The conflicting parties in the Middle East need to get “around the table and actually negotiate”. So said New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon last week. It is a statement Luxon has now made several times, and one Neville Chamberlain would have heartily approved of.

When he made his comment last week Luxon was on a visit to Laos. He may as well have been in La-la land. Who does he think the Israelis are dealing with? A potential coalition partner? A difficult union delegation? These are the people you get around the table with. Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, are not these people. They are genocidal jihadists who have openly declared their determination to wipe Israel off the map. And their barbaric murderous actions are ample proof that they mean exactly what they say.

You don’t get around the table with people who want to kill you. You fight them. You don’t negotiate with them. You confront them, and you defeat them. As Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said last week, Israel doesn’t just have the right to defend itself – it has the right to win. Indeed it must win. Kicking the can down the road through a ceasefire for the sake of short term peace is not an option. Its enemies will simply regroup – and return for more massacres.

Israel knows that. Which is why it is fighting – and winning. And in so doing it is changing the strategic realities on the ground in a way that is far more likely to facilitate peace in the long term. Only when the malevolent influence of these jihadist forces is broken and detached from the hopes of the Arab people who live in Gaza and the West Bank will there be space for genuine dialogue and negotiation. The sort of dialogue and negotiation that Israel has been willing to engage in for decades – but which has always been thwarted by the jihadists.

Former Israeli Labour Prime Minister Ehud Barak writes in his biography of how attempts to progress the Oslo Accords, in 1995 and again in 2000, were never met with good faith negotiation from Yasser Arafat. And as for the jihadists in Hamas, they met both attempts with increased rocket attacks and suicide bombing to deliberately sabotage any chance of peace. Like Chamberlain, Barak discovered that getting around the table with people beholden to such malevolent influences is a futile endeavour.

In light of this our own political leaders need to completely change their approach. Pointless platitudes about ceasefire and de-escalation need to stop. Instead they should be standing clearly with the only real democracy in the Middle East and their right to fight – and to win.

Ewen McQueen
October 2024