Israel’s war against Iran was short, says The Economist, with precision strikes, clear goals, and “results that enhanced its military prestige”. The war in Gaza has become “endless, indiscriminate and militarily pointless”, and it is turning Israel into a “pariah”. The situation is “dire” – over 60% of buildings are damaged and two million people have been displaced. Although previous predictions of famine in 2024 by aid groups and the UN proved false, the threat today is “real and urgent”. Israel is providing food, bypassing badly-run UN systems that allowed Hamas to profit. But the amounts are “disgracefully low”. Without a robust ceasefire, people will starve. The “hellscape” they live in – overrun by “trigger-happy Israeli forces”, gangs and what’s left of Hamas – is too dangerous to walk through to pick up supplies.

Anyway, “Hamas is defeated”. Its leaders are dead; its military capacity is shattered; its main backer, Iran, is “humbled”; and the IDF controls 70% of Gaza. Failing to provide adequate aid to civilians under, effectively, “occupation”, is a war crime. A plan by the nastier elements in Israel’s government to corral Gazans into a permanent “humanitarian city” would amount to ethnic cleansing. Many Israelis agree that a ceasefire is needed, including an “overwhelming majority” of MPs outside the ruling coalition, who are acutely aware of the damage being done to Israel’s global standing. It’s time for a proper ceasefire, in which a new Gazan government, backed by Arab and Western powers, can take over. Given Hamas’s record of “incompetence, cynicism and utter indifference to Palestinian life”, many Gazans would support this. It was Donald Trump’s furious intervention that ended the war in Iran. It’s time he deployed that “anger and muscle” for the good of Gaza.

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