“AT times of war, the art of strategy is to align military means with political ends,” Lawrence Freedman once said. Yet Labour’s timid response to Israel’s year-long war on Palestine results from a failure or refusal to recognise that Israel’s strategy — its military means — is based on what has become a very clear and transparent political end.

This is the destruction of any prospect of a two-state — or any other — solution by the elimination of any viable infrastructure that could be the basis of a Palestinian state.

If their objectives were ever “limited” to the destruction of Hamas’s military capabilities, Israel’s goals have become the realisation of their long-term nirvana — the creation of a “Greater Israel” covering all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea.

They have taken the view that if the world — or more specifically, the US and Britain — will condone the massacre of over 40,000 Palestinians, the starvation and privation of hundreds of thousands more, then there is probably no Rubicon they cannot cross.

Within Israel, there is a public discussion of bussing West Bank Palestinians with historic Jordanian identity cards to Jordan.

The extremist demands to create settlements within Gaza are to help realise the dream of driving Palestinians in Gaza into Egypt.

The attacks on Jenin and the actions of armed settlers across the West Bank are designed to create the West Bank as a new Gaza — where the war methods used in Gaza can be deployed with the same impunity anywhere Israel decides within the Palestinian territory it illegally occupies and controls.

There is no way that Israel’s military means can be justified in relation to any peaceful or democratic objectives, and yet purportedly mainstream political parties countenance Israel’s behaviour and continue to sell arms, aid and invest in Israel’s war machine.

The new Business and Trade Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, has announced Labour’s intention to have a new trade deal with Israel, ignoring the war that is taking place.

Continuing to supply arms and to trade and do “business as usual” is not just about the failure to halt the deaths. The much-delayed ceasefire will not achieve that. But, much worse than that, it means that we are endorsing Israel’s project of the total colonisation through forcible settlement of the whole of Palestine.

There is no point or validity in calling for a viable, secure Palestine as part of a two-state solution while enabling the means to destroy any prospect of that possibility. We allow the finance that funds illegal settlements; we allow the trade that sustains those settlements; we ignore the arming and impunity of the settlers.

A free Palestine is going to require the decolonisation of Israel’s “project.” It will involve the brick-by-brick dismantlement of the wall, the withdrawal of the settlements, and the return to Palestinians of their land, water, air and freedom.

This is not going to be possible while the Western powers, including the new Labour government, remain signed up to Israel’s war strategy, along with both its public but also its not very covert objectives.

There is an inherent contradiction between funding Israel’s war while purportedly supporting any solution that involves there being a Palestine in any shape, size or form.

The debate focuses on the nature of the Palestinian state — how it will be constructed, what its borders will be, and whether it will have control of its own resources and borders.

But, perhaps we would be better considering the shape and nature of the Israeli state that is being created before our eyes. It is not now, nor has it ever been a democracy.

Labour needs to not only distinguish between supporting the existence of an Israeli state and supporting the actions of that state, but it also needs to start taking into account the nature of the state that is being created based on that support.

Israel’s intent is the disappearance of Palestine and its people; Labour will never be forgiven if it is a knowing and active collaborator in that process. We are currently.

There needs to be a line in the sand — one year on, no more arms, no more blood until Palestinian self-determination becomes a reality. Until international law has been respected and implemented.

It was a step forward for Labour — with its recent actions to recognise that Israel is in breach of international law and that there need to be consequences, however limited.

But if this logic applies to a small minority of arms licences, it also applies to Israel’s other major breaches of international law. The biggest, most obvious and blatant are the occupation itself and the wall and settlements being used to make it permanent — to colonise Palestine.

The occupation and settlement of another’s land breaks one of the most fundamental post-second world war international laws, as set out in the fourth Geneva Convention, designed to prevent more wars.

It is far more than ironic; it is tragic that a country designed to be a safe haven for victims of that war is now the perpetrator of war crimes, transgressing the laws that were based on learning the lessons of that horrendous history.

Seventy years of injustice is too long, a year of war is too long. At the time of this tragic anniversary, let’s make Labour part of the solution, not an integral part of the problem as it continues to be. The encouraging vote at the TUC giving clear support to Palestine and an arms embargo is an example Labour should be following.

National march: End the Genocide in Gaza — Stop Arming Israel. Assemble Saturday September 21 12pm, at St George’s Plateau outside Lime Street Station, Liverpool.
 
Meeting: Palestine — What should the new British government do? Saturday September 21 4.30pm, at the Racquet Club Hotel, 5 Chapel Street Liverpool L3 9AG. Register at www.bit.ly/Palestine24. Speakers include the Palestinian ambassador, Richard Burgon MP, Kim Johnson MP, John McDonnell MP, Hugh Lanning (Labour and Palestine), Maryam Eslamdoust (TSSA general secretary), Mick Whelan (Aslef general secretary) and Matt Wrack (FBU general secretary).

Sign the petition for a full arms embargo on Israel at www.bit.ly/armsembargo.