2023-10-20 19:01:50
With military intervention by the Israeli army seemingly imminent, why is the prospect of political negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians currently out of reach?
This period is marked by clashes. Notably, the Hamas terrorist attack in Israeli territory on October 7, followed by the muscular reaction from Tel Aviv, with undoubtedly a ground operation to come in the Strip. Gaza. But if we want to hope one day to emerge from these tragic impasses, for which civilians on both sides are paying the heavy price, we will have to go back to basics.
The initial problem is that the two parties cannot agree on the terms of a peace that would lead to the peaceful coexistence of two states, as planned by the UN since 1948. The Palestinians believe that Israel does everything to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. They claim that the Jewish state, apart from some security cooperation in the West Bank, has never respected the Oslo Accords. They also believe that the Israelis, by pursuing in a determined manner – regardless of the governments for 20 years – an active policy of colonization in the West Bank, are making it more and more impossible, in concrete terms, for a real state to function, notably with an essential territorial continuity.
Some even go so far as to say that the real objective ofIsraelin violation of international law and UN resolutions, is in fact to seize the West Bank to create “Greater Israel” – as is also being demanded in Tel Aviv by the most extremist members of the current government.
An impossible dialogue
It is this distrust which transforms into hostility and then, particularly for the youngest, into despair. “No future”, no future, and therefore very often a process of radicalization.
The situation is both different and similar in the Gaza Strip. Different, because since the withdrawal in 2005, there are no longer any Israeli settlements in this territory. Similar, because the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt makes daily life very difficult for the 2.3 million people who crowd into this 400 km² confines. Not to mention the interventions of the Israeli army which reacts to the attacks launched by Hamas from this territory.
On the Israeli side, it is believed that the collapse of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the total hostility of Hamas, which in its charter advocates the destruction of the Jewish state, make sincere and responsible dialogue for a political option impossible.
What has been happening over the past two weeks only reinforces the impossibility of a dialogue in the short and probably medium term. This is the drama of the region: in each camp, it is the gravediggers of the Oslo process who are currently in a position of strength, and who are leading Israeli and Palestinian civilians into an overflow of fury, passion and hatred.
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