Two States:Israel And The Palestinians:The Road To 7th October.

The war in Gaza has been raging for over a year and five months now. There's no realistic end in sight and Trump's batshit vision of a kind of Dubai meets Las Vegas resort where bearded bellydancers shimmy on the beach while Elon Musk eats hummus and children carry gold Trump balloons looks like the fevered dream of a very warped mind.

The atrocities carried out on the 7th October 2023 were horrifying. Israel's response to those atrocities is also horrifying. Unlike some of my friends on the hyper-engaged left, I don't subscribe to the theory that everything Israel does is evil and everything Palestine does is both justified and saintly. To put it bluntly, while I have respect for the citizens of both Israel and Palestine I have nothing but contempt for the leadership of both.

Hamas and Netanyahu are not just blocking a solution. They are both, quite actively, the problem. Of course, the issues go back decades and are deepened by the belief in non-existent Gods and fucked up medieval religions, but the people of Israel and the people of Palestine voted for Hamas and Netanyahu so maybe they deserve the shit they've brought on themselves. Maybe instead of a two state solution we should look at a zero state solution. If you can't play nice then you can't play at all.

Of course, that's me at my angriest. Frustrated by the fact that there never seems to be any progress in this part of the world. While it's hard to have sympathy with the killers on either side (and there are lots of them), most Israelis and most Palestinians are just trying to get on with their normal life. A huge number of those being killed are innocent children. The ones that aren't being killed are being brutalised and that in itself makes the continuation of these seemingly eternal hostilities ever more likely.

Norma Percy is a better person than me and she has incredible form when it comes to making documentaries about geopolitics. Her Death of Yugolsavia from 1995 is essential viewing (I've gone back to it countless times) and she's also made Inside Europe:Ten Years of Turmoil, Iran And The West, Cuba:Castro Vs The World, and Endgame In Ireland. Israel and the Palestinians:The Road To 7th October (BBC2/iPlayer) may have been her toughest assignment yet. Not least because the situation is still ongoing. Not least because she will undoubtedly be accused of bias no matter how she chooses to tell the story.

I didn't think it was bias. I thought it was incredibly fair handed and the list of people who turned up as talking heads suggests that I was not alone in that. There was Hillary Clinton, Tony Blair, Ehud Olmert, Condoleeza Rice, John Kerry, George Mitchell, Rahm Emanuel, and the Hamas leaders Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh.

The latter assassinated in Tehran last July, not longer after filming of this series finished. Then there's an assortment of Israeli, Palestinian, American, and Saudi Arabian ministers, security advisers, chiefs of staff, princes, ambassadors, delegates, and consul generals. Together with historical recorded interviews with Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, and Yasser Arafat they all combine to tell a story that is as fascinating as it is frustrating and tragic.

It starts (this show, not the entire Israel/Palestine story,) in 2003 with a Hamas suicide bombing on a bus in Jerusalem that kills twenty-three people. Part of the Intifada, it sees then Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (a former guerrilla fighter) accused, not for the first time, of turning a blind eye to Hamas terrorism and results in the then Israeli premier Ariel Sharon ceasing all contact with Arafat and his people.

Sharon, however, had a radical plan. To remove Israel's presence in Gaza - including dismantling settlements there. The Disengagement Plan, as it was known, needed US backing and President George W Bush was more than happy to provide that backing even if members of Sharon's own party, the right wing Likud - including one Benjamin Netanyahu, were not.

Some Palestinians didn't trust Sharon and there was widespread doubt, suspicion even, that this would not lead to the long desired return of Palestinian statehood. As this was all happening, Arafat died (of natural causes) and his successor Mahmoud Abbas, despite being a more diplomatic figure, vowed to take on Hamas in a way that Arafat never had. In Egypt, with Sharon by his side, Abbas announced he would put an end to the Infitada.

Huge protests against Sharon's Disengagement Plan gathered force in Israel and then, just before the withdrawal was due to begin, one of Sharon's cabinet ministers called a surprise press conference. Netanyahu. He resigned, claiming he considered Sharon's plan an appeasement to terror.

Despite this, Israel still began pulling troops from Gaza (which caused huge internal troubles in Israel) yet, as this happened, support for Hamas grew. In an attempt to normalise Hamas (an armed terrorist group), they were allowed to partake in Palestinian elections. Abbas thought that would make the elections legitimate and he also believed they'd lose. They didn't. They won.

Condoleeza Rice got Sergei Lavrov (Russia's foreign minister then and now) to speak to Hamas about embracing peace (that shows how long this has dragged on, the Russians were considered peacemakers) but Hamas believed they had been voted in expressly to continue their armed struggle and to ultimately wipe Israel from the face of the Earth.

