The foreign secretary, David Cameron, has called for a “sustainable” ceasefire in the Gaza conflict, as he warned that “too many civilians have been killed” by Israel in spite of its right to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas.
In a significant shift in tone by the UK government, Cameron, in a joint article with the German foreign affairs minister Annalena Baerbock, wrote: “Our goal cannot simply be an end to fighting today. It must be peace lasting for days, years, generations. We therefore support a ceasefire, but only if it is sustainable.
“We know many in the region and beyond have been calling for an immediate ceasefire. We recognise what motivates these heartfelt calls.
“It is an understandable reaction to such intense suffering, and we share the view that this conflict cannot drag on and on. That is why we supported the recent humanitarian pauses.” It came after it emerged that three Israeli hostages killed by the Israel Defence Forces in Gaza were bare chested and carrying a white flag when they were shot, according to an initial military investigation.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told a press conference late Saturday that they were as “committed as ever” to war. He said they were determined to fight to the end and Gaza “will be demilitarised and under Israeli security control following the defeat of Hamas”.
The killing of the three hostages – who were kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October during its assault on southern Israel – has triggered widespread anger and incredulity in Israel amid a mounting sense of anxiety over the safety of the remaining hostages in Gaza.
According to reports of the IDF probe in the Israeli media, the three men Yotam Haim, Samer El-Talalka and Alon Shamriz – all in their 20s – had somehow escaped their captors and were approaching an IDF position in the Shejaiya area of Gaza City where there has been heavy fighting.
One of the men was carrying a stick with a white cloth tied to it and all had removed their shirts. Spotting the three, an Israeli soldier on a rooftop opened fire, shouting “Terrorists!”
While two of the hostages fell to the ground immediately, the third fled into a nearby building. When a commander arrived on the scene, the unit was ordered into the building where soldiers killed the third hostage despite his pleas for help in Hebrew.
As the first details of the killing were released by the IDF on Friday night, after most Israelis had begun to mark Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, a hastily called demonstration converged on the Kirya, a military headquarters compound in Tel Aviv.
Chanting “Shame”, “There’s no time” and “Deal now!” the protesters represent a growing thread of anger in Israel at the way in which the war is being prosecuted, as the situation of the remaining hostages in Gaza has taken a series of dark of turns in the past week. After the brief optimism of the last ceasefire, news for the hostage families has been grim.
A series of bleak and perfunctory announcements from the IDF and other officials have disclosed the deaths of a number of hostages, including one, Sahar Baruch, killed during a failed rescue attempt.
The killing of the three hostages came hard on the heels of the military’s announcement that it recovered the bodies of three other hostages killed by Hamas, after Israel had suggested that it believes about 20 of more than 130 hostages still held in the densely populated coastal strip are dead.
The mistaken killing by the IDF of the three men has amplified an already bubbling sense of anger that has cut across Israel’s political affiliations over the Netanyahu government’s handling of the hostage crisis, which critics say has blown hot and cold over the weeks of war prompting recriminations.
“If Israel can’t protect its citizens, why does it exist?” demanded demonstrator Ben Aviv, a camera focus puller, echoing a question that has troubled Israelis since 7 October. “It is obvious this situation is not going to be resolved by military action.”
“I’m here,” added Jonathan Porat, an economist, “because this is what I would want people to do for me if I was in the hostages’ position. I don’t believe the [military] operation is going the way it’s being suggested. I want the hostages back. I was a soldier. We don’t leave anyone behind.”
And it is not only at gatherings such as this where the question of where Israel’s war against Hamas is going – and to what meaningful end – is being asked.
Cameron and Baerbock write in an article, published in The Sunday Times and Welt am Sonntag in Germany, “Israel will not win this war if their operations destroy the prospect of peaceful coexistence with Palestinians. They have a right to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas. But too many civilians have been killed.”
Following Biden’s comments last week that Israel was losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing”, US officials have told Israel that its window for conducting major combat operations in Gaza is fast closing.
The reality is that the events of the past few days, around the question of the hostages and on the diplomatic stage, have cast a light on a key unresolved tension at the heart of Israel’s war against Hamas over its war aims: how to dismantle the threat of Hamas in Gaza while securing the release of those captured.
And while Israeli officials have tried to suggest it was the intense military pressure on Hamas that led to last month’s ceasefire and hostage deal, the hostage deaths have led to mounting questions over that strategy.
The intersection of these two competing war aims was underlined by comments made a week ago by Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi. Asked what would Israel do if it located Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, surrounded by hostages, Hanegbi’s answer infuriated hostage families. “That would be a heart-rending dilemma,” Hanegbi answered.
It was a disquiet amplified by reports later in the week that Netanyahu had blocked David Barnea, the head of Israel’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad, from travelling to Qatar to kickstart negotiations, expressed in a statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
“The feeling is that every evening, a [game of] Russian roulette is being played in which families are being notified of their children’s deaths in captivity.”
For Palestinians in Gaza, the continuing trajectory of Israel’s two-month long offensive is writ large in terms of daily deaths and suffering, amid mounting hunger and disease.
With the death toll – civilian and combatant – now almost 19,000 according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the coastal strip, whole neighbourhoods have been reduced largely to rubble and 1.8 million of the strip’s population of 2.3 million internally displaced.
All of which has fuelled an escalating humanitarian crisis that has been driving the wider international discomfort, not least in Washington. Even as Israeli officials insisted they need further months to complete their campaign against Hamas, the message from Biden was clear.
Discussions, said a US official after the meeting, were focused on “a shift in emphasis from high-tempo, high-intensity clearance operations to ultimately lower-intensity focus on high-value targets, intelligence-driven raids, and those sorts of more narrow, surgical military objectives.”
While US officials have said in public they do not wish to impose a timeline, privately it is clear that the Biden administration is pushing for an end to major combat operations by the end of December.
Also unsettling the White House has been Netanyahu’s refusal to discuss meaningful ideas for the “day after” – who will govern Gaza and how and the scope for reconstruction amid the public rejection by the Israeli prime minister of the idea that a reinvigorated Palestinian Authority, which governs in the West Bank, should be involved.
Despite the bellicose language of Netanyahu insisting the war will go on for as long as Israel deems necessary for “absolute victory”, there is a sense that the clock is ticking down.
And while Netanyahu has tried to make political capital out of his public show of defiance of Biden, it is not a stance that has met with approval from the Israeli public.
In one sign, however, that Netanyahu may be softening his position, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that the Mossad chief had travelled to Oslo at the weekend to meet Qatari officials about the shape of a new ceasefire-for-hostages deal.
On Saturday, however, there was little sign that the war might be heading towards a less intensive phase or a second ceasefire.
Palestinian media reported that at least 14 people were killed in strikes that hit two houses on Old Gaza Street in Jabalia, while dozens more were reported killed in a strike that hit another home in the same area.
“Every day, I leave the place where we took refuge,” said Israa Zahr, a doctor working in an Unrwa shelter who survived an Israeli airstrike on her home that killed her mother, brother and nephew.
“I say goodbye to them when I go to work as if it were the last farewell. I’m afraid I won’t come back. I’m afraid I will come back and I will find no one.”
