Seven months of one-sided war

The support for Israel in Europe and the US is not as unshakable as it may seem

After Hamas’ vicious and bloody terrorist attack on October 7 last year, three things seemed inevitable. First, it seemed likely that Israeli society would react as most societies have when faced with terrorist brutality: By lashing out unthinkingly. Second, that public and political support for Israel, particularly in the West, would be solidified. And third, that West Asia’s moves towards stability and regional integration for a decade would be decisively upturned.

Of these three, only about one and a half have played out as expected.

On the first: Israeli society, already far more radicalised than it was a few decades ago during the First and Second Intifadas, has largely supported a military response that has been overwhelming, brutal, open-ended and pointless. The media there rarely reports on the human effects of the war on Gaza; and its leadership seems unwilling to engage with basic questions of how Hamas could actually be destroyed without destroying all of Gaza, and of what might happen in terms of Palestinian self-governance the day after Hamas is destroyed.

The important fact to be reckoned with here is that while Israel’s unpopular Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might be fighting this war to the end in order to prolong his time in office, it is not Mr Netanyahu’s war alone. It is hard to claim that Israeli politicians other than Mr Netanyahu are thinking hard about alternative solutions, different endgames, or a less brutal way of winning the war.

Thus any move towards peace and a return to stability will have to be imposed on Israel by its friends and allies. And so we come to the second point: On public and political support for Israel in Europe and the United States. It seems unshakable — but is it?

In fact, it feels brittle. Had almost any other Democratic President been in power, the response from the US in particular would likely have been very different. But Joe Biden, even as a legislator, was distinguished in the tanks of a broadly pro-Israeli US Senate by being its most fervent defender. The last time a US President attempted to actually pressurise Tel Aviv was over 30 years ago, when George H W Bush threatened to pull US guarantees of Israeli loans unless settlement activity stopped. Mr Biden led the charge against Bush on that issue, and his mind does not appear to have changed much since then.

But many in the rest of the US, including many younger Americans of Jewish origin, think differently from then. The protests on US campuses that have transfixed the world over the past two weeks are a sign of a changing consensus. The most recent poll suggests four in ten Americans think that the US is doing “too much” to support Israel in its war.

In Europe, meanwhile, President Emmanuel Macron has warned Israel not to kill “women and babies”, that transferring the Gazan population would be “a war crime”, that there is no need to “flatten Gaza”, and even said that France might recognise a Palestinian state. The nature of Israeli bombing itself has served to weaken its base of support in the West.

What of the broader destabilisation of West Asia, however? The current White House clearly prioritised limiting this war to Gaza. They no doubt feared Iran-backed militants in Lebanon would also enter the lists against Israel, which would then widen the war to include Iran, thereby sparking a broader conflagration. Restraint on the part of both Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Iranian leadership has prevented this, even after an Israeli air strike on an Iranian embassy that killed 16. The slide to broader war seems to have been arrested. Arab states have disallowed vast protests against the bombing, mindful that protests against Israel might also spill over into protests against their attempts to normalise relations with Israel. From the Indian point of view, the unlikelihood of a broader war that would spike up energy prices and collapse our economy is obviously welcome.

Yet the fact is also that the process of reintegrating West Asia, which Indian officials determined in the past few years would be immensely helpful to this country’s economy and its trade, has been halted because of the unrelenting assault on Gaza.

In the end, what emerges is a clear picture: Israel’s neighbours, friends and foes are holding back. The country itself has lost itself in a rabbit hole of vengeance and loss. We in the rest of Asia can only hope the process of realignment in the West concludes swiftly, and a new consensus emerges that is willing to push Tel Aviv towards a more permanent peace.