Hamas is the single biggest barrier to peace in Gaza | Yiftah Curiel

Reading the British papers in recent days, one could easily become confused regarding the outcome of this latest conflict between Israel and Hamas; headlines pronounced victory for both sides, and only a few commentators wrote what many are surely thinking: no winners here, only losers.

One realisation that has emerged from the current round of violence, and should be clear to any right-thinking person interested in a two-state future, is that Hamas today is the single greatest obstacle to the prosperity of Gaza, and in the longer run, to a peace agreement. The facts are there for everyone to see: Hamas is an internationally recognised terror group, which has earned that dubious title honestly, by virtue of dozens of suicide bombers, exploding buses and thousands of rockets. Its leaders sit in Qatar, its weapons smuggled from Iran, it trains alongside Hezbollah, and its ideology, clearly spelled out, is both radical Islamist and antisemitic. Its actions, as seen recently with the 18 executions of alleged collaborators with Israel in Gaza, resemble those of Isis and al-Qaida.

Throughout its history, Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups have worked hard to derail the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. At the height of the Oslo process, they blew up buses in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, sending suicide bombers to explode among Israeli civilians. It was then that the late prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, said: “We must fight terrorism as if there’s no peace process, and work to achieve peace as if there’s no terror.”

Rabin’s words hold true today, when an armed terror group has once again rained thousands of rockets from a strip of land which Israel had left almost a decade earlier in a bid to strengthen the chance for peace. Plans for an airport, a seaport and numerous joint Israeli-Palestinian projects in Gaza were in full swing when Hamas took over in 2006 and violently removed the Palestinian Authority, declaring it would not recognise Israel and proceeding to wage war on its civilians.

Hamas control of Gaza has been an ongoing tragedy: for Palestinians, who have been subjected to an extremist regime which violates the rights of women, gays and other minorities, while using their resources – largely supported by the international community – for amassing rockets and building terror tunnels. For Israelis, Hamas’s actions weaken the case for peaceful coexistence, providing a worst-case scenario that became a reality which would be catastrophic if repeated following a West Bank withdrawal.

This week’s international uproar following an Israeli declaration as “state land” of 1.5 square miles in Gush Etzion – land that is under no private ownership and is destined to remain under Israeli sovereignty under any future agreement – is telling. Outrage, and action, should be directed at Hamas’s extremist brand of terrorism, which remains the foremost stumbling block to any agreement.

The wide support expressed by the Israeli public for the Gaza operation reflects the untenable situation of a country under constant rocket threat, a reality not experienced in Europe since the second world war. This support mirrors the growing realisation, reflected throughout the region, that radical elements left to their own devices do not become moderate of their own accord; rather they are supported by their friends and allies, and become stronger and more audacious. Peace is achieved by strengthening moderates while actively pursuing the isolation of extremists, using diplomatic as well as military means.

As Hamas leaders stand amongst the rubble of Shuja’iya, brandishing weapons and proclaiming victory and continued jihad, at least one thing is clear: until it is stopped, peace may well elude us, and so long as it remains in power, the real losers will be Israelis and Palestinians who long for a radically different, peaceful future.

Revert green light for new West Bank settlement, Kerry tells Netanyahu

John Kerry and Binyamin Netanyahu during a meeting in January. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AP

John Kerry has called the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, amid a US effort to persuade Israel to reverse the go-ahead for the largest appropriation of land on the occupied West Bank since the 1980s.

The secretary of state's call followed the disclosure that the US had officially requested Israel to reverse the decision, amid mounting criticism of the move both internationally and within Netanyahu's own cabinet.

Kerry is preparing to meet Palestinian negotiators seeking a firm deadline for Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories to the pre-1967 borders. Failing that, Palestinian officials have warned they will seek a UN resolution setting a three-year deadline for the end of the occupation.

The talks will be Kerry's first face-to-face discussions with Palestinian negotiators since Washington found itself sidelined from ceasefire talks in July when Kerry – the top US diplomat – failed to broker a truce in the war between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

The announcement on Sunday that the land in the Gush Etzion settlement block near Bethlehem would be expropriated – the first step towards building a significant new settlement there – has seen strong protests from the UK and European governments including France and Spain, and from Italian foreign minister Federica Mogherini, who was just appointed the EU's next foreign minister.

