The following article is a work of political commentary. It addresses one of the most contentious and painful conflicts of the modern world. It does so with clarity and frankness, but also with the intention of promoting dialogue and a workable—if imperfect—settlement. All factual claims are drawn from sources in the public domain, cited in good faith. Quotations attributed to public figures are reproduced from media reports generally regarded as reputable. Interpretations are offered as personal opinions, protected under the long-standing traditions of free political speech in this country.

The author does not speak for any party to the conflict. He condemns all deliberate violence against civilians and calls for an end to policies that deepen suffering and inflame hatred. Where terms such as “atrocity,” “ethnic cleansing,” or “terrorism” appear, they refer to specific acts or policies as alleged or reported—not to ethnic or religious groups. No part of this article should be taken as an incitement to hatred, violence, or unlawful action of any kind. It is a moral and strategic argument, addressed to those who retain the capacity to think politically in a collapsing international order.

 

That the Israelis are committing atrocities in Gaza is beyond reasonable doubt. You must be either morally blind or a liar to deny the overwhelming and consilient testimony of deliberate, sadistic outrages committed against the civilian population of Gaza. The purpose of these atrocities is not, as the apologists insist—when forced to admit them—a regrettable by-product of legitimate self-defence. It is to murder or expel the Arab population, and then to seize their land and incorporate it into an expanded ethno-nationalist state.

This is not a wild and unsupported claim. Consider the reported words of Limor Son Har-Melech, a member of the Israeli Knesset:

The sole picture of victory in this war that will allow us to lift our heads… is settlements across the entire Gaza Strip.
(The Atlantic, 2025)

Or the Heritage Minister, Amichai Eliyahu:

North Gaza is more beautiful than ever. Blowing up everything is amazing. When finished, we will hand over the lands of Gaza to soldiers & settlers who lived in Gush Katif.
(A purported post on Twitter)

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has been no less candid:

Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to … the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries.
(The Guardian, 2025)

Former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir declared in February:

The only solution for Gaza is to encourage the emigration of Gaza’s population… this is the only solution to the Gaza problem.
(Washington Post, 2025)

And Avi Dichter, Israel’s Agriculture Minister, was equally forthright:

We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.
(Wikipedia, 2025)

These statements are taken from media sources with some reputation for accuracy of quoting, or from sources that do not appear to have been contested. I have taken reasonable effort to establish their accuracy, but accept that I may be wrong. If true, however, they confirm in words what Israeli actions have already allowed us to infer. They carry more weight than any pro forma statements to the contrary made by the Israeli Government.

Taking the most minimal estimates, tens of thousands have already been killed—some beneath rubble, others through disease or deliberate starvation. The same Israeli ministers who speak of “settlements” and “clear zones” have coordinated military operations that kill with the indiscriminate fury of warfare in the ancient world. They are delivering a livestreamed reprise of the Third Punic War. The old, the sick, the young: all are legitimate targets. This is conquest, not defence. It is ethnic cleansing, committed with the smugness of those who know they are untouchable.

And they are untouchable—because they possess nuclear weapons, because they have great and probably disreputable influence over the American Government, and because they have perfected the art of projecting themselves as moral paragons even while their tanks and drones level whole cities.

All this is wholly or reasonably undeniable. Even so, to denounce the Israeli ruling class as morally depraved is as useless as it is easy. So too calling for outside interventions or trial and punishment of the guilty: these things will not happen. What matters is what can be done to stop the killing—whether any settlement can be devised that gives all parties something of what they do, or should, want.

There is, unfortunately, no settlement that will give all parties everything of what they want. But I do believe there is a settlement that will give and take on both sides, yet still leave each side with the feeling that it has received more than it has lost. Here is my suggestion.

First, let us accept facts on the ground. Israel should be recognised within the borders it now controls: this includes the whole of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. There is no point pretending that these territories will be returned to Arab control. They will not be. The choice is not between a Greater Israel and a Free Palestine. It is between a Greater Israel and a growing pile of Arab corpses now, and a growing pile of Arab and Israeli corpses should the present balance of power ever shift.