Abbas remained President of Palestine while Hamas's Khaled Mashal became the Prime Minister. Hamas and Fatah (the party of Abbas) members started killing each other and the situation got so bad that the king of Saudi Arabia invited representatives from both groups to Mecca to talk about conciliatory moves. Saudi Arabia!

A short lived peace did not last and soon Hamas took full control of Gaza placing a two state solution in peril. In Israel, Ariel Sharon had had a stroke (that would eventually end his life) and Ehud Olmert had taken over as leader. As Hamas continued to attack Israel, Olmert promised direct talks with Palestine. He wanted to offer Abbas a deal. 95% Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and handing the Arab side of Jerusalem over to Palestine.

But Olmert was under investigation on corruption charges and was all but forced to announce he would resign as soon as a new Israeli leader was appointed. In the meantime, him and Abbas pressed ahead with their plans. George W Bush advised Abbas to seize this chance for peace. Abbas, however, did not seize it.

Bush was replace by Obama, Olmert by Netanyahu. Obama wanted a two state solution and peace between Israel and Palestine yet Hamas (who, of course, controlled Gaza) were designated as terrorists by the US. Obama appointed Senator George Mitchell as envoy for the Middle East. Mitchell was best known for helping to negotiate peace in Northern Ireland.

But Hamas would neither give up arms nor accept Israel's right to exist. Obama agreed with Abbas that Israeli settlements had to stop but only Netanyahu had the power to stop the expansion and he had already assembled Israel's most pro-settler cabinet in the country's history. When Obama told Netanyahu that "not one brick" should be built on Palestinian land, Netanyahu agreed. 

But only to talks. UN investigator Richard Goldstone discovered that Hamas had committed war crimes. He also discovered that the Israeli Defence Force had done so too. Israel was in danger of being sanctioned and negotiations were in danger of being derailed. Netanyahu put a freeze on West Bank settlements but that freeze lasted less than a year.

It wasn't exactly the "not one brick" that Obama had demanded. Obama and his Vice President Joe Biden condemned the move yet Netanyahu shook Abbas's hand and talked of respecting Palestine's need for sovereignty while Abbas agreed he would accept international security in the Palestinian lands.

At least in public. Privately, Netanyahu had told Abbas that it would take "many decades" for Palestine to become a free country. Abbas was so unhappy that the two of them never met to discuss peace ever again - and may never do. When the Palestinian people protested, Hamas and Fatah listened to them and reconciled in the neutral city of Cairo. Netanyahu saw this reconciliation as a victory for terrorism.

George Mitchell resigned as he felt it highly unlikely an agreement for peace could ever be reached. Netanyahu strengthened the Israeli defence forces while Hamas built a huge network of over two hundred tunnels to get goods in from Egypt. Food, water, and medicine. But also 'war materiel'.

With the situation at a low ebb, Tony Blair was sent in to mediate. His team found Hamas was taking a cut of everything that arrived through the tunnels and the Israeli blockade was strengthening, rather than weakening, Hamas. A young Israeli hostage, Gilad Shalit, was - ostensibly - Netanyahu's reason for not lifting the blockade.

Hamas were demanding the release of one thousand prisoners in return for the safe return of Shalit. At first Netanyahu rejected the offer but after eighteen months, and following huge demonstrations in Israel about Netanyahu's mishandling of the economy, he agreed and 1,027 Palestinian prisoners were released. Two hundred and eighty of them were serving life sentences. One, the mass murderer Yahya Sinwar, was serving four life sentences. Sinwar received a hero's welcome on his return to Gaza. He would go on to mastermind the 7th October attacks.

Hamas continued to attack Israel with rockets and Israel continued to bomb Gaza. Obama's Secretary of State John Kerry hadn't given up hope and he went to see a politically weakened Abbas. Abbas demanded the release of more Palestinian prisoners. Netanyahu begrudgingly agreed to release 75% of those on Abbas's list.

When Hamas and Fatah finally agreed to form a unity government in Palestine, both the Israelis and the Americans considered Fatah to have thrown in their lot with terrorists and when Israel discovered Hamas fighters arriving, via tunnels, in Israeli space, Netanyahu ordered a huge invasion of Gaza with the specific aim of destroying the tunnel network.

The fifty-one day war that followed was the deadliest (at that point) Israeli/Hamas war so far and the tunnels, as we now all know, were not eradicated. When that war finally ended, Hamas, encouraged by Blair, tried some diplomacy. But not much. Blair's meeting with Mashad in Qatar saw Mashad refuse to make any compromises whatsoever.