The move has been widely interpreted by Israeli analysts as a political gesture designed to shore up support for Netanyahu on the right wing, which has criticised him for his handling of the war in Gaza.

For his part, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has said if there is no progress on peace negotiations to settle the borders of a future Palestinian state, Palestinians will push forward with unilateral steps towards recognition and have threatened to pursue Israel for war crimes in the international criminal court – both moves opposed by the US.

Art and affinity in the troubled lands of Northern Ireland and Israel | Bill Drummond

We never grow out of our need for baddies and goodies. We watch, listen or read the news – subconsciously or not – wanting to be presented with stories about baddies and goodies.

Over the past month or so we have been presented with a very clearly defined baddies and goodies story – that’s if you suffer from the western liberal mindset that I have. The Israelis have played the part of the baddies and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have played the goodies. Even though we know it is a lot more complicated than that, we still take some sense of vicarious moral high ground from siding with the goodies. It is so much easier for us to have a simplistic view on this than try and understand what is going on in Iraq and Syria with Islamic State. And what is a caliphate? And who are the Yazidis anyway?

In early August I was driving across the north of Ireland to Belfast International airport. On my way I drove through one of the republican estates in Ballymena. Among the usual Irish tricolours fluttering from the lamp-posts were a number of Palestinian flags.

I was on my way to pick up Sagit Mezamer, an Israeli artist and curator, who had just arrived from Jerusalem. Had she any idea of what she was flying into? As in: any notion of the history of this corner of the Emerald Isle and how the two sides in the Troubles had occasionally adopted the flags of the divide in that other Holy Land.

Mezamer and I had worked together as part of a series of performances by The 17 in Jerusalem back in 2011. Mezamer was flying into Northern Ireland at my invitation, the plan being that she would be the 2015 curator of the artist’s residency in County Antrim that I’ve been involved with running since the late 90s. For the past seven years the residency has been curated by a different artist-run collective in Ireland or the UK.

The residency is housed in the Curfew Tower, which was originally built to imprison local rioters and miscreants, in the middle of Cushendall, a town on the beautiful Antrim coast. In the first week of August we have an exhibition in the tower of work by a previous artist-in-residence. It has become something of an institution locally – everybody visiting the exhibition gets to vote for what they think is the best work on display.

Cushendall is a very republican town, even if the flying of tricolours from lamp-posts and the painting of kerbstones might be suppressed for the sake of the tourist trade. Thus Cushendall is very pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli.

Over the past month or so I have been questioning my motives of inviting artists from Israel to do residencies in the heart of republican Northern Ireland. I must accept that it is part of the contradictions and problems contained in this invitation that attract me to it.

My own history relating to this is complex. I was born to parents working in a Church of Scotland mission school in the Transkei, South Africa. The first words I learnt to speak were Xhosa, the language of Nelson Mandela and the girls that looked after me, while my parents were teaching.

My parents moved back to Scotland when I was two. My childhood was then spent in a religiously divided west of Scotland, where from accident of birth it was only natural for me to be a supporter of Glasgow Rangers. For those who do not know, Rangers are supported by Protestants. The other major Glasgow team and arch rivals, Celtic, are supported by Catholics. These two teams are also the most supported teams in Northern Ireland. At Rangers and Celtic matches, fans of respective teams will fly Israeli and Palestinian flags.

Rangers and Celtic fans during an ‘old firm’ derby. Photograph: David Moir/Action Images / Reuters

My support for Rangers was unswerving until one evening in May 1967, when I decided to lend my support – for one night only – to another Scottish team who had reached the finals of the European Cup. The other Scottish team being Celtic. Celtic won. The next morning I went into school wearing a tartan scarf to acknowledge a Scottish team being the first team in the UK to ever win the European Cup. At breaktime I got the shit beaten out of me by “Big” Dougie King, a fellow Rangers supporter. My allegiances towards Rangers faded with each blow. The vacuum was filled with a growing fondness for the local-ish team of my boyhood, Queen of the South.

Strangely enough, Dougie King and I never fell out. We both shared a love of music that seemed to transcend our other growing differences. But perversely I still know all the words to all of the Rangers songs, when I don’t even know the words to the songs I have written myself.

