Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 22 September 2025. © Richard Kemp

The Israeli offensive engulfing Gaza City has hurled Hamas into panic mode. The IDF is conducting the most intensive operations of this two-year campaign, building intensity by the day, with another combat division just committed to the fight. In the past couple of days they have killed dozens of Hamas terrorists, seized and destroyed munitions dumps and located and attacked numerous tunnel shafts. From ground and air, military facilities including fighting positions, command centres and observation posts located in civilian buildings, including tower blocks, have been struck and destroyed.

In line with their obligations under the laws of war, the IDF have repeatedly dropped leaflets warning Gazan civilians to leave the city and opened up corridors to allow them to move safely to the south. Current estimates suggest around 550,000 have departed so far and more are on the way out. Fearful of losing their human shields, Hamas have continued to threaten civilians against leaving and tried to block exit routes for vehicles. Meanwhile terrorist leaders have been trying to save their own skins, some by attempting not just to escape from Gaza City but right out of the Strip. Doing everything they can to halt the IDF onslaught, Hamas released photo-montages of Israeli hostages on Telegram, threatening to kill them all and to force them into the front lines directly under the guns of the advancing troops.

In an attempt to show strength but in fact demonstrating only weakness, terrorists fired two rockets from northern Gaza towards the city of Ashdod, neither of which got near its target. Another measure of Hamas’s desperation came to light at the weekend when they attacked UN teams working to establish a new aid corridor in the south to allow supplies to reach an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone where those getting out of Gaza City could take refuge. The attackers seized UN vehicles to try to create a barrier preventing the movement of aid trucks.

All of this shows just how unnerved Hamas has become as Israel’s advance on Gaza City unfolds. Already reeling from the assault on their sponsors in Iran, they had been hoping for at least a pause in hostilities with the latest stalling tactics from their negotiating team in Qatar. But that evaporated with the IDF strike on Doha which demonstrated that from now on the Hamas leadership were safe nowhere. This does not necessarily mean that Hamas’s collapse in Gaza is imminent, but even the most hardened jihadists are susceptible to the psychological as well as the physical effects of battle. As Napoleon himself said, in war ‘the moral is to the physical as three is to one’.

So, at Hamas’s moment of maximum stress, Starmer rides to their rescue with his formal recognition of a non-existent Palestinian state, a move that their leaders characterise as “victory”. Hamas are obviously not interested in Starmer’s two-state solution, any more than their fellow jihadists in the PLO and Palestinian Authority are: they want only the annihilation of the Jewish State. But Starmer’s recognition is nevertheless important for them, an indication that even at this stage there is still hope for international pressure to stop the Israeli offensive. According to senior Hamas terrorist Ghazi Hamad, recognition of a Palestinian state ‘is one of the fruits of October 7. We have proven that victory over Israel is not impossible, and our weapons are a symbol of Palestinian honour”. Hamas have not celebrated any event more since 7 October, and they have been joined in their revelry by jihadist networks globally.

Hamas needn’t count their chickens though. Starmer and his posse of ‘recognisers’ are not the cavalry and they won’t be saving them in the nick of time. But their support will at least help stiffen the terrorists’ resolve at a critical moment and may well cost Gazan civilians, IDF soldiers and hostages their lives in the process. On the other side of the ledger, however, Israel’s erstwhile allies have now shot their bolt. Recognition was their doomsday weapon. By publicly rewarding the butchers of 7 October, they have denied themselves even the small amount of influence they might have had over the progress of this war or the future of the Middle East. The leaders of Britain, France, Canada, Australia and the rest have nothing more to offer except words that will no longer be listened to, either in Jerusalem or Washington.

Hamas themselves ignored Starmer’s imperious edict that his future Palestinian state would not include a role for them. They know very well that he wouldn’t have any say in that. They would also have noted the inherent contradiction in his previous condition on Israel that it must stop attacking them if recognition were to be avoided. Nor is Hamas the only roadblock in the path of a two-state solution. Only this weekend, Israel uncovered and dismantled the first rocket production facility in the West Bank, at Ramallah, the presidential seat of PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas, a recent honoured guest in Downing Street. Even if Starmer doesn’t understand the PLO’s threat to peace and security Trump certainly does, which is why he banned them from coming to the UN this week to celebrate their much-feted recognition.

Paradoxically, Starmer’s appeasement of global jihadists by opposing Jerusalem’s defensive war in Gaza will make Britain even more dependent on Israel. Weakness of this type only ever provokes further violence and the threat to the UK will consequently increase. I know from my own experience how much Israel has assisted Britain and many other countries in combating terrorism and the need for that will now be even greater. While Britain may have failed Israel in this fight, I also know that Israel will not fail Britain, however great our betrayal.