When I say recognition, I mean recognition not just by the United Nations and the great powers. I also mean full recognition by all other states in the Middle East and exchange of ambassadors. This inevitably includes—and I know this will be unpopular—full indemnity and oblivion for all criminal acts committed by or alleged against members of the Israeli Government and armed forces. These men will bever be brought to justice. Pretending that they might be will do no good, but only much harm to easy relations in future.

Second, all Arabs in these areas—except those specifically permitted to remain—should be made to leave and should be resettled elsewhere in the Arab world. This is not a just solution. It is a necessary one. It recognises the undeniable fact that Israel controls where they live, and has the power to stop them from living there—either by killing them or chasing them away; and this is what the Israelis plainly want to do, and are not very choosy about what means they employ.

Third, Israel must pay. It must pay fully and publicly for the cost of this population transfer, for the destruction inflicted on Gaza, and for every act of international terrorism it has committed in pursuit of regional dominance.

Among those acts—and there are many others of the same kind—were the recent bombings in Lebanon in September 2024. These included the remote detonation of booby-trapped pagers placed on the bodies of alleged militants. That civilians and even children might pick up the devices, or be close by them, was of no concern. The object was murder and terror—carried out abroad, and against non-combatants.

The same applies to the campaign of assassinations against Iranian scientists. Israeli agents have murdered academics on foreign soil, often in third countries, with methods ranging from car bombs to drive-by shootings. These were not military targets. These were researchers. Their deaths were not collateral damage. They were the targets. This is not espionage. It is not pre-emptive defence. It is murder for strategic gain—and, by international definitions, it constitutes state terrorism.

I might suggest that the Israeli Government should also be required to make a clear promise before the United Nations to stop murdering people outside its own territory. Whether such a promise would have any binding force I cannot say. Even so, it would be an improvement on the present state of things, where the Israelis either deny the plain truth of their actions, or define state terrorism as legitimate self-defence.

But I return to the matter of just compensation: what would this look like? I will not pretend to know how much. But it should be prompt and sufficient. It should include full payment for all territories annexed from neighbouring countries. It should include restitution for all property stolen since 1948, paid at full present market value. It should include reparations for all civilian deaths. It should include full support for the resettlement and welfare of the displaced. This last cost will probably be enormous and continuous. It will go far beyond putting flesh back on their wasted bodies and finding somewhere for them to live. It must include payment for the building of the infrastructure needed for their civilised life and development. It must be large enough for those Arab countries taking them in to feel that they are gaining rather than being imposed upon.

How should this compensation be paid? A promise by the Israeli Government—even made in an international treaty that recognises something like the Greater Israel of Zionist dreams—must be seen as worthless. If their behaviour to date is any indicator of their future conduct, they will take the land and wriggle out of payment for it. Payment must be extracted and disbursed at the international level. There should be established a United Nations Compensation Authority—one that Israel cannot influence or subvert. No Israeli body should handle or disburse funds. The scheme must be international and transparent, and it must be legally enforceable.

According to the Organisation of Economic Complexity, Israel exported $61.7 billion in goods in 2024. Let us suppose that every member state of the United Nations was required to levy a ten per cent tariff on all goods imported from Israel, and to hand this over in full to the United Nations Compensation Authority. Over fifty years, that would bring $308.5 billion. The Authority might be authorised to sell bonds against future proceeds to pay for large initial costs of resettlement. Would this sum be enough? I have no idea. But raise the tariff or extend the period, and the figure rises. This would not bankrupt Israel. But it would force it to pay for the very large benefits offered.

