“No one likes us, we don’t care.” It may be rousing on the stadium terraces of south London, as the signature chant for Millwall football club, but as a national strategy it’s a disaster. Even so, Israel has become a Millwall among the nations, apparently unbothered by and impervious to the condemnation of a watching world – condemnation which this week gained serious momentum.

As one country after another pointed an accusing finger towards Israel, repelled by the starvation, devastation and bloodshed it has brought down on Gaza, Israeli officials offered the now-familiar middle finger in return. When Keir Starmer announced Britain’s intention to recognise a state of Palestine, it was swiftly brushed aside by the deputy mayor of Jerusalem as “much ado about nothing”.

There was a similarly dismissive reaction to both France’s earlier pledge to make the same diplomatic move and Canada’s announcement on Wednesday that it would follow suit. Sometimes, the register is studied insouciance, a shrug of the shoulders; sometimes it’s anger. But the message is consistent: we won’t budge. As the Israeli ambassador to Canada put it: “Israel will not bow to the distorted campaign of international pressure against it.”

Yet for all the Shakespearean references, the “diplomatic tsunami” which Benjamin Netanyahu’s critics warned of for many years, and which now seems to have arrived, is not nothing. What’s more, and underneath the Millwall bluster, there are signs that Netanyahu knows it.

More than 140 of the 193 member states of the UN had already recognised Palestine, but that club will soon include major western powers: the shift by France, the UK and Canada means no fewer than three members of the G7 are now on board. This same week saw a special conference convened at the UN in New York, where 125 countries urged Netanyahu to commit to the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, as they sought to........

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