The humanitarian situation is on the verge of collapse in the Gaza Strip. More than 30,410 Palestinians have died since Israel’s response against Hamas following the October 7 terrorist attack. On Thursday, a distribution of humanitarian aid turned into a tragedy after Israeli soldiers, feeling “threatened”, according to the IDF, opened fire. A stampede ensued. In all, 118 people died and 760 injured, according to Hamas. As famine threatens Gaza, the United States has begun participating in airdrops of humanitarian aid. Also, negotiations resumed this Sunday to try to obtain a truce between Israel and Hamas during the Ramadan period, which begins on March 10. But is there a long-term solution?
Guest of the Grand Rendez-vous d’Europe 1/ CNews/ Les Echos, Hubert Védrine, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, author of Great diplomats. The masters of international relations from Mazarin to the present day (ed. Perrin) provided his analysis of this war between Israel and Hamas. According to him, “the urgency is to find a path towards a Palestinian state”.
For Hubert Védrine, “there is no power in Israel or outside that can stop the action of the Israeli army” and “the day it stops, you will see that a large part of Israeli opinion will say ‘we have not gone far enough, we have not destroyed all of Hamas, there are still dangerous guys, etc.'”, particularly because Hamas “can never be completely eradicated because it is a political as well as a military system.
According to the diplomat, we must “return to this question” of a two-state solution. “In my life in power, I participated in almost all the peace processes. I knew the small, very courageous minorities who, within Israel, had resigned themselves to the fact that there would be a Palestinian state , and within the Palestinian world had resigned themselves to recognizing Israel. These were minorities often fought in their camp”, he explains, taking up the examples of Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat assassinated by an Egyptian Islamist, and of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin assassinated by a Jewish extremist.
“The peace camp is reborn”
Currently, US President Joe Biden is one of the only ones to have put this possibility of a two-state solution back on the table, without being heard “for the moment, because he is waiting for somewhere in Israel, people to push Netanyahu aside to put General Gantz in place”, analyzes Hubert Védrine. But for the former minister, even if all the conditions are met to begin negotiations for a Palestinian state, “the lunatics on both sides will try to eliminate them. As soon as it starts again, the same fanatical extremists who accept no Palestinian state or not Israel at all will start again,” he says.
But before that, for Hubert Védrine, “the United States would have to get the operations to stop, [puis] bringing back into the game Arab leaders who had been reckless in going too far in the Abraham Accords, without achieving anything for the Palestinians. We were all collectively victims of Netanyahu’s policy which said ‘there is no Palestinian problem, and in any case I have no interlocutor’. He did everything so that there was only one monster in front of him.”
According to the diplomat, “the peace camp is reborn” and “there is a slight chance, a sort of virtuous circle which restarts the process. But this may seem purely utopian, and in this case, we go from drama to drama” , he worries. “But paradoxically, this idea [d’une solution à deux États] which seemed unrealistic is being re-studied”, underlines Hubert Védrine, who hopes for the involvement of France in the event of a negotiation process.