IIsrael is preparing to celebrate a very somber seventy-sixth birthday on Tuesday May 14. More than seven months after the massacres of Israeli civilians by Hamas which triggered it, the war is still thundering in Gaza, fueling global disavowal. It continues to sow unprecedented desolation, while the objectives set by the Israeli authorities continue to elude them.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had promised the eradication of the Islamist militia and the release of the captured hostages on October 7, 2023. The fate of the latter, dependent on an endless negotiation that neither camp seems to want to see succeed, now inspires the greatest concerns. As for the Israeli troops, who threaten the last city of Gaza still standing, Rafah, which would inevitably add new carnage to the disaster, they are forced to strike again the north of the enclave where the armed wing of Hamas has reappeared , months after the strikes and ground incursions which had transformed it into a field of ruins, at the cost of the deaths of thousands of Palestinians.
This military failure is coupled with a political impasse for which Benyamin Netanyahu bears overwhelming responsibility. By maintaining the narrow strip of land without the slightest outline of civil organization, he in fact created the conditions for the return of the militia that he said he wanted to annihilate. By opposing any perspective that takes into account the legitimate rights of the Palestinians, he is also playing into the hands of Hamas’s extremism.
The latter would, however, have a lot to answer to those whose cause he claims to defend, whether it is the destruction of Gaza and the thousands of victims of Israeli bombs, or his bet on an “axis of resistance” which didn’t materialize as much as he hoped.
Guilty international passivity
Today’s military failure and its appalling human toll are the result of the Israeli strategy which has turned Gaza into a gigantic open-air prison, the scene of recurring wars that the current one has pushed to their climax. It was facilitated by a culpable international passivity, whether it be tolerance in the face of the blockade imposed on Gaza, weakness in relation to the errors of the official representatives of the Palestinians or pusillanimity in the face of leprosy in the colonization of the West Bank by Israel.
Israel’s most trusted ally, the President of the United States, belatedly ended up taking stock of this dead end. By deciding to deprive the Israeli army of certain offensive weapons until further notice if it persisted in its desire to attack Rafah and by making it known, Joe Biden noted that pressure could perhaps succeed where the words failed.
We must go further. The emergency requires a paradigm shift. To alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians and protect Israel from itself, both the story of the coverage of this conflict by The world since 1945 published Monday May 13 shows how the Palestinian question has continued to weigh on the image of the Jewish state. Alongside Israel, the recognition of a Palestinian state, which the United States refuses to do, but as Israeli figures are pleading and new European countries are preparing to do, could only contribute to this.