Throughout the 70s and 80s, I supported all the cultural and sporting boycotts of South Africa, but at the same time always had a longing to return to the land where I first learned to walk and talk. And when Mandela was released I took pride in the fact that if we had ever met I could still remember how to greet him in his own language.

Being brought up in a religious household and having a fevered imagination, the stories of the Old Testament took on epic proportions. The trials and the tribulations of the Israelites and their prophets loomed large in my life.

In the late 50s and early 60s we had a number of family holidays in the north of Ireland. Belfast was the first city that I can remember visiting. Along with the stories of the Old Testament, the myths of Ulster loomed large in my imagination, be it the severed Red Hand thrown on to the beach or Finn MacCool at Giant’s Causeway. In the early 1980s, when I was managing Echo and the Bunnymen, I did everything I could to make sure they would play Belfast, whatever the security difficulties.

Over the decades, both Israel and Ulster grew in my mind as patches of land where the faultlines on the human soul were at their most strained. Both contain that heady concoction of conflicting relationship with the God above our heads, and with the land beneath our feet. And somewhere in between we fly our little flags. Then add to the brew William Blake’s Jerusalem and the many levels of meaning we can project on to those words.

But back to the reality of the here and now – this week Israel made another land appropriation in the West Bank, this time in retaliation for the three Israeli teenagers whose killing started the recent conflict. Will this be enough to collapse this latest shaky ceasefire? Will Hamas launch new missiles into a well-defended Israel? Will the Israeli army respond by sending even more missiles the other way into the densely populated Gaza Strip? Will hundreds more innocent children be killed? Will another generation be radicalised?

And here in the safety of London, certain quarters of the chattering classes have called for a cultural boycott of all things Israeli while pockets of antisemitism are flaring up across Europe.

For me, a cultural boycott of Israel solves nothing, just an idea for the online commentators to froth about. That said, I know parachuting a handful of artists from Jerusalem into a small republican town on the Antrim coast is not going to bring about peace in the Middle East. And I know the argument that any artist being sent by one country into another is just a form of cultural imperialism.

But as I am writing these words in my notebook, the flight I am on is lifting up into the sky to take me back to London. Out of the window I can see at least a thousand green fields getting smaller as the outline of the coast of the north of Ireland comes into view. I have left Mezamer behind to spend a week in the Curfew Tower to get to know the people of Cushendall, before she heads back to Israel and starts the selection process as to which Jerusalem-based artist will be spending a month or so in the tower next year.

But more importantly, since I introduced Mezamer to Raymond Watson, their dialogue has begun. Watson lives in Cushendall but he grew up in the very divided Belfast of the 60s and 70s. As a young man he was drawn into the IRA. For his endeavours he was sentenced to 12 years in the Maze. But it was during those years he began to realise the futility of the armed struggle and how backward-looking it all was. It was while he was in the Maze he started to develop as an artist, and his art was informed by what he had gone through. I first met Watson four or five years ago, and he recently published a book, The Cell Was My Canvas. It tells his story from a boyhood in Belfast to internationally exhibiting artist via his years in the Maze. If anyone is interested in making art that both confronts and explores conflict resolution they should read it.

I know none of what I’m attempting to engineer will bring one child who has been killed in the Gaza Strip back to life. And Churchill’s “to jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war” line will remain an easily quotable cliche, but that won’t stop me.

A few miles up the road from Cushendall is the village of Clough. Clough is predominantly loyalist. One of the most prominent buildings in this village is the Clough Rangers supporters’ club. Maybe in the next couple of years I can get some artists over from the Gaza Strip to do something with the members of this club. Maybe have the Rangers Supporters’ fife and drum marching band play a version of Fida’i, the old Palestinian national anthem. Or the Palestinians to chant “We are the people” but in Arabic, or maybe even Hebrew, or both.

A very British bubble of global tensions and local solutions

A rise in antisemitic and Islamophobic attacks has been reported in recent months. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

In 2010, the globetrotting I do on behalf of this column took me to Waltham Forest College in east London for an event comparing the student body with that before the second world war. In 1940 it was people with a common pigmentation and largely shared backgrounds. Seventy years later, I found speakers of 76 different languages.

