Jerusalem, occupied territory (or so the UN says) – In a move that has culinary critics and international lawyers reaching for the same bottle of antacids, Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly ordered the Israeli Defence Forces to claim a 70% stake in Gaza. The remaining 30% is, presumably, available for a timeshare arrangement with Hamas, though one suspects the checkout process will be somewhat... explosive.
Let us parse this numerical nugget with the gravity it so richly deserves. 70% of Gaza is roughly 250 square kilometres of rubble, resentment, and the occasional, quite possibly accidental, UN school. This is not a land grab; this is a land hoovering. This is the kind of proportion normally reserved for a particularly aggressive Monopoly player who has just passed Go and decided to buy the entire board, including the jail token’s soul.
Whitehall, meanwhile, has responded with the vigour one expects from a nation that once ruled a quarter of the globe but now struggles to rule a single cabinet meeting. “We call for the protection of civilians,” intoned a spokesperson, a sentence that has been dusted off so often it now has its own frequent flyer miles to the UN Security Council. Yes, protect them from the 70% land theft or from the inevitable 100% of the humanitarian crisis that will follow? The ambiguity is, I must admit, rather elegant.
Let us examine the logistics. How does one take 70% of a territory that is essentially a densely packed human terrarium, three million souls crammed into a strip of land that would fit comfortably inside the M25 with room left for a branch of Waitrose? Precisely: with great difficulty and a total disregard for who is standing on the 70% you’ve just claimed. The IDF, to be fair, are merely following orders. And what orders! “Go forth and partition like it’s 1948, but this time, make it a rounder number.” The precision of 70% suggests a pollster’s dream, a demographic carve-up that would make a Swiss banker blush. Perhaps they used a pie chart? “75% was too aggressive, 65% too indecisive. 70%? That’s a B-minus. Send in the tanks.”
Britain’s plea, however, rings with the hollow timbre of a biscuit tin that has been licked clean by a fox. “Protection of civilians” is a noble goal, but hard to achieve when the protectors are the ones being asked to leave the dining room. I can imagine the scene in Downing Street: Sir Keir Starmer looking at a map, squinting, and saying, “But if they take 70%, what do we annex? We must keep a slice of the action, something for the Commonwealth. What about the beachfront? The whaling station? Oh, right, no whales. Never mind.”
Meanwhile, the real civilians – the ones who will bear the 100% of the consequences – are currently trying to figure out whether their home is in the 70% or the 30%. It’s a game of musical chairs with surface-to-air missiles as accompaniment. I suspect the odds are not in their favour, unless they fancy living in a demilitarised zone the size of two football pitches. Which, come to think of it, is precisely what the remaining 30% will resemble after the IDF’s 70% has been thoroughly “secured”.
Bibi, of course, is playing a different game entirely. He is a man who understands that diplomacy is just a fancy word for “telling the world to go hang while you do what you want”. His 70% offer is not a compromise; it’s a starting bid. In the bazaar of Middle Eastern politics, you start high. Perhaps he expects Hamas to counter with 40%, and they’ll settle on 55% after a few rounds of rocket fire and emergency UN resolutions. It’s the dance of the damned, and the band is playing “Hava Nagila” on a loop while the stage burns.
So, as the sun sets on another day of thrilling geopolitical theatre, we ask ourselves: what does 70% of Gaza actually mean? It means 70% more checkpoints, 70% more angry teenagers throwing stones, 70% more correspondents filing reports from hotels in Tel Aviv while the real news happens under a cloud of tear gas. And Britain? Britain will continue to call for protection, perhaps in a slightly louder voice, perhaps with a sternly worded letter. Possibly even a strongly worded letter, if things get really desperate.
But above all, let us not forget the gin. The gin is essential for processing these percentages. A 70% stake in Gaza is bad enough, but a 70% proof gin in my glass is the only thing that makes reporting on this absurd circus tolerable. Cheers, Netanyahu. May your 70% bring you the silence you crave, and may the remaining 30% be enough for the rest of us to find a bit of peace.
