It took 108 years after the Balfour Declaration, when the British first professed support for the establishment of a Jewish national home “in Palestine”, for London to even commit to recognising Palestinian statehood. Last month, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that Britain would recognise the state of Palestine in September, unless Israel ended the war in Gaza and took urgent measures aimed at long-term peace, based on the two-state framework. France, another close ally of Israel and an enabler of Israel’s nuclear weapons programme, also said that it would recognise Palestine in the UN General Assembly session. Canada, Australia and a few other nations in the western alliance system have also pledged to follow suit.

Make no mistake. This is not a moment of sudden moral awakening against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. Israel has occupied Palestinian territories since 1967. Several countries in the Global South, including India, recognised Palestinian sovereignty in the late 1980s, following the declaration of independence by the Palestine Liberation Organization. Even after the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995, which promised a two-state solution, most western governments insisted that they would recognise Palestine only as part of a final settlement. Today, such a settlement based on the two-state formula appears as remote as ever. But more and more countries in the Global North are now stepping forward to recognise Palestinian sovereignty. Why?

Charges of genocide

There are two possible explanations.

First, the charge that Israel is committing genocide, the most serious crime before international law, is no longer a fringe theory. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, while the International Court of Justice is examining the genocide charge. Within Israel, two leading rights organisations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, have accused the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of committing genocide, a position also echoed by Amnesty International and Médecins Sans Frontières. Omer Bartov, an Israeli-American genocide studies scholar and a veteran of the IDF, has stated that Israel is committing genocide. David Grossman, one of Israel’s most respected writers, has said that “with immense pain and a broken heart” he must use the word genocide to describe his country’s war on the Palestinians.

In just 22 months, Israeli forces have killed 2.6% of Gaza’s pre-war population, wounded over 6.5% and displaced nearly all of them. Among the dead are over 18,000 children. Israel had also imposed a total blockade in March 2025, weaponising hunger and aid delivery, and triggering a mass starvation crisis. Since May, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while trying to collect food and other relief, according to the United Nations. Such systemic violence against an entire people in an occupied territory by their colonial rulers has been unprecedented in recent history, which makes the war increasingly impossible for even Israel’s staunchest allies to defend — the United States remains the outlier.

Second, mounting allegations of war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide have shifted international public opinion decisively against the Jewish nation. Across Europe, public protests have swelled, fuelled by anger not just towards the war but also towards the hollow position most of their governments, which, otherwise, are vocal about human rights, have taken. A YouGov poll in June found that only 13%-21% people in western Europe have a favourable view of Israel. In some countries, the support for the Gaza war has dropped to as low as 6%. Dissent is growing even in the U.S., which is Israel’s patron and partner. An Economist/YouGov Survey in August found only 27% Americans to be supportive of Mr. Netanyahu, while 84% backed an immediate ceasefire. Nearly half of American voters now believe that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.

Ideological regime

Israel is aware of the strains in its ties with its traditional allies and that it is losing global public opinion. The stain of Gaza will not fade easily. The most prudent and humane thing for Israel to do is to end the war through a ceasefire for a hostage deal, open all humanitarian corridors, pull back from Gaza and take steps to hold itself accountable for its failures and violations. But Mr. Netanyahu’s regime, driven by a settler, expansionist neo-Zionist ideology, is unable to pursue any of these measures. Instead, Mr. Netanyahu seeks to escalate the war further. Last week, his security cabinet cleared a proposal to take control of Gaza City.

How did the ‘start-up nation’, imagined as a collective of communes for what Pankaj Mishra calls “a pitilessly abused people”, become a victimiser? The answer lies in a collective failure of both the post-War world and an expansionist Israel. This failure reached catastrophic proportions following Hamas’s brutal October 7, 2023 massacre. Nations typically go to war with clearly defined objectives and a theory of victory. Israel’s declared objectives were the destruction of Hamas and the release of hostages. But in Gaza, the target has not just been Hamas. It has been Gaza itself. Twenty-two months later, Hamas is far from destroyed. And some 50 hostages, most of them dead, remain in captivity.

If Mr. Netanyahu ends the war and leaves Gaza, that would be tantamount to admitting defeat. If he agrees to a ceasefire, his far-right allies — Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir — will abandon his government, which has already lost its majority in the Knesset. And once he is out of power, he will have to face a reckoning, not just about the corruption charges he faces but also about the failures of October 7 and the war that followed. So, it is in Mr. Netanyahu’s interest to prolong the war even if it continues to devastate Palestinian lives and erode Israel’s standing in the world.

Shoa and Nakba

The second problem is more structural. Mr. Netanyahu, a child of revisionist Zionism, has long supported Jewish settlements in disputed areas. The settlers, a big political bloc in Israel, want more Lebensraum (living space). For them, the war is an opportunity to “return to Gaza after 20 years”. But Gaza is the home of two million Palestinians. What becomes of them?

Mr. Smotrich, the Finance Minister, has openly called for “Gaza to be totally destroyed” and the Palestinians expelled. Defence Minister Israel Katz wants to push them to the “humanitarian city” in Rafah, which is widely criticised even by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, as a concentration camp. If Palestinians are expelled or confined to such concentration camps, Jewish settlers can return to the enclave. This is the theory of victory for Israel’s far-right. And this theory aligns well with Mr. Netanyahu’s plans to escalate the war and seize control of the territory. When the world pushes for a two-state solution, Mr. Netanyahu is pushing for a no-state solution — no sovereignty for the Palestinians, no state for the Palestinians and no rights for the Palestinians.

