Israel must use better judgment or risk losing support of the West

A Palestinian holds the remains of his mother amid the rubble of building destroyed in an Israeli strike on the Bureij refugee camp on Thursday. Picture: AFP

This is a perilous moment for Israel. It needs to better understand that its closest allies – including Australia and the US – are finding it increasingly difficult to support its war against Hamas without also openly criticising its conduct of the war and the fearful civilian death toll.

It does not in any way undermine the righteousness of Israel’s cause to defeat Hamas or the unspeakable horror of what Israelis suffered at the hands of terrorists on October 7 to also observe that Israel is making some mistakes.

The civilian death toll from the Israeli air and ground offensive may not be the 9000 that the Hamas-run Gazan health ministry claims but the vision we see each night speaks for itself in that it is clearly a terrible toll.

Australia, the US and Israel’s Western allies need Israel to succeed in this conflict, to wipe out Hamas, as much as that is physically possible, and prevent it from ever committing another October 7.

Hamas has disgracefully used civilians as shields, establishing its headquarters under hospitals, schools and refugee camps, ensuring maximum death and international outrage should Israel hit those targets. Even so, Israel cannot afford to be completely deaf to international opinion, for its own safety and security, as much as for the people of Gaza.

It must do more – and be seen to do more – to prosecute its war while also protecting civilian lives and alleviating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as difficult as this is in practice.

The concern for Israel, politically, is not the angry tide of opinion in the Arab world, because this was always inevitable in any conflict involving Gaza. Arab nations have displayed appalling double standards in this war, refusing to condemn Hamas, stoking tensions, spreading disinformation and doing nothing to help the Gazan people they profess to care about.

But Israel cannot afford to alienate its closest allies. As the only democracy in the Middle East surrounded by autocracies and dictatorships, most of whom want it wiped off the map, Israel needs the democratic world to always be firmly in its camp. The Biden Administration and the Albanese government have been, but they are now increasingly critical of the sheer scale of civilian deaths despite their steadfast support for Israel’s mission. US Secretary of State ­Antony Blinken has dashed to ­Israel to urge a strategy that would reduce civilian casualties. Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong keep using the diplomatic mantra that “Israel has a right to defend itself but how it defends ­itself matters as well,” yet it is now clear that they believe Israel is not defending itself with the proper balance between civilians and military targets.

Israel’s decision this week to twice bomb the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza was a case in point. Israel says it targeted the camp to kill a senior Hamas leader and ­destroy the network of Hamas tunnels running under it. But the bombs levelled the area, killing at least 100 people and most likely many more, with pictures of the huge bomb crater and the devastation appearing on newspaper front pages around the world. It was a public-relations nightmare for Israel.

Even though it was not the most deadly Israeli airstrike, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for some, with a host of countries recalling their ambassadors from Israel, including Bahrain, the first Abraham Accord state to do so.

Was the military advantage of that strike worth the civilian loss of life and the international outrage? These are the difficult judgments Israel must make each day, but they are judgments that Israel is failing to sell to the world.

Northern Gaza is now all but cut off from the south and those residents who did not, or could not, heed Israel’s advice to move south for safety, now find themselves in a hot war zone. The terrible truth is that there may be only limited options for Israel to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza City while it is engaged in its life and death struggle with Hamas in the north. But it still needs to try.

Where Israel could more easily help alleviate the suffering of ­Gazans is in the south. More than 600,000 people heeded Israel’s advice to move south for safety only to find that there was little shelter, food or water to sustain them.

Israel could and should facilitate far greater numbers of trucks carrying essential aid into Gaza from the Rafah border crossing in Egypt.

Israel’s decision to cut off food, water and fuel supplies to Gaza – made in anger after the October 7 massacres – has proved to be a mistake.

Hamas was always going to ensure that its fighters had ­adequate supplies, so it was the population that suffered and the resulting humanitarian crisis has only helped turn the tide of international opinion against Israel.

Israel also claimed that it could not allow fuel into Gaza because Hamas would steal it and use it in its rockets. But with hospitals in Gaza running out of fuel and many unable to operate, Israel says it will allow fuel into the territory “with oversight” to ensure that it reaches the hospitals. If this was possible, why was this policy not implemented in the first place?

Israel deserves and needs the backing of the West in its quest to destroy Hamas, but it needs to take more care not to jeopardise that support.