Friends of Israel must tell it to stop all-out war in Gaza. Too many innocents are dying – Stewart McDonald

As former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has warned, Israel’s war against Hamas will not end the threat they pose, but it will silence moderate Palestinians who want a two-state solution

“O Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie; above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” Earlier this week, I heard O Little Town of Bethlehem for the first time this Christmas season.

Its opening verse normally conjures up images of men on camelback, quietly picking their way through the back streets of an ancient town in search of a child in a manger. This year, however, it brings an altogether different set of images to mind.

I thought of the video I saw of a young Palestinian girl called Dunia, left alone in this world after her parents and siblings were killed by an airstrike. Full of incredible bravery and hope after experiencing so much suffering, she spoke about losing her leg in the attack that killed her family and told a reporter about her dream of growing up to be a doctor like the ones who had helped her. Last week, a tank fired shells into the maternity ward where she was staying and killed her.

Dunia Abu Mohsen, 12, lost her leg in a bomb blast that killed her family. She was killed when the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip, was shelled (Picture: Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images)

Israel has right to eliminate Hamas threat

By the third week of the conflict, more than 3,000 children had been reported killed in Gaza. The figure has now risen to 10,000 dead or missing, more than the cumulative number of children killed in armed conflicts across the world for the past three years. Gaza, in the words of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, has become a “graveyard for children”.

In two months of conflict, Israel has fired 29,000 bombs and missiles into Gaza. That is three times as many missiles as Russia has fired into Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion almost two years ago – and all into an area less than half the size of Kyiv. In those two months, more buildings have been razed in Gaza than during the sieges of Aleppo or Mariupol. More civilians have been killed in eight weeks than during the entirety of the three-year Allied campaign against Islamic State.

Israel has the right and indeed moral obligation to defend itself and to eliminate Hamas as a terrorist threat. But those of us who have always recognised the need for Israel – a free, sovereign, democratic Jewish state – to exist should be more clear-eyed about the current Israeli government’s direction of travel. We must ask the Israeli government the same question that American General David Petraeus became famous for during the Iraq War: “Tell me how this ends.”

‘Bombs don’t obliterate an ideology’

In the UK and US, increasing numbers of Israel’s friends are starting to imagine what the next stage of the fight against Hamas looks like. In an article in the Daily Telegraph this week, former UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace argued that “when all this is over, and the IDF withdraws from what is left of Gaza, there will still be Hamas. All the action will have achieved is the extinction, not of the extremists, but the voice of the moderate Palestinians who do want a two-state solution. International sympathy will have expired, and Israel will be forced to exist in an even greater state of siege.”

I think he is correct. As my friend Alicia Kearns, Conservative chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, noted earlier this week, “bombs don't obliterate an ideology, and neither can a stable state be constructed from oblivion". Netanyahu’s military strategy in Gaza is doing more harm than good for Israel’s long-term security prospects and a lasting peace in the region.

US politicians have begun to speak up about this too. The Democratic national security caucus wrote to President Biden earlier this week, saying: “We are deeply concerned by PM Netanyahu's current military strategy in Gaza. The mounting civilian death toll and humanitarian crisis are unacceptable and not in line with American interests; nor do they advance the cause of security for our ally Israel.”

After two months of the war, “indiscriminate” bombing – Biden’s words, not mine – has displaced 90 per cent of the Palestinian population, with Israeli real estate firms already publishing artist’s renderings of luxury homes built atop the rubble of Gaza. The current Israeli government, which includes what Biden called “some of the most extreme members” he’d ever seen, is embarking on a path which shows no sign of leading to any kind of peaceful coexistence.

Remember horror of October 7

We must not be naïve about what they are fighting against. This latest stage in a decades-long conflict was triggered by a brutal and barbaric terrorist attack carried out by Hamas on October 7, in which around 1,200 innocent people were killed and about 240 were taken hostage. Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, has publicly said that the horrors of those attacks were “just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth”. The idea that Israelis, Palestinians or the wider world should accept Hamas having a future in Gaza is one for the birds.

But the rest of the world is watching as Israel’s bombardment of civilians and civilian infrastructure passes without censure from the governments of the West. The UK Government can and must remain steadfast in its support of Israel’s aim to end the threat Hamas poses, but the current Israeli strategy of all-out war must transition to a counter-terror operation, and the UK Government must find the courage to say this plainly. Too many innocent people have died already.

I know that this is perhaps a heavy column for the time of year. But it seems almost unimaginable that now, as we gather with our loved ones to sing carols about Royal David’s City, there are innocent people, not far from Bethlehem, living through one of the most violent and destructive wars of our lifetimes. I can only hope that next year will bring them peace.

Stewart McDonald is SNP MP for Glasgow South