Milan Kundera once wrote: “The struggle of a man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. For over seven decades, Israel not only remembered but also reminded the world of the horrors endured by the Jews in Europe. The organised and institutional remembrance of the Shoah has, at times, become a tool in the hands of extremist Zionists to silence criticism of the Israeli state, branding dissent as anti-Semitic. But today, the organised and systemic violence in Gaza, live streamed to millions across the world, is forging a new collective conscience about the Palestinian Nakbas.

The decision by Israel’s closest allies to recognise Palestinian sovereignty and subjectivity may not immediately alter the situation on the ground. But it is a breaking moment in the post-1948 Israel consensus in the West. Messrs Nentanyahu, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, blinded by their shared ethno-nationalist ideology and drunk with hard power, are programmatically incapable of grasping the shifts unfolding around them.

Published – August 13, 2025 12:16 am IST

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that “intense” fighting against Hamas militants in the southern Gaza city of Rafah is nearly over, more than eight months into the devastating war.

“The intense phase of the fighting against Hamas is about to end,” Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel 14 network, without providing a clear timeline.

“It doesn’t mean that the war is about to end, but the war in its intense phase is about to end in Rafah.”

Israeli officials have described Rafah as the last Hamas stronghold in the Gaza Strip, and in early May troops entered the southern city, on the besieged territory’s border with Egypt, despite global alarm over the fate of Palestinian civilians sheltering there.

The military seized the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing, a key conduit for desperately needed aid into Gaza that has remained shut since then.

Netanyahu’s interview — his first with Israeli media since the war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack — was broadcast as his defence minister arrived in Washington for talks on the Gaza war and surging cross-border tensions with Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.

On the ground in Gaza City, in the north of the Palestinian territory, Israeli bombardment continued on Sunday with medics and the civil defence agency in the Hamas-ruled territory reporting deadly strikes.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement has traded daily cross-border fire with Israel’s army, heightening fears of all-out war particularly over the past two weeks.

Netanyahu said that “after the end of the intense phase” in the Gaza Strip, Israel would “redeploy some forces to the north… primarily for defensive purposes”.

– ‘Civilian administration’ –

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s visit to Washington, which he said would include meetings that are “critical to this war”, follows public statements by Netanyahu concerning US military aid which have added strains to ties with the White House.

Netanyahu has accused Israel’s close ally and biggest military supplier of freezing some arms and ammunition deliveries during the war, which US officials have strongly rejected.

As he prepared to depart for Washington, Gallant said: “Our ties with the United States are more important than ever”.

Netanyahu, who has faced growing pressure from Israeli demonstrators demanding a deal to free hostages still held in Gaza, said he would not agree to any deal that includes a permanent ceasefire — one of Hamas’s key demands in stalled mediation efforts for a truce.

“The goal is to return the kidnapped and uproot the Hamas regime in Gaza,” he said.

When asked about post-war scenarios for Gaza, Netanyahu said it was “clear” that Israel would maintain “military control in the foreseeable future”.

“We also want to create a civilian administration, if possible with local Palestinians” and regional backing “to manage humanitarian supply and later on civilian affairs in the Strip”, Netanyahu added.

Similar proposals Netanyahu had presented to his ministers in February were swiftly rejected by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, and prompted US warnings against the “Israeli reoccupation of Gaza”.

Two members of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, former military chiefs Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, left the government earlier this month over the lack of post-war plans.

– War ‘must stop’ –

In Gaza, Israeli forces kept striking targets and battling Hamas.

In Gaza City, medics at Al-Ahli hospital told AFP that at least five people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a facility of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

The Israeli military said its jets struck militants who “operated from within buildings that previously served as an UNRWA headquarters”

There was no immediate comment from UNRWA, whose facilities have come under attack before.

Some UNRWA buildings have been turned into shelters for displaced Palestinians during the war.

An early morning air raid on a family home elsewhere in Gaza City killed at least seven people, the civil defence agency said.

The October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

The militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza although the army says 41 are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,598 people, also mostly civilians, Gaza’s health ministry said.

“This war must stop,” said Umm Siraj al-Balawi, struggling to survive in a makeshift shelter amid a field of rubble, with strung-up sheets protecting her young children from the blazing sun.

But despite the needs, “delivery of any meaningful humanitarian assistance inside Gaza has become almost impossible and the very fabric of civil society is unravelling,” the European Union said in a statement.

As the war has raged on, Israeli protesters have taken to the streets week after week demanding greater efforts to bring home the remaining hostages.

In his Sunday interview, Netanyahu said that if his rule ends, “a left-wing government will… establish a Palestinian state”, dubbing it a threat to “our existence”.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah said it had targeted military positions in northern Israel with attack drones, after an Israeli strike in eastern Lebanon killed the commander of another armed group, Jamaa Islamiya.

After the Israeli military said plans for a Lebanon offensive had been approved, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah responded that no part of Israel would be spared in the event of a full-scale war.

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