UK abstained.
As Guterres has underlined, 85% of the population of Gaza has been displaced, around 60% of its housing stock destroyed, and the World Food Programme has said half of the population of Gaza is starving.
This is not self-defence; it is destruction and massacre. Many people, states, and organisations have spoken out. The statements from the UN and its various organisations, from the largest global aid agencies and human rights organisations, have all called for a halt, in the strongest and most desperate terms that many of these organisations have ever used. But still to no avail. Many have warned that the US is (or risks being in some statements) complicit in war crimes.
Europe disunited
The European Union remains deeply split on Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Ten EU member states either co-sponsored Friday’s UNSC resolution and/or voted for it: Belgium, Ireland, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain (and other European countries including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland). In October, during the earlier UN General Assembly vote on Gaza, 8 EU member states voted for a humanitarian ceasefire, 15 abstained and 4 voted against. Poland and Finland are now taking a stronger stance as seen by Friday’s vote. But it’s not enough – and compared to the US, the EU anyway has much less influence.
The EU’s foreign policy supremo, Josep Borrell Fontelles, called last week for countries to heed Guterres call in triggering Article 99 and support the UNSC resolution: “I ask the EU members of the UN Security Council and like-minded partners to support UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s call. The UNSC must act immediately to prevent a full collapse of the humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, just back – alongside Borrell and European Council President, Charles Michel – from the 24th EU-China summit, found time to tweet (on X) on that summit but not on Gaza (and China’s crimes against humanity, according to Human Rights Watch, in Xinjiang (genocide according to the US), do not seem to limit the EU’s focus on trade with China).
The European Council summit this week, on Thursday and Friday, 14 and 15 December, will address the question of the Middle East, as well as aiming to open membership talks with Ukraine and to agree €50bn in funding for Ukraine. The latter vital decisions on Ukraine depend on whether the grandstanding and threat of using a veto by Hungary’s undemocratic and truculent prime minister Viktor Orbán can be overcome, which looks possible but not definite.
But sadly, we know in advance that the European Council will not agree to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, albeit doubtless they will underline EU humanitarian aid and call for respect of international humanitarian law by both sides.
Several commentators, this autumn, have criticised the EU for its weakness in foreign policy, its failures to agree a common position on a range of critical issues. But, just as with the Iraq war, twenty years ago, the division on Gaza, however dismal, is, surely, better than the EU adopting one common position against a ceasefire.
Disunited Kingdom
There will be time in the future for comment on the damage done to the ‘West’ by explicit and implicit support for the IDF’s destruction of Gaza. The US has not called for a ceasefire and vetoed the UNSC resolution – while the UK tagged along by abstaining.
The UK’s likely next prime minister, Keir Starmer, has also still refused to call for a ceasefire, and while the Observer today (10th December) suggests that shadow foreign secretary David Lammy has now strengthened Labour’s language, Labour is still talking of pauses not ceasefires. Tony Blair did not have to follow the US on Iraq. Starmer does not have to follow Biden and Sunak on Gaza. These are and were choices – desperately damaging ones. Getting foreign policy so desperately wrong even before getting into power is a profound failure.
Scotland’s First Minister, Humza Yousaf, has been one politician calling consistently for a ceasefire. He said on Friday that he agreed with the NGO Save the Children that the UK has become complicit by not voting for a ceasefire. London’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, and Scottish Labour’s leader, Anas Sarwar, have also called for a ceasefire. Thousands, and millions, have demonstrated, in Scotland, in the UK, around the world. But too many countries and governments are failing Gaza.
I was at an event this week (under Chatham House rules so I cannot say where it was held or who spoke) that focused on EU-UK relations. One participant suggested there was discussion between the EU and UK on ‘the day after’ in Gaza. No-one is against post-conflict planning. But in the face of the massive and continuing destruction of Gaza and the failure of the UK and so many EU member states to call for a ceasefire, then who knows what the ‘day after’ will look like in Gaza, in the Middle East, and around the world.
Gaza generation
I visited Gaza just once, in 2010, when I worked for one of the big humanitarian NGOs. Afterwards, I wrote a blog where I concluded: “It’s a young generation [in Gaza] that is growing up with little hope, with isolation, with physical and mental trauma from conflict, with alienation and anger. Some of the adults we talk to say that they still want to see a peace process, many would support a genuine two state solution. But they wonder what the new generation of young adults will be ready to accept after growing up in the closed borders of Gaza.”