I was struck by a conversation with two men studying English as a second language. One was a Bosnian Serb, the other Croatian. Carriers of emnities and hatreds. How does that play out in London, I asked them. We are just relieved that it isn't an issue here, they said. I spoke to one of the teachers about the potential for conflict. "Being away from that situation, their view is that 'we've all lost,'" she told me. "They just want to learn the language more than anything else."

The two men no doubt felt passionately about the rivalry they had left behind, but, for them, our island and specifically the college represented a virtuous bubble. As a strategy, that has much to commend it.

They came to mind last week as the leaders of the Board of Deputies of ^{British Jews and the Muslim Council of Britain unveiled an unprecedented joint declaration condemning Islamophobia and antisemitism. We know how dreadful are the events in Gaza and Israel at the moment. It's hard not to be moved and to construct a strong opinion. But how should that manifest itself here? We know what has been happening. Last week the Community Security Trust revealed 240 reports of antisemitic incidents in the UK in July, a 500% spike on the monthly average. We have seen the phenomenon before. Last year, it was said that almost half the mosques and Muslim centres in the country had suffered some kind of attack since 9/11. The world connects: when other continents sneeze, we inevitably catch the cold. That's truer than ever before in this age of social media and non-stop news.}

^{The UK has always been a place for activism. It has always looked outward and taken a view. And so the world's disputes will play out here. But at the same time, there is something peculiar about the way groups live here. The Bosnian and the Croat twigged it.}

^{We must always raise a voice; but we should also preserve the bubble. It isn't perfect, but it works.}

Israel estimates cost of Gaza conflict at £1.5bn

Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is looking to reduce government spending by 2% this year. Photograph: Jim Hollander/EPA

Israel has been presented with a hefty bill for 50 days of war in Gaza, as the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, moved to slash government spending by 2% this year to offset the $2.52 bn (£1.51bn) cost of the conflict.

With only the Israeli military and domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet exempt from the sharp spending reductions, the area to be hit hardest emerged as the Israeli education system, with critics – including members of Netanyahu's cabinet – predicting that the poorest Israelis will feel the brunt of the cuts.

Among those protesting was the welfare minister, Meir Cohen, who insisted there was no more fat in his budget to trim.

"From whom will we take? From those who have nothing to put in their children's sandwiches for school?" he complained on Israeli army radio.

Amid estimates by some economic observers that the war may have cost Israel a decline of 0.5% in its growth in GDP, Netanyahu defended the stringent across-the-board cuts before a cabinet meeting in the country's south on Sunday, insisting: "Security comes first."

The proposed emergency budget reductions, amounting to about $561m, will help fund a sharp hike in the budget of Israel's armed forces and Shin Bet amid estimates that the latest round of fighting in Gaza cost Israel $50m for each day of the war.

The Israeli budget for this year – even before the war and the latest proposed cuts – had already heralded a bout of belt-tightening that had seen a fierce fight over spending cuts, later reversed, to the Israeli defence forces.

On the Palestinian side experts have estimated that the bill for reconstruction after the conflict could be upwards of $6bn and take 20 years to accomplish under the current Israeli and Egyptian restrictions on imports of building materials into Gaza.

The Israeli budget cuts come amid evidence that Israel's economy – which had already been slowing to a sluggish 1.7% growth in the second quarter of this year, including the key hi-tech sector – had been hard hit by the weeks of conflict, not least tourism.

Netanyahu has also been facing demands to increase the scope of an already large compensation package for southern Israeli communities close to the Gaza Strip.

Speaking ahead of the cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu insisted: "We are starting to fill in what is lacking in the defence budget, As we saw recently, defence comes before all else.

"We will start to fill in what is missing in the defence establishment. This reflects our understanding of the priorities, with security coming before all else. We did great things, but this requires us to roll up our sleeves to enable the IDF, the Israel security agency [Shin Bet], and the security services to continue to defend Israel effectively."

The new austerity programme – which had been anticipated – emerged amid continuing criticism by Israelis of Netanyahu and his government, whose approval has plummeted since a long-term cease fire with Hamas was agreed last week.