Netanyahu's plan to build a billion dollar barrier between Israel and Gaza was approved despite the fact that Israel would have to cut its budget for health, education, and even, er, security to be able to afford to build it. Israel were basking in the fact that they had a new, and powerful, ally. The new American President Donald Trump was a family friend of Netanyahu.

Trump wanted a 'deal' (of course he did) and he did all he could to win over Abbas. Abbas, for his part, was impressed with Trump. Hamas, also, had high hopes for Trump. Trump set up a team to deliver his 'deal' and put his son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge.

Hamas tried to play it both ways. They signalled support for a two state solution while refusing to recognise Israel's right to exist! It seems unlikely Israel was impressed with that and it seems equally unlikely Palestine was impressed when Trump became the first sitting American president to visit Jerusalem's Wailing Wall and when he moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The latter move led to a fear of mass uprising in Arab capitals, storming of the embassy, and US diplomats potentially being taken hostage but none of that actually happened. What did happen, however, was that Abbas hung up on Trump and instructed his people to have no further dealings with the US government.

In Palestine, they burned images of Trump and Hamas turned ever closer towards to Qatar who provided them with millions of dollars. In cash. In suitcases that were carried through Israel. Netanyahu knew this was happening and was happy to allow it to happen. The theory being that if Palestine had economic prosperity they would no longer want to kill Israeli citizens.

Israel's policy, at this point, was to back Hamas in order to edge out Abbas and Fatah. Hamas now enjoyed the financial support of Qatar, the military support of Iran (under General Qasem Soleimani - who was assassinated by a US drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020), and the tacit support of Israel and by extension the US.

Trump spoke of bringing major international investment into the West Bank and Gaza (not for the last time) while at the same time providing Netanyahu with everything he wanted. In Trump's world of deals, Israel could have the land and the arms, Palestine could be paid off. Netanyahu, however, wanted even more than what Trump was giving him.

Abbas called an emergency meeting of the Arab League in Cairo and the United Arab Emirates (after years of top secret negotiations) became the first Arab nation to recognise Israel's sovereignty. The UAE thought this would help them get their hands on America's state of the art F35 fighter jets. US law would not allow an American company to sell weapons to stated enemies of Israel.

When the US, Israel, and the UAE agreed a deal (with Bahrain also a signatory) - the Abraham Accord - Palestine opposed it and an unpopular Abbas postponed Palestinian elections under the pretext of Israel apparently not allowing voting in some parts of Jerusalem. The election cancellation ensured that Hamas were not brought back into the political fold and when Israel attacked the al-Aqsa mosque that, predictably, created further tension and violence.

Rockets were fired at Jerusalem, the inevitable tit-for-tat killings followed, and Israel launched an eleven day 'Guardian of the Walls' bombing campaigm. Syria and Lebanon supported Hamas and Hamas would go on to call the 7th October attacks 'the al-Aqsa flood'.

At the time, Israel was in the process of trying to normalise its relations with Saudi Arabia but to do this they would need the help of the new American President Joe Biden and Biden, during his campaign, had called Saudi Arabia a "pariah state". When Biden visited Israel and Saudi Arabia he was reluctant to shake the hands off the Saudis (following the horrific murder of Jamal Khashoggi) and instead dished out fist bumps to both the Saudis and Israelis. He also agreed to open Saudi air space to the Israelis.

Six months later, Netanyahu returned to power in Israel and assembled the most right wing cabinet in Israel's history. Months of protests in Israel followed and some Israeli army reservists threatened not to call up for duty if called. Netanyahu spoke of a peace deal with Saudi Arabia and one with Palestine too but at the United Nations when he showed a map of the Middle East, Palestine was conspicuous by its absence.

The map showed Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, the UAE, and Bahrain but no Palestine (or, for that matter, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Oman, Kuwait, or Qatar). Netanyahu's map showed both the West Bank and Gaza as part of Israel. 

A few days, on the 7th October 2023, Hamas attacked Israel killing well over a thousand people. Israel responded by invading Gaza killing, so far, over 62,000 people. After that - who knows?

One thing seems certain. It was never in the interest of either Benjamin Netanyahu or Hamas to have peace. It suits each of them to have a forever war. It seems almost impossible that peace will ever come to the region unless both Netanyahu's government and Hamas are removed from power. Hamas are as much a danger to Palestine as they are to Israel. Netanyahu is as much a danger to Israel as he is to Palestine. In my lifetime, peace has never looked close in this part of the world. Right now, it looks further away than ever.