Where does the killing and injury of so many thousands of children, the lack, and obstruction, of basic supplies including food and water, and the failure of the US and too many European countries to call for a ceasefire, leave today’s generation? And where does it leave the world we live in?
I started with poetry and I will end with a few lines from Wilfred Owen, the English poet who died a week before Armistice Day at the end of the first world war:
“Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.”
First published on the author’s Europe and Scotland Newsletter on Substack
Alastair McIntyre says
The problem with a cease fire is that it simply allows Hamas to build back up again. Let us remember that it was Hamas that started this war. The people of Gaza voted for Hamas to run their country so they are complicit with their running of their country.
Also look at the hundreds of millions Hamas has put into building their huge tunnel infrastructures and the weapons they have acquired. That money could have gone to the people to build a better country.
And why is it that no Arab country has offered a safe place for the Palestinian people to live during this time?
Hamas are evil people and they must be exterminated. You can’t do that with a cease fire as so many Palestinians support Hamas. And Hamas has used their people as human shields by building their war infrastructure under hospitals, schools, UN buildings, Mosques, etc.
Yes it is terrible that innocent people are being killed but Hamas could stop it by surrendering. Instead they continue to send rockets into Israel and note that they don’t warn any Israeli people they are going to send rockets. Israel at least uses highly targeted rockets and tries to avoid civilians whereas Hamas couldn’t care less.
Hamas are embedded into the civil population and so many of the civil population support them so it’s a very difficult situation but a cease fire will only continue this war and so I’m glad that the UK and USA don’t support it and they are right not to support it.
And let us remember that no Jewish people live in Gaza whereas 20% of Israel is made up of Palestinians.
We simply have to support Israel against Hamas and a cease fire just means you support Hamas and their horrific treatment of their own people and the Jews.
I fail to understand why You would want to support Hamas and their evil ways.
Israel has the right to exist and thus to defend their own people and I support them and what they are trying to do in this war. You on the other hand clearly support the cruel treatment of their own people and the innocent people they have killed and you must take another look at this whole situation. All the hundreds of millions going to Gaza has not reached the people of Gaza but instead allowed Hamas to build a war infrastructure. So why aren’t the people of Gaza calling for their removal and vote in a more humanitarian government?
Hamas knew that Israel would hit back at Gaza because of their attack on them So it’s Hamas that is clearly the problem and they must be eliminated and a cease fire is not the answer.
BSA says
Astonishing callous stupidity. Israel created Hamas with 75 years of unforgivable oppression.
alex Sinclair says
Hamas are the government of Gaza. They attacked Israel on October 7 inflicting the most barbarous of atrocities on the civilian population. The Palestinians chose to start this war against Israel and are now reaping what they have sown.
Andrew Anderson says
“It is the blockade that is stopping development”, wrote Kirsty Hughes in her 2010 blog. Up to a point, Lord Copper. Events since October 7th have reminded us that Gaza was and is extraordinarily well-provided for in one respect: it’s the most militarised place on earth, with the possible exception of North Korea. All Hamas’ materiel comes directly or indirectly from from Iran, Qatar or other friendly states/arms’ dealers. If a fraction of that destructive expenditure had instead gone towards economic and social development, Gaza would have been transformed (as Alastair McIntyre pointed out), and there would of course be no Hamas in charge. I wonder why Hughes says nothing about this?
That said, we are where we are. Of course there should be a ceasefire, but for how long ,and what will follow? The UN could and should take charge in Gaza, or failing that it should be a mission organised by other states in the Middle East. Either way, Hamas’ power must be ended, and Gaza demilitarised. None of that will be easy, or quick, or entirely peaceful, but I can’t see an alternative except endlessly recurring war.
I’m sure Israel is breaking international law, for which it should be held to account. Two wrongs don’t make a right. However, there’s no incompatibility between pointing that out and acknowledging that Hamas’ actions started this, and that it must be prevented from doing anything similar in the future.
Btw, my understanding of Chatham House “rules” is that there’s only one rule: you can’t attribute anything said to the speaker (unless of course they consent). That doesn’t stop someone disclosing what was said, or indeed where, so that if someone at this exclusive gathering had any bright idea about what to do, it would be in the public interest if we knew about it.