I don’t know anything about the Middle East, apart from the fact that Israel is an outlier, in that it is a functioning democracy, not Muslim, espouses western, liberal values, gets billions in military aid from the USA, and is populated largely by people who came from Europe.
It’s clear that it’s never going to bond with its neighbours particularly well, and it’s hard for me to see that any ‘solutions’ (like the Two-State Solution) is going to fix things. It’s also hard to see that bombing Gaza back to the Stone Age is going to improve relations with its neighbours.
What seems to be odd, to me, is that no western leader is saying this out loud, and no leader, but especially Biden (whom everyone in Western Europe slavishly follows, on geopolitical matters) is willing to tell Israel to “cool it.” I understand that there is huge sympathy for the Jews in the West. I accept that Israel is in most ways a much more admirable country than Iran or Yemen. But the West is not prepared to stand up for the Uigers, or the Tibetans, or the Uyghurs or the Rohingya people like they are for the Israelis.
If the behaviour of Biden and his camp followers was a result of a careful calculation of electoral advantage, I’d understand it. But from what I can tell, young people overwhelmingly support the Palestinians and want the bombing to stop. Maybe this is like Brexit, a policy that nobody likes, but nobody (no politician) is going to break ranks on. I am not a strategist, but as voters get more and more disillusioned with those in power, this opens up a wide space for a pro-Palestine party to occupy.
I have known a lot of Jews, all of whom seem decent, hard-working individuals. They must feel devastated by the Hamas attacks, but these were not carried out by the whole of the Gaza population. To punish the whole enclave for a militant group directed from Iran seems just … wrong.
As I tried to make clear, I am not criticising anyone. I am just struggling to understand why countries without a dog in this fight don’t just keep well out of it. It seems baffling to me that Starmer has not distanced himself from both sides. It’s not as though he can influence events, but his comments have surely lost him a lot of young voter support.