Benjamin Netanyahu has done it again. The Israeli Prime Minister, ever the bull in the china shop of Middle Eastern diplomacy, has ordered the IDF to seize full operational control of 70% of Gaza. This is not a strategic shift; it is a declaration of intent.
It is the sound of a man who has read too much Tacitus and not enough Machiavelli. The land will be pacified, occupied, and eventually settled. This is the old playbook: conquer, claim, colonise.
Gaza is to become the West Bank writ large. Meanwhile, from the fog-shrouded halls of Whitehall, comes a familiar murmur: Britain reaffirms its support for a two-state solution. This is the moral equivalent of a Victorian vicar preaching temperance outside a gin palace.
It is well meaning, utterly pious, and completely useless. The two-state solution is a corpse propped up by diplomatic niceties. It has been dead since Oslo.
Every new settlement, every new checkpoint, every new blockade has hammered another nail into its coffin. Netanyahu is not interested in states. He is interested in facts on the ground.
Britain, for its part, is caught in a tragicomedy of its own making. It wants to be the global arbiter of justice, but it has no skin in the game. It has withdrawn from empire, but cannot resist playing the imperial referee.
The result is a foreign policy that is all posture and no power. The British government will issue statements, the Foreign Office will wring its hands, and Netanyahu will continue his bulldozer strategy. Why?
Because he knows that Britain is merely a voice; it no longer has a vote. And so we watch the decline of the West in miniature: one man builds walls, another builds platitudes. The tragedy is that neither will succeed.
Gaza will not be pacified. No amount of occupation can suppress a people who have nothing left to lose. And the two-state solution will not be resurrected by press releases.
We are drifting toward a one-state reality, but one defined by apartheid and resistance, not peace. The intellectuals will debate this. The politicians will posture.
But history, as always, will have the last laugh. And it will not be kind.
