So the Prime Minister of Israel has ordered his generals to seize seventy per cent of Gaza. I suppose we are meant to gasp in horror, or perhaps nod in grim approval. The United Kingdom, ever the moral scold, now demands ‘humanitarian corridor guarantees’. How quaint. One almost expects Mr. Netanyahu to apologise for not using the proper floral arrangements when shelling Hamas headquarters.
Let us be honest with ourselves. This is not a new war. This is a re-run of every conflict between a settled power and an insurgent population since the Roman proconsuls tried to pacify Judaea. The same tactical moves, the same humanitarian outcries, the same righteous indignation from the chattering classes in London and Brussels. And when it is over, the same bitter recriminations and the same inevitable stalemate.
Netanyahu’s order to occupy seventy per cent of the Strip is, in military terms, what we called in the Victorian era a ‘forward policy’. The British did it in the North-West Frontier, the French in Algeria, the Russians in the Caucasus. You seize the ground, you impose your will, you hope the natives grow tired of resistance. It rarely works. But what alternative is there? Hamas has sworn to destroy Israel. The usual ‘two-state solution’ is a fantasy as long as jihadist ideology fester in Gaza. So the IDF will push into every alley, every tunnel, until they can break the will of the enemy. And the world will wring its hands.
The UK’s demand for humanitarian corridors is, if I may be blunt, the moral posturing of a nation that has long since forgotten how to fight. Britain, which once ruled a quarter of the globe, now asks politely for safe passage for aid. How the mighty have fallen. If you are going to wage war, you must accept that civilians suffer. That is not a call for callousness but for clarity. A humanitarian corridor is a logistical nightmare; it protects the enemy’s support base and prolongs the conflict. The Victorians understood that a short, brutal war was kinder than a long, sanctimonious one.
Yet I digress. The real issue is not Gaza but the degeneration of political discourse. We debate like academics at a conference, not like men and women who understand that sometimes violence is the only language the enemy respects. Netanyahu may be many things: a cynic, a manipulator, a man who has outlasted his moral usefulness. But he is also a realist. He knows that seventy per cent of Gaza is not a solution but a starting point. The question is whether the West has the stomach for the struggle.
One is reminded of the great British colonial administrator Lord Cromer, who said of Egypt: ‘We do not govern in the interests of the governed alone, but in the interests of civilisation.’ That sounds arrogant today, and perhaps it is. But without that civilisational confidence, we are left with endless negotiations and perpetual war. The UK demands guarantees. Israel demands security. The Palestinians demand dignity. Nobody gets what they want, and the dead pile up.
In the end, this is not a column about Gaza. It is a column about the failure of imagination in our ruling classes. They cannot conceive of a world where force is necessary, decisive, and morally ambiguous. So they bluster about corridors while the IDF bulldozers advance. I do not know if Netanyahu’s move is wise. I do know it is a sign of desperation. And desperate times require measures that polite society condemns. History will judge; it always does. But history is written by the victors, and the victors are usually the ones willing to do what the liberals cannot stomach.
