Pno one any longer discusses the scale of the human toll from the ongoing carnage in Gaza. But no one, among the international leaders who claim to want to provide answers to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is moved by this. The silence which followed the particularly deadly strike against a refugee camp on December 24 attests to this.
This guilty apathy, when it is not a question of blind support for the destruction in progress, is the business of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who announced on December 25 an intensification of the fighting waged by the Israeli army in the narrow strip of land. “It will be a long war that is not about to end”he promised.
It can continue, in fact, as long as the United States is satisfied with the fact that a little aid reaches the Palestinians of Gaza, plunged into extreme deprivation, liable at any moment to be mowed down by the bombs supplied to the Hebrew State. This is the message sent by the latest United Nations resolution, watered down by American diplomacy.
The Israeli Prime Minister had set two objectives for his troops after the massacres perpetrated on October 7 by Hamas militiamen against Israeli civilians: the eradication of the Islamist movement and the release of people captured during this terrorist operation. After two months of unprecedented bombings, the Israeli military is careful not to declare Hamas destroyed. As for the fate of the hostages, trapped by their captors and the strikes of their own army, it fuels concern more than ever.
On the evening of October 7, the political fate of Benjamin Netanyahu seemed sealed. He was in fact responsible for the fiasco of the Israeli security system as well as the strategy aimed at sparing Hamas in order to better weaken the Palestinian Authority and thus bury the prospect of the creation of a Palestinian state. The boss of the Israeli nationalist right has continued to fight it over the past three decades.
Salvation board
The Israeli Prime Minister today seems to consider that the permanent state of war, which he is trying to establish by playing on the thirst for revenge of his public opinion, could offer him a lifeline. The continuation of operations postpones until later the time of reckoning and the work of a possible commission of inquiry aimed at establishing responsibilities in the Israeli chain of command.
The prolongation of the fighting also makes it possible to remain silent on the fate that will be reserved for Gaza once the Israeli bombardments have ended. Benjamin Netanyahu is only capable of saying what he does not want, starting with the return of Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority.
However, this is a crucial question. Recovering a poor and overpopulated territory, where living conditions were already critical before the massive destruction recorded for nearly three months, will in fact be a prerequisite for a possible relaunch of a diplomatic process.
The massacres of Israelis on October 7 and the indiscriminate bombings killing Palestinians by the thousands have tragically underlined its urgent need. We cannot plead in Washington and Paris for the two-state solution by accepting the endless war that Benjamin Netanyahu sets for his country as the one and only horizon. It is time to put an end to this dissonance accepted out of pusillanimity.