There are dangerous parallels between Britain’s support for Israel and its war-mongering stance ahead of the 1914 war, writes Chris Sutherland.
Photos provided by The Network of Photographers for Palestine. Credit: Mohammed Alhajjar
Genocide in Gaza was barely mentioned in the 2024 General Election. The bipartisanship between Labour and the Conservatives has been a disgrace. All we got were clipped, terse statements about humanitarian aid, the need for a ceasefire within a two-state framework and a ‘let’s move on quick please’. No-one mentions the fact that Israel (Britain’s ally), has violated all three.
Gaza was only talked about when it was impossible not to, despite 38,000 dead, 90,000 wounded, 2 million displaced and the whole of Gaza reduced to rubble: a society virtually eliminated and more horrors to come. Nobody even questioned the unelected Lord David Cameron’s unilateral decision to suspend funding to UNRWA in January (the main body providing humanitarian aid to the victims in Gaza). This followed bogus Israeli claims of UNRWA’s involvement in the events of 7/10. Throughout one of the most terrible slaughters in recent modern history, the British government just sat back, unlike the many charities and NGOs and hundreds of thousands of citizens who have contributed towards aid on the ground. I give every month to ‘Medical Aid for Palestinians’ and urge every reader to do the same.
The government has continued to licence arms and continues to permit the export of components for the F35 jets that bomb and strafe civilians in Gaza. It still trades and welcomes genocidal Israeli politicians and generals. It condemned the ICJ interim judgements at the Hague, and ICC indictments against Netanyahu and Gallant. It recently put in a legal case to the ICC to say they have no jurisdiction, despite previous rulings to the contrary. The new government has wanted to be seen changing its stance slightly. But it’s the things we don’t see that matter.
Declassified UK has put in repeated questions to the Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office about the use of their RAF base at Akrotiri in Cyrpus, to launch UK spy drones flying over Gaza (allegedly to spot hostages but really providing the Israelis with intelligence); arms flights that have used British territory to provide munitions for genocide; countless RAF flights, raising unanswered questions about the use of British special forces in Gaza; and, recently, 84 flights between Cyprus and Beirut between March and July (thought to be bolstering the Lebanese Army against Hezbollah).
‘We don’t divulge these things’ say government ministers. Nor do they divulge the internal advice of their own legal department as to whether British complicity in the sale of arms to Israel breaks International Humanitarian Law (IHL), although we know it almost certainly has. The UK has refused arms embargoes, refused to call for an effective ceasefire, and continues to issue empty platitudes about ‘two states’ despite that solution having been dead in the water for 30 years, and all the more impossible since 800,000 illegal settlers are now armed in the West Bank.
The fact is the UK armed services are heavily locked into the Israeli arms and tech sectors. Their armies, navies and air forces train together in various mutual pacts. Israel and the UK are allies, along with the US and NATO. They’ve shared intelligence for decades. Israel is the West’s ‘watch-dog’ in the Near East.
The Long Road to Gaza
I studied under Paul Kennedy at UEA, long before he became a celebrity historian as Director of International Studies at Yale. One of his key interests was the way British military conversations developed with France after the Entente Cordial in 1904, along with key military reforms and the balance of power before the outbreak of World War One. Britain was so committed to a military path that when war was sparked in the Balkans, everything was in place.
War was declared by a handful of Liberal aristocrats, and belatedly rubber stamped by propertied male MPs in Parliament. The war machine rolled into action, without anyone outside of a narrow band of ruling class landed capitalists being consulted. Millions were swept into the killing machine of the trenches. Off went the British Expeditionary Force to its allotted place on the Northern front line. A privileged (and very safe) ruling class sent millions of people to their deaths without any democratic vote, and without even a whimper of protest from most of their Labour and socialist representatives.
That same ruling class carved up Palestine and Syria in the Sykes-Picot secret agreement of 1916 between Britain and France, despite assurances to the Arabs that there would be an independent Greater Arabia. Another tiny faction issued the Balfour Declaration of 1917 that led to the British Mandate of Palestine of 1922. Its principal function was not to allow self-determination for indigenous Palestinians but to help establish a Zionist state of mostly European settler colonialists. The ‘Road to Gaza’ started then. The national rights of Palestinians were treated as worthless.
Understanding what this has to do with the July General Election and a British air base in Cyprus involves taking stock of the tension and threats of invasion along the Israel-Lebanon border.