The scale of the cuts have been dictated by the insistence of Netanyahu's finance minister, Yair Lapid, that he will not raise taxes to cover any shortfall.

The disclosure of the scope and potential impact of the proposed cuts came as Israel announced on Sunday a land appropriation in the occupied West Bank that an anti-settlement group termed the biggest in 30 years and a Palestinian official said would cause only more friction after the Gaza war.

Four hundred hectares (988 acres) in the Etzion settlement bloc near Bethlehem were declared "state land, on the instructions of the political echelon" by the military-run civil administration.

Israel Radio said the step was taken in response to the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teenagers by Hamas militants in the area in June. The notice published by the military gave no reason for the decision.

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Fatou Bensouda: the truth about the ICC and Gaza | Fatou Bensouda

Has the international criminal court avoided opening an investigation into alleged war crimes in Gaza due to political pressure, as suggested in an article published in the Guardian earlier this week? The answer is an unequivocal “no”. As prosecutor of the ICC, I reject any suggestion of this in the strongest terms.

When an objective observer navigates clear of the hype surrounding this issue, the simple truth is that my office has never been in a position to open such an investigation due to lack of jurisdiction. We have always, clearly and publicly, stated the reasons why this is so.

The Rome statute, the ICC’s founding treaty, is open to participation by states. The prosecutor can only investigate and prosecute crimes committed on the territory or by the nationals of states that have joined the ICC statute or which have otherwise accepted the jurisdiction of the ICC through an ad hoc declaration to that effect pursuant to article 12-3 of the statute.

This means that the alleged crimes committed in Palestine are beyond the legal reach of the ICC, despite the arguments of some legal scholars that fundamental jurisdictional rules can be made subject to a liberal and selective interpretation of the Rome statute. They appear to advocate that as the object and purpose of the ICC is to end impunity for mass crimes, the court ought to intervene, even where clear jurisdictional parameters have not been met. This is neither good law nor does it make for responsible judicial action.

The Palestinian Authority sought to accept the jurisdiction of the ICC in 2009. My office carefully considered all of the legal arguments put forth and concluded in April 2012, after three years of thorough analysis and public consultations, that Palestine’s status at the UN as “observer entity” was crucial – since entry into the Rome statute system is through the UN secretary general, who acts as treaty depositary. Palestine’s status at the UN at that time meant it could not sign up to the Rome statute. The former ICC prosecutor concluded that as Palestine could not join the statute, it could also not lodge an article 12-3 declaration bringing itself under the ambit of the treaty, as it had sought to do.

In November 2012, Palestine’s status was upgraded by the UN general assembly to “non-member observer state” through the adoption of resolution 67/19. My office examined the legal implications of this development and concluded that while this change did not retroactively validate the previously invalid 2009 declaration, Palestine could now join the Rome statute.

That Palestine has signed various other international treaties since obtaining this “observer state” status confirms the correctness of this position. Nonetheless, to date, the statute is not one of the treaties that Palestine has decided to accede to, nor has it lodged a new declaration following the November 2012 general assembly resolution. It is a matter of public record that Palestinian leaders are in the process of consulting internally on whether to do so; the decision is theirs alone and as ICC prosecutor, I cannot make it for them.

By virtue of the nature of the court’s mandate, every situation in which the ICC prosecutor acts will be politically fraught. My mandate as prosecutor is nonetheless clear: to investigate and prosecute crimes based on the facts and exact application of the law in full independence and impartiality.

Whether states or the UN security council choose to confer jurisdiction on the ICC is a decision that is wholly independent of the court. Once made, however, the legal rules that apply are clear and decidedly not political under any circumstances. In both practice and words, I have made it clear in no uncertain terms that the office of the prosecutor will execute its mandate, without fear or favour, where jurisdiction is established and will vigorously pursue those – irrespective of status or affiliation – who commit mass crimes that shock the conscience of humanity. My office’s approach to Palestine will be no different if the court’s jurisdiction is ever triggered over the situation.

It is my firm belief that recourse to justice should never be compromised by political expediency. The failure to uphold this sacrosanct requirement will not only pervert the cause of justice and weaken public confidence in it, but also exacerbate the immense suffering of the victims of mass atrocities. This, we will never allow.