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The leader of Israel’s leftwing opposition party has warned that the country’s renewed offensive in Gaza risks turning it into a “pariah state” as international condemnation of its campaign in the enclave grows.
The UK, France and Canada said on Monday that they would take “concrete actions” against Israel if it did not stop the offensive and lift restrictions on aid that a UN panel last week said had left nearly half a million Palestinians facing starvation.
French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on Tuesday that France would support a review of the EU’s association agreement with Israel in response to its renewed offensive.
Yair Golan, leader of Israel’s The Democrats party, told Israeli public radio on Tuesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government was “endangering” the country’s existence with its conduct of the war against Hamas, which has provoked concerns even among US President Donald Trump’s administration.
“Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don’t return to acting like a sane country,” Golan said.
“A sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations.”
Golan’s remarks drew a furious response from Netanyahu, who accused the former general of “wild incitement”.
“While we are waging a multifront war and leading complex diplomatic efforts to free our hostages and defeat Hamas, Golan and his friends on the radical left are echoing the most despicable antisemitic blood libels against IDF soldiers and the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said.
Israel has massively ratcheted up its offensive in Gaza in recent days, expanding its ground operations in the enclave and carrying out air strikes across the territory that have killed hundreds of Palestinians.
Until Monday, it had also not allowed any food, aid, medicines or fuel to enter Gaza for more than two months, exacerbating a humanitarian catastrophe for the enclave’s 2.2mn people, and prompting a senior UN official to warn of a looming “genocide” in Gaza.
Israel rejected the accusation, and has insisted that its restrictions on aid entering Gaza were designed to prevent it being diverted to Hamas.
But its approach — including a new plan to allow a little-known foundation to deliver aid to Palestinians at a handful of distribution points expected to be concentrated in southern Gaza — has drawn increasing international criticism, including from some of its staunchest allies.
Netanyahu said on Monday that the decision to allow minimal amounts of aid into Gaza was a response to pressure from Israel’s “friends” across the world and in the US Congress, who had warned the Israeli prime minister that “‘we will not accept pictures of mass starvation . . . We won’t be able to support you’” in the war effort.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said on Tuesday that recent rounds of negotiation in Doha had been unable to bridge “a fundamental gap between the two parties”.
He criticised Israel’s blockade on Gaza, saying “it shouldn’t be acceptable to the international community. Yet we are seeing, unfortunately, that the Israeli government is carrying it out with impunity.”
Barrot said on Tuesday that France was “determined” to recognise a Palestinian state, without setting a concrete timeframe for such a step.
The UK’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, said earlier this month that the UK was also in talks with France and Saudi Arabia about whether to recognise a Palestinian state at a UN conference due to be held in New York in June.
However, he stressed that the UK wanted recognition to be part of moves towards a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, rather than a symbolic act.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 53,000 people, according to Palestinian officials. During Hamas’s October 7 attack, militants killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and took 250 hostage.
Additional reporting by Chloe Cornish
