Israel-Hamas war offers no easy answers, only difficult questions

Normalisation is the term coined to describe growing political, diplomatic and economic relations between Israel and Arab or Muslim majority states. Binyamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden say it is one main reason for the Hamas attacks on Israel because its success would justify transactional links with the Jewish state and marginalise demands for Palestinian statehood. Any such intention is scuppered after the Hamas atrocities and Israel's retaliatory destruction of Gaza. Instead intense US, European, Middle East and world diplomacy aims to stop a regional war, create a pause or ceasefire in the fighting, insist on humanitarian relief and reopen Israeli-Palestinian…