resistance to Israel's occupation.

Netanyahu declared war on Hamas, and Western politicians, including Australian ones spoke of an Israeli "right of self-defence". It soon became clear that Netanyahu's words were more than rhetorical: bombs began falling on the inhabitants of Gaza. At first there were claims of precisely targeted missiles, and bullets, firing at known Hamas centres, with civilians "unfortunately" paying the price of allowing alien and wicked Hamas soldiers operating in their midst.

In time, as casualties began to mount, it has come to seem as if Palestinian civilians are living in a deliberately constructed free-fire zone.

What Israel is doing may have the support of a substantial number of Israelis who were shocked and horrified by the October 7 massacre.

So also, among the Jewish diasporas.

But soon there was substantial unease at the ruthlessness and disproportion of the retaliation, and at suggestions that the war had become a cover for ethnic cleansing.

Around the Western world as much as in areas traditionally much more friendly to Palestinian aspirations, protests and demonstrations began, sometimes, in the West, including in NSW, put down harshly by police and civil authorities.

What was surprising was the amount of open Jewish dissent, both in Israel itself and in Western countries.

Any former reflex of holding back because of a Jewish sense of siege, or fury at comparison of the scale of killing with the Holocaust, seems to have given way to a sense that Israel has abandoned civilised restraint, is committing war crimes, and exceeding any moral or legal rights that might have been there because of an unprovoked attack.

That sense has increased with Israeli restrictions on the supply of food and essential health items to Gaza and by sophistry blaming Hamas, the UN, or the victims themselves for the death toll.

That the Western media is not permitted inside Gaza aggravates the suspicion and sense that the truth is being hidden.
Israel has lost the support of many Jews, many old sympathisers

If Israel thought it could harness outrage to quietly push the inhabitants of Gaza, and perhaps later of the West Bank out of the country, it could hardly have created an environment more likely to make such a task impossible - even in the face of some of its more rabid and unapologetic ministers.

Israel has embarrassed its population, many Jewish people and their friends in the outside world and made the life of politicians who have usually been excessively effusive miserable.

Even Donald Trump, hitherto an uncritical friend of all of Israel's excesses has signalled his disgust with official denials of starvation and blaming of the victims.

Many of the ordinary public have become angry at the lack of progress, correctly discerning that the problem has been Israeli intransigence.

Responding to the public reaction, old allies have become more measured in any statements supporting Israel and much more inclined to acknowledge the roots of Palestinian grievance.

By now, Israel, which had friends and sympathisers aplenty 22 months ago, is significantly more unpopular around the world.

Westerners tend to estimate this by Western opinion polls. Most of the non-industrial world has long been hostile to Israel, if perhaps now even more unpopular.

Now it is manifesting itself in a renewed movement to recognise the right of Palestinians to become a nation within the bounds of the old Palestine - including in control of lands taken from them in war.

Some national leaders, including Anthony Albanese, have dragged their feet on this, while others such as France, Canada and now Britain have adopted the cause with less reservation.

Albanese insists that Australia will make its own sovereign decision on its own timetable, rather than falling into line with an artificial deadline caused by a UN meeting soon.

Although Albanese, like Penny Wong from Labor's notional left, has had a traditional lean towards Palestine, he has been playing the game very slowly and cautiously, anxious not to upset opinion among Australian Jews, the Murdoch press (which has become hysterically pro-Israel), and, probably, Donald Trump.

Yet the outcome seems inevitable. Israel will have to face a fresh challenge to its policies, in the face of determination by some former allies that it will not be able to delay, debate and dither yet again.

Palestinians will have direct agency in the outcome.

And Palestinian rights will not be brokered by Arab nations with their own agendas, but by people with direct and bloody experience of the forces with which they are reckoning. It won't be a gathering of friends.

• Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times

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