The Vulnerable Border of Israel
A few weeks ago Hezbollah published two ten minute drone videos. This was no ordinary footage. For twenty minutes they flew over Israel’s most secret military and naval installations. Hezbollah annotated what they saw: radar, comms installations, Iron Dome platforms, military bases, and the Haifa Naval complex including its submarine base, Israel’s strategic oil and gas reserves, industrial and research complexes, power and water plants, as well as civilian infrastructure such as IAF air bases and Ben Gurion International airport.
Then in a surprise announcement, the giant US Intel Corporation suddenly cancelled its $25bn investment in Israel’s new micro-chip plant at Kiryat Gat, even though the plant is well advanced.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) called it a great victory but it was much more than that.
What the two videos showed and what the cancelled investment revealed was that pretty much the whole of post-1949 Israel is within range of Hezbollah missiles. That same week Hezbollah had footage of an attack drone hitting a radar and comms station in Galilee. Pictures from the drone showed Israeli soldiers scattering in panic. It’s clear that many other missiles and drones have penetrated Israeli defence systems.
Defence analysts estimate Hezbollah’s missile capacity at around 150,000, capable of firing 3,000 a day. It has an army of an estimated 100,000 battle-trained fighters. Unlike Gaza, which is flat and vulnerable to air and sea, Southern Lebanon is hilly and mountainous. Hezbollah have deep mountain bases, their own tunnel networks, tanks, surface to air capability, radar, anti-tank guided ordnance, hi-tech comms, logistical support, supply lines, and an interior with defensive depth.
After months of border ‘clashes’, Israel is now openly threatening another invasion of Southern Lebanon with all the terrible memories of 1982, the bombing of West Beirut, and the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Israel occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years before being forced to withdraw in 2000. There was a new force on the block: Hezbollah, borne out of bitter wars with Israel, is highly motivated, organised and equipped. They now dominate the border with Israel.
When Israel tried to re-invade in July 2006 they got a bloody nose. Some units had to be rescued. The war lasted 34 days despite Israel inflicting huge damage on civilians and infrastructure. But the memory of this defeat runs deep in Israel. Hezbollah has been consolidating its military strength and its influence over Lebanese politics. Today, Hezbollah has one of the largest and best equipped non-governmental militaries in the world.
Fear of all-out war with Hezbollah has led some 80,000 Israelis to evacuate their border towns and settlements, and similar numbers on the Lebanese side. Settlers say they won’t go back until the border is secured. The tense border situation is a kind of ‘mutually assured destruction’. Both sides have much to lose and the stakes are huge.
Across Israel another 500,000 have chosen to use their dual passports to leave the country. This is a disaster for Israel with a population of just 8 million. Its economy is reeling from the cost of the Gaza war. Israel is reckoned to have lost $400bn in lost economic activity and long-term impacts such as reduced investment, low productivity and labour market disruption which will take years to recover from. GDP has shrunk by 20% in the period October to March. A fire-fight with Hezbollah would be catastrophic.
A rational Netanyahu would accept the Biden Peace Plan over Gaza as the price for Hezbollah’s peace on its northern border. But no: the Israeli war cabinet says plans have been signed off for another invasion and units have been busily training in the north. His fellow war criminal, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant is talking of bombing Lebanon into the Stone Age. Yet the same Gallant recently pointed out that they needed 10,000 more troops ‘now’.
Whatever the bluster, Israel is nowhere near ready to prosecute a war against Hezbollah and expose the underbelly of Israeli cities in a way never before seen. In an article in newspaper Maariv, Israeli journalist Alon Ben David quotes sources saying more than 500 armoured vehicles have been damaged by the resistance in Gaza. He writes of depleted ammunition stocks and exhausted troops – 666 killed, 4,000 injured, and 11,000 requiring psychiatric treatment. He also reports that officers are telling senior military planners that the army and air force isn’t ready. Israel is not used to long wars. “Never, throughout its 76 years,” he writes, “has the army been built for a 9-month war. Instead it was built as a shock army which mobilises the reserves at the moment of command, goes out decisively in a short time, and returns to normal.”
Gaza has not been a short war and Hamas is nowhere near to being defeated. Top generals are openly saying that they can’t be defeated both as a force and as an ideology. Gaza alone ties down three IDF Divisions and numerous specialist and reserve units. Taking on an even more powerful Hezbollah and fighting on two fronts could be a step too far. In fact, analysts warn that northern Israel, especially Galilee where Palestinians still outnumber settlers 2:1, is particularly vulnerable to invasion from Hezbollah.
