For Starmer or any other leader to back a ceasefire, I basically think the US president has to come out as that is the US position. That puts weight behind the idea and the US is a (the) major backer of Israel so if our president is not going there it gives others the opening to just say "Israel must defend herself." and wash their hands of the whole thing.
If you look at this closely, Israel is not so much defending itself as waging a war to exterminate Hamas which is difficult to do because as you kill civilians in the thousands, we know that creates more terrorists.
What is the current capacity of Hamas to launch an assault on Israel? It looks nearly nonexistent at the moment. The attack they launched was a surprise attack (sort of Netanyahu and his crew knew it was coming) and based on all the evidence was about the most major attack they could muster. They don't have an air force, or tanks, or an army. They are a terrorist group that can kidnap and randomly slaughter civilians. Israel could, as Sam Harris recently said, wipe out all of the Gaza strip any time they wanted to. It's basically Mike Tyson fighting a little old lady. They shoot some missiles at Israel which mostly, can't get through the Israeli defenses.
So, like the US attacking Iraq, this is a one-sided affair where we know who will win. The argument here is, how should Israel go about wiping out Hamas? By bombing the living hell out of the civilian population? Certainly not, that will, as you pointed out, create more rage and hatred toward the Israelis and create more terrorists. Early on I listened to an Israeli official state that bombing Gaza basically just results in a lot of civilian deaths and does little against Hamas except win them new converts. Generally, the way terrorists are created is to take all hope from a people and so their only response is terrorism.
Israel controls every service in Gaza. Water, electricity, cell phone towers, fuel, and food. They shut it all off immediately. Then they began bombing the hell out of the place. People like Sam Harris back this and call the civilian casualties, "just part of war."
In a war between countries, the combatants are clear. In a war against a group like Hamas, well, that's not the same thing. It's a group of radicals that have essentially decided to sacrifice themselves for a cause against a country with an army and air force and overwhelming capacity to destroy everything in their path.
Harris basically says that you have to count all civilian deaths as attributable to Hamas. Israel is not killing civilians, Hamas is, because if the Israelis kill civilians on the way to wiping out Hamas, well, Hamas caused that and killed those civilians. Problem with that is, it makes no logical sense, and when you are the one dropping the bombs, the people whose family members you kill are going to blame you, the bomb droppers, not Hamas.
It absolutely makes sense to have a pause in the bomb dropping to allow for humanitarian aid to be provided for the innocent Palestinians and to try to get them out of the way. Israel has massed their forces on the border, there is likely no chance of another Hamas incursion into Israel. So, yeah, I am with you, ceasefire and save the children that can be saved. Seems like a simple and logical choice.
