BENJAMIN NETANYAHU’S claim to be working with the US on a ceasefire in Lebanon is nothing but stalling.
He has changed his tune in the last 24 hours: his office issued a social media statement on Thursday boasting that “the prime minister has not even responded” to the US-French ceasefire plan.
An overnight clarification, claiming that Israel was engaging with the proposal and “appreciates the US efforts in this regard because the US role is indispensable in advancing stability and security in the region,” followed. Perhaps the White House objected behind the scenes to being publicly humiliated by a leader whose war machine would soon grind to a halt without its supplies, funding and military back-up.
If so, it should not be pacified by flattering remarks. Keir Starmer was right to warn at the UN that we are on the brink of a war “no-one can control and with consequences that none of us can foresee.”
So where is the action to match this urgency?
Where is the total arms embargo that would show Israel Starmer is serious about an immediate ceasefire? Where is the closure of RAF bases on Cyprus to US traffic that would impede the supply of weaponry? The public demands that the US act to rein Israel in, or the diplomatic penalties for its continued efforts to set the Middle East on fire?
There is no point in trusting Netanyahu when he says he is pursuing a ceasefire (especially within 24 hours of his denying exactly that). He has said the same over Gaza for nearly a year, while repeatedly derailing talks whenever they get close to agreement — whether through suddenly adding new Israeli demands, or by assassinating the leader of the organisation he is supposed to be negotiating with.
Instead, he is lashing out in every direction. Had he agreed a ceasefire with Hamas and secured the return of the hostages it holds — the demand of enormous rallies in Israel’s own capital, week after week, the demand of the United Nations, a demand backed at least officially by our own government following months of pressure from street protests — then the Hezbollah rocket fire would have stopped, and the residents of northern Israel who have fled would be able to return home.
Instead he has deliberately ratcheted up the confrontation with Hezbollah, with bigger and bigger bombing raids, the exploding-pager terrorist attack and now the threatened ground invasion. Nor has he confined this escalation to Lebanon, with Syria reporting the Israeli bombing of one of its military bases near the Lebanese border today.
These are the acts of a government hell-bent on wider war, and empty words from Washington and London will do nothing to stop it.
If people power mobilised on the streets forced the shifts we have seen so far in British government policy — grudging support for a ceasefire at the UN, and a partial halt to certain arms export licences — then that power must be redoubled in a protest movement that forces ministers to go further.
The war must be contained, because its capacity to spread through the region is obvious. There is no guarantee an Israeli government as reckless as Netanyahu’s is proving would never escalate to the use of nuclear arms in such a wider conflict.
But containing it must be the first step to stopping it. The daily horror in besieged Gaza, a tiny, overcrowded strip where a trapped people have nowhere to run from Israel’s bombs, continues as the world watches Lebanon.
And the destruction of Gaza is accompanied by daily outrages visited on the Palestinians of the West Bank. This war is about creating a greater Israel across all of historic Palestine: and now eyes have been opened to that fact, we must stop British governments conniving in that ethnic cleansing project.
