1957 Sinai Again?
These are the Biggest Losers of the Gaza War
While Israel reels from military and diplomatic defeat, Britain and France are left exposed — their pro-Palestinian grandstanding reduced to hollow gestures as Islamist forces rise within their own borders.
Beyond Israel’s devastating defeat in the Gaza war, a war that forced it to empty its prisons of convicted terrorists and withdraw from the Strip while allowing sworn enemies (Turkey, Qatar) to operate freely within spitting distance of Tel Aviv, two other nations have also emerged as clear losers: Britain and France.
Throughout the conflict, both European powers worked hard to grab headlines, championing the idea of a Palestinian state and posturing as if they still possessed an independent foreign policy not tethered to the will of the United States.
But Washington saw through the performance. President Trump mocked French President Emmanuel Macron to journalists and to his face and told Britain’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, (also) to his face that he did not agree with him. The lofty talk of “recognizing Palestine”, a project without substance or traction, has now been put on hold under Jared Kushner’s framework for the region.
Meanwhile, Israel lost control of Gaza to Hamas, and also lost its last stronghold in global public opinion among its remaining allies America’s young conservative generation.
As for Britain and France, their pompous and empty declarations now leave them facing the very problem that led them to adopt a quasi-jihadist line against Israel in the first place, the Islamic challenge rising proudly within their own societies, a phenomenon they helped enable through years of moral confusion and appeasement.
Unlike Britain and France, at least one can say of Israel: it fought, even if it lost and folded like cheap knife.
1957 anyone? Just this time the Americans are not folding Israel, France, and Britain with the help of the Russians, but with the help of a different axis - an Islamic one.