Impunity is fuelling Israel’s spiralling aggression

This article was originally published in The New Statesman.

The images are familiar but the locations are new: shattered buildings and billowing smoke in Tel Aviv and Tehran signal the onset of an all-out war between Israel and Iran. The death toll in both countries continues to grow as their armies trade missiles in the wake of Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and military apparatus a week ago. Army bases, energy infrastructure, residential blocks and hospitals all appear to be fair game, and the hostilities show no signs of dissipating. 

Israel was quick to characterise its attack as “pre-emptive”, saying it had no choice but to act in defence of its citizens as Iran advances towards a nuclear weapon. Yet such a claim is entirely without basis in international law. Moreover, the attack has only disrupted planned talks between Iran and the United States aimed at achieving a deal that would restrict the former’s nuclear programme. Israel even assassinated one of Iran’s key negotiators. 

In reality, Israel attacked not out of fear but out of hubris: it seeks to decisively weaken its strongest enemy in the region — at a cost of hundreds, possibly thousands of Iranian civilian lives — and knows it can do so with impunity.

This was, no doubt, a risky gambit. At least two dozen Israelis have already paid with their lives and hundreds more have been wounded as the country’s air defences struggle to intercept every Iranian projectile. Against such a powerful adversary, there is also a chance that carefully calibrated hostilities could quickly spiral out of control, dragging the entire region and much of the world into conflagration. 

But as far as the broader international response is concerned, things are playing out exactly as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu wagered. President Donald Trump described the attack as “excellent”, and had reportedly sent Israel a shipment of 300 Hellfire missiles only days earlier despite maintaining that the US was uninvolved in the operation. Now, he is preparing to join Israel in a full-scale offensive, calling for the Iranian regime’s “unconditional surrender.” 

Keir Starmer’s government has duly followed suit, calling for restraint while simultaneously moving military assets to the Middle East and suggesting the UK could support Israel in the war. In Germany, meanwhile, Chancellor Friedrich Merz praised Israel for doing the West’s “dirty work.”

With Israeli leaders now openly proclaiming the loftier goal of assassinating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and hinting at bringing about regime change in Iran, the chances of de-escalation in the short term appear slim. And just as Israel’s allies in the region have helped shoot down Iranian missiles, Western governments have come readily to Israel’s defence — both rhetorically and materially — to ensure it can continue its attacks. 

This is the overwhelming lesson Israel has drawn from the past 20 months amid its intensifying onslaught on Gaza: there is no limit to what the world will let it get away with. Now, as it bombs its sixth neighbouring state or occupied territory in less than two years, there should be no doubt that impunity is the lifeblood of Israel’s pyromaniacal government, and the fuel driving its spiralling aggression. Until it runs up against firm international resistance, it will not cease in its campaign to militarily re-engineer the entire region to serve its own interests.

Indeed, while the new war with Iran has hijacked the headlines, the official death toll from Israel’s assault on Gaza since the Hamas attacks of October 7 has surpassed 55,000. Researchers believe the true figure could be twice as high. Trump’s full-throated support for the war should be no excuse for Starmer not to do everything in his power to halt it, yet instead he continues to authorise arms exports to Israel worth hundreds of millions of dollars — including components of F-35 warplanes used to drop bombs. 

Since collapsing the ceasefire in March, Israel has effectively dropped the pretense that the Gaza offensive is primarily about freeing the more than 50 hostages remaining in Hamas captivity. Yet impunity still reigns, and it takes two to make a mockery of international law.

Israel’s leaders have made plain their ambition to seize control of the entire Gaza Strip and raze everything in it to the ground, and the army is dutifully obliging: in some cities, the extent of the devastation is greater than in the aftermath of the atomic strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The enclave’s 2 million inhabitants are homeless and starving, with Israel’s latest aid distribution mechanism a naked ploy to displace the population en masse using food as bait. 

If Israel’s government has its way, Gazans may soon be pushed out of the Strip for good. And the war with Iran won’t disrupt this agenda; it will only provide a smokescreen allowing Israel to operate with even less scrutiny. 

It’s not just Gaza: Israel has also used the cover of war to rapidly accelerate its takeover of the West Bank. Settlers armed by the state and shielded from the law have succeeded in wiping scores of Palestinian shepherding and agricultural communities off the map through threatening and administering brutal violence. In the West Bank’s urban centres, the largest Israeli military operation in 20 years has forcibly displaced 40,000 people from several refugee camps, destroying hundreds of homes in the process.

The Israeli government additionally announced plans last month to build 22 new illegal settlements in the West Bank with the explicit intention of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has also initiated a large-scale land registration process that rights groups have described as a significant leap towards formalising Israeli sovereignty in the occupied territory. 

This, too, will continue unabated as the world’s attention shifts to regional war, and simply imposing sanctions on a pair of outspoken ministers is a paltry response to a campaign that is rapidly erasing the Palestinian people from their land.

If the UK wants to avoid being dragged into a war that will further destabilise the region, cause countless civilian deaths in Israel and Iran, enable the continuation of Israel’s ethnic cleansing and slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and almost certainly lead to more attacks on Israeli and Jewish sites around the world, it must act immediately to force Israel down.

That means ceasing all arms licenses until Israel complies with international law, suspending the existing bilateral trade agreement, and imposing sanctions on all political and military leaders responsible for war crimes. All of these measures are long overdue, popular with the British public, and will end the impunity that Israel has enjoyed for far too long at the expense of the entire region.▼

Ben Reiff is a senior editor at +972 Magazine and a member of the editorial collective at Vashti Media.