Would Israel agree? Would the Palestinian Arabs agree? Would the neighbouring countries agree? Has anyone ever asked them? Whatever may be said in front of the television cameras, all governments are dominated by cold-hearted cynics. I see no evidence that governments in the Middle East are any different. And who would lose from such an agreement? The Israelis would doubtless be annoyed to be shown as the villains their rulers have made them. They and their supporters would lose certain moral advantages. But, assuming they are not actually mad, I suspect the Israelis would think the deal a good one. The only question would be the details of how much and how enforced.

The Palestinian Arabs would not be happy to lose what little they have kept since 1948. On the other hand, they have effectively lost this already. Their land is lost. Their dead are not coming back. In place of nothing, they would be offered a fresh start in the most favourable circumstances.

The neighbouring countries could easily do with the resettlement bribes, and might be happy to be able to drop eighty years of war and threats of war with Israel. They should even feel a rational happiness that 10p or whatever of every pound spent in Golders Green on Israeli olive oil was coming to them.

The only serious losers would be the madder American God-botherers, who would need to give up on hoping for an imminent Rapture, or whatever else their heretical theology claims the present State of Israel will give them. Everyone else would gain something. No one would gain everything. But that is the nature of compromise.

Population transfers have an ugly reputation. They certainly involve large violations of individual rights. But they do work to stabilise and even to improve relations between neighbouring countries: they can be made to involve an economy of suffering. The mutual transfers of the 1920s between Greece and Turkey were a success in terms of relations between states. The expulsion of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia finally allowed clean borders to be drawn between Germany and its neighbours. These transfers were made without generous funding, and, in the German case, as acts of revenge. The transfer I suggest would be lubricated at every stage by lavish and continuous funding. If this cannot make the lion and the lamb lie down together, nothing can.

The only alternative to an agreement of this kind is to continue where we are heading: an expanding Israeli state, surrounded by burning ruins, its enemies maddened by grief and dreams of vengeance, its allies bought or blackmailed, and the rest of the world staring blankly at a newsfeed of starving children and smiling ministers; all this followed by some ghastly revenge. The next phase of this war may draw in Lebanon, Egypt, or Iran. It may produce wider famine. It may provoke armed uprisings in Europe. It may lead to nuclear retaliation. Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.

We must choose between a world in which Israel is allowed to keep its gains but forced to pay for them, or what may amount to no world at all. I therefore commend my plan to whoever important may be reading this blog.

 

Postscript: On Law and Publication (Reginald Godwyn)

This article has been written in full awareness of the legal climate in the United Kingdom. Its purpose is political analysis—not incitement, defamation, or racial hatred. It accuses the Israeli Government and its ministers of serious wrongdoing, drawing on public sources, official quotations, and observable facts. Where it makes inferences, these are presented as personal opinion, offered in good faith. Where it makes proposals, they are framed as morally undesirable but politically necessary.

The right to make such arguments is protected under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into British law by the Human Rights Act 1998. This includes the freedom “to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority.” Such protection extends especially to political speech, and remains in force even when such speech offends, shocks, or disturbs.

This was made clear in Handyside v United Kingdom (1976), in which the European Court of Human Rights stated that freedom of expression:

…is applicable not only to ‘information’ or ‘ideas’ that are favourably received… but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population.

The article is explicitly framed to avoid falling foul of the Public Order Act 1986, which criminalises speech “intended or likely to stir up racial hatred.” It does not target Jews as a racial or religious group. It targets policies and actions undertaken by the Israeli State and its agents. The British courts have long recognised this distinction.

It does not breach the Terrorism Act 2006, as it does not glorify or encourage terrorism. It does not breach the Defamation Act 2013, being comprised of either verifiable facts or protected opinion. And it cannot justly be removed or censored without triggering the “chilling effect” that British and European jurisprudence warns against.

If any person or authority chooses to challenge this article, the burden of proof will lie with them. They must show that its publication is not only controversial, but criminal. This would be difficult. And it would raise uncomfortable questions about the extent to which lawful political speech remains possible in a country that still claims to be free.

Let no one doubt that this article falls within the lawful bounds of dissent. To suppress it would be not an act of justice, but a confession.