In Gaza, one commodity is not in short supply: self-delusion

As the tragedy unfolds in Gaza, in the aftermath of the horrific Hamas attack into Israel last month, one simple principle should be clear. All actors must take responsibility for their own actions, especially for the impact of those actions on innocent civilians.

The importance of taking responsibility for one’s actions should be straightforward and self-evident. However, it bears emphasising because there is a widespread evasion of responsibility on every side of the conflict. Washing one’s hands doesn’t clear one’s conscience.

Each side convinces itself that its own actions are merely the inevitable consequence of the other side’s behaviour. Supporters of, or apologists for, Hamas wrongly assert that the injustice and brutality inflicted on Palestinians for so long provides justification for the barbarism they inflicted on innocent Israeli men, women and children on October 7th. Binyamin Netanyahu’s government wrongly argues that the utterly shocking events of that day provide sufficient reason for the killing of thousands of equally innocent Palestinians. Despite the hardships that we see every day on our TV screens, one commodity is not in short supply: self-delusion.

Human affairs are not about inevitable consequences. They are about complex dilemmas, moral choices and the acceptance of responsibility. None of us are mere pawns caught up in the inevitability of history. We are not helpless cogs in an endless cycle of revenge.

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Appeals to religion can make it easier for people to pretend that they are merely agents carrying out the will of some divine power. The mindlessness of appeals to Islamic jihad finds an echo in the farcical biblical inspiration for the ever-expanding Israeli seizure of the occupied territories, which belong to the Palestinians. Netanyahu has taken explicit inspiration from the Old Testament. “There is a time for war,” he tells us, quoting from the Book of Ecclesiastes. In truth, most of the world today sees more wisdom in the Book of Ecclesiastes’s recognition that there is a time to mourn, a time to weep and hopefully, before too long, a time to heal. Fundamentalist Christians, especially in the United States, who confuse banal biblical soundbites with divine wisdom, have also contributed to the unfolding calamity.

There is a hell of a lot of responsibility to go around. Hamas was responsible last month for one of the most appalling acts of terrorism the world has seen. It also bears a large share of the blame for the suffering being inflicted on the people of Gaza. Iran and other international supporters of Hamas share in that guilt. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators, if they allow their protests, or the protests of which they are part, to spill-over into anti-Semitism or calls for the destruction of Israel, cannot wrap themselves in any blanket of morality.

Israeli governments, for their part, must accept responsibility for failing to make any serious effort over several decades to respect their Palestinian neighbours as equal human beings or to live at peace with them. Rather, relying on their overwhelming military strength, they have systematically annexed Palestinian land to which they have no entitlement, something that the United States should and could easily have prevented them from doing. The Israeli government’s outrage at UN secretary general António Guterres’s comment that there is a “context” for recent developments was precisely because his comment was so obviously true.

In its conduct of the Gaza war, Israel might wish that Hamas installations were not in civilian areas or that hospitals were not close to military targets or that the lives of babies in incubators were not dependent on electricity supply. But they are. Israel, like everyone else, must take responsibility for its actions rather than pretending that the reality of the world is different from what it is.

The US must also take responsibility for its policies. For its government to say, as it repeatedly has, that it has established “no red lines” for Israel’s ongoing actions does not absolve it of its share of blame for the tragedy in Gaza. Since the US largely funds and arms Israel, as it does for good reasons, it cannot exculpate itself from the indiscriminate nature of Israel’s Gaza campaign. The US is gradually, belatedly, shifting its position towards emphasising the importance of protecting Palestinian civilians and insisting on access for humanitarian aid. It may even be giving stronger messages in private. However, as long as it doesn’t oblige Israel to accept that there are inescapable moral “red lines”, it must bear some of the responsibility, and consequent damage to its own standing and interests.

Many of those involved in the conflict believe in their own version of God. If and when they come to meet their maker, it will not be enough to blame others or to quote their holy books. They will have to account for their own actions.

Bobby McDonagh is a former ambassador to London, Brussels and Rome