​"The Israeli assault on Gaza is an impossible military operation"

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This interview with Daniella Peled is the bleakest I have done. Daniella is ferociously well-informed – she is the managing editor of the Institute for War and Peace Rep​orting.  

I turned to her to talk about the Gaza conflict because she does not carry with her the standard biases of a Western progressive – she is of Jewish heritage and knows Israel well.

I found her to be entirely without hope. There is no hope for a two-stage solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she says. And it is impossible to imagine the Israeli assault on Gaza producing any workable peace.

I will let her speak for herself in this edited transcript.

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I began by asking Daniella about Netanyahu, who's played the hard man for decades in Israeli politics, and indeed is in coalition with extreme right-wing Jewish parties, who boast of their toughness. Yet despite all the posing, Netanyahu has presided over a catastrophic security failure.

Daniella Peled: “There is a lot, a lot of anger towards this government. I mean, there was before​, over the judicial reforms, which would prove profoundly undemocratic. And Israel has seen months and months of unprecedented protests…

But I think this assault on Israeli security and Israeli civilians is hugely damaging for him [Netanyahu]. Part of the story that people are telling each other is that the soldiers and the security forces took so long to arrive at the scene of the attacks because they had been largely deployed to the West Bank to protect settlers [who the] far right elements in Netanyahu's government have emboldened.

Nick Cohen: Settlers seem to have been given licence to kill [Palestinians]

Israeli soldiers prepare to take Gaza city

Daniella: The situation is febrile enough. It hasn't been helped by the supposed national security minister giving out weapons almost willy nilly to people in the West Bank.

Nick: So the day before the attacks, you've got Netanyahu, trying to tear up the constitution of Israel by limiting the power of the judiciary, that same judiciary which is going to investigate him for corruption. You’ve got ultra-nationalist groups within his government pushing settlement on the West Bank and diverting troops from the border with Gaza. Okay you've got to wait for the inquiry, but you'd think that this is the end of Netanyahu, wouldn't you?

Daniella: I feel fairly confident about that. But then again he is the ultimate and consummate political survivor, you know. Also don't think that this is a panacea for everything. I don't think removing Netanyahu will somehow magically make the situation any better or improve the prospects for any form of peace in the future, and we're a long, long way from even discussing that.

And please, let's not mention the two-state solution, because, it's a phrase that has become incredibly tired, and in this context, it just seems, too painful an irony.

Nick: What was Hamas trying to achieve with its massacres and what do you think its strategy is now?