Under current conditions it would seem madness for Israel to mount a simultaneous assault on Hezbollah whilst still being committed in Gaza and the West Bank. The West Bank alone needs a ‘West Bank Division’ just to uphold the occupation. Since 7/10 there have been nightly raids and attacks on all the main cities, towns and villages, with 600 Palestinians killed, 5,000 injured and 10,000 arrested. In June, Haaretz’s veteran Defence Correspondent, Amos Harel warned that the Israeli public ‘apparently hasn’t yet grasped the difference in terms of the damage that Hezbollah’s rockets can cause compared to Hamas … heavier, longer range, more accurate.’ To return to my original question: why is this relevant to the UK and the recent General Election and why are there parallels with 1914? Quite simply, with all Israel’s key military bases now vulnerable to missile attack, there is open speculation that war with Hezbollah might force the Israeli Air Force to re-locate to the safe zone of RAF Akrotiri, possibly also the RAF naval base in Haifa, especially if Hezbollah drones and missiles succeed in taking out IAF runways. That would mean Britain becoming directly involved in the war against Hezbollah. Like the secret military conversations between Sir Henry Wilson and his French counterparts prior to 1914, the UK has long been part of the western pro-Israel military axis, most of it secret and behind closed doors.
Hezbollah has threatened it would then view Cyprus as a legitimate target. For its part, Cyprus, an EU member, has said it will not allow their sovereign territory to be used in a war against Lebanon. Cyprus, with its large ex-pat Lebanese community, has already seen demonstrations against the British presence at Akrotiri. It’s an imperial anachronism that the UK still owns 3% of Cyprus’s landspace with its bases at Akrotiri and Dhekelia. It largely did as it pleased with that land during the Syrian and Iraq conflicts, including letting it be used by the US.
The US has also now deployed two naval Battle Groups stationed in the East Mediterranean and Red Sea – the Dwight D Eisenhower and Roosevelt Battle Groups. These include NATO ships (Italy, France and UK) as part of CENTCOM’s war against the Houthis. So now NATO is involved along with the Royal Navy.
The risk of a regional war erupting has already been exposed in Israel’s recent brush with Iran. Iran backs Hezbollah through its ‘Shia Corridor’ that connects Lebanon, Syria and Iran. Moreover, Israel has been itching to attack Iran to smash its nuclear capacity. There are other geopolitical factors at play: the Saudi/Iranian rivalry for regional hegemony; Russia’s backing for Assad’s Syria and Hezbollah; unstable regimes in Egypt, Jordan and Iraq; and the seeds of a second ‘Arab Spring’ across Muslim North Africa. Palestine is the spark that could fire up the whole region.
Erdogan was weakened in the recent Turkish elections, but he is still regionally ambitious. Islamophobia and anti-migrant racism lurk behind the rise of the European Far Right across Europe. Ukraine-Russia-EU-NATO is both a hot and cold war. The US and China are two empires colliding and competing for global hegemony, with sabre-rattling about what would be the biggest battle of them all. The world is not a safe place.
So there we have it: a modern-day 1914 cocktail, waiting to explode at any moment and engulf most of the region. Israel is a nuclear power, and in a tight corner they may be tempted to use them. The historian Benny Morris has even publicly called for Israel to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s nuclear programme calling it a ‘moment of truth’.
It’s probably the most dangerous time in Israel’s short 76 year history. Despite all its posturing as the world’s fifth-strongest military power, the war in Gaza has exposed many chinks in the Israeli myth of invincibility. Israel’s international reputation has been shattered, particularly amongst the young in America and across the world. Smearing Israel’s opponents as anti-Semites no longer has the same effect. Israel has lost its victim status. It is an aggressor state. Netanyahu and Gallant, like Putin, are now dodging international arrest warrants.
Britain could well find itself sucked inexorably into the maelstrom, with events beyond its control and no democratic break to stop the warmongers. None of this was mentioned in the General Election campaign. People have been blissfully unaware of an imminent regional and global conflict. Our ‘liberal media’ have been loyally silent. As in 1914, while the people sleep, a few powerful people could make decisions that kill millions. We need to create a world based on peace and justice. That begins with kicking out the warmongers and supporting those who want to build one democratic state in Palestine, where Jews and Palestinians can live in peace as equals.
The Network of Photographers for Palestine arranges exhibitions across the country. Its latest exhibition, ‘The Deep End’, is showing at the Govanhill Festival (29th July – 11th August).