The war in Gaza involves us all. As a world, as a country, as a community, as individuals. In the same way that 9/11 touched the “geopolitical unconscious of every living being”, as French philosopher Jacques Derrida noted, the massacre of October 7th 2023, carried out in cold blood by Hamas, has warped the space-time continuum in which we live, prompting a monstrous cycle of Israeli reprisals. The risk of genocide, expressed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), makes it clear that the terror caused by this war is on the highest scale of our inhumanity.
In six months more than 33,000 Palestinian men, women and children have perished in Gaza. The Israeli bombardments and sniper rounds claim lives indiscriminately. Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of families have taken refuge, lives under the threat of attack, famine is spreading and so, too, is chaos. The enclave has been transformed into a pile of ruins. A history, a culture, a memory are in the process of disappearing before our eyes. What was announced as a war against Hamas is becoming a war against a people.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Children, refugees, humanitarian workers, the sick: in the absence of a realistic war aim, there are no longer any limits holding Israel back from its downwards spiral. “In the dark times, Will there still be singing? Yes, there will still be singing. About the dark times,” wrote Bertolt Brecht in his 'Svendborg Poems' in 1939.
The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish echoed this sentiment in the 1970s, when he was already predicting a sombre future in Gaza while still insisting on its fighting spirit: “Gaza is devoted to rejection…Hunger and rejection, thirst and rejection, displacement and rejection, torture and rejection, siege and rejection, death and rejection…” he wrote in 'Silence for Gaza'.
Six months after the start of the conflict, it is time to ask ourselves hard questions: what are we doing to put an end to the catastrophe? When, one day, this war ends, will we be able to live with our consciences?
Facts and meaning
To these deep questions Mediapart, as a newspaper, replies with the only weapons at our disposal: words, facts and meaning. Since October 7th we have worked collectively to sift the truths from the falsehoods, to go beyond the military propaganda. With our reports, our investigations and our analysis, we have told the story of the trauma of Israeli men and women and the deadly downwards drift of their leaders: of the murderous hypocrisy of Hamas, of the war crimes committed by the Israeli Defence Force and the gradual destruction of the Palestinians; of the complicity of Western powers, the hypocrisy of Arab countries and the impotence of international law.
We have documented the historical context of colonial oppression and the geopolitical repercussions of a divide which is redrawing global fault lines. We have highlighted the views of inhabitants on the front line and of those who, staring into the precipice, continue to come up with potential paths to a political solution.
As journalists we have denounced the blackout imposed by Israel which forbids foreign reporters from entering Gaza, undermining freedom of information. We have lent our support to our Palestinian journalistic colleagues, refusing to accept the idea that they might die with a camera on their shoulder.
From the first hours of the conflict our subscribers have spoken in the columns of Mediapart Club of their astonishment, their distress, their anger, their rage. They have sought to see things clearly and to cling onto reason. A unique place for exchange and dialogue, our participative space has transformed itself into a soundbox for conversations from around the world. To highlight its vitality we have assembled an ebook that is being published today, and which contains the most powerful and most sensitive contributions (see here and in pdf format here).
Like the journalists in our editorial team, our bloggers have done their utmost to avoid falling into the trap laid by the armed forces involved, by keeping a critical distance from their narratives. For that was the first pitfall. How can one not hear the terror of a people (Israeli) who are scarred by the loss of civilians and who are convinced they face an existential risk? How can one not understand a people (Palestinian) in the process of being wiped off the map, outraged at decades of subjugation and confinement? How can one not see that the responsibilities are shared, including by the international community, but that the resignation of Benjamin Netanyahu is an essential condition to prevent something irreparable from happening?
While we have sought to embrace the complexity of the stakes involved, public debate in France immediately lost its way amid toxic alternatives: on one side, any refusal to describe the massacres by Hamas as “terrorist” and to point out the colonial context in which they were carried out identified you as a worshipper of evil; on the other, any refusal to salute the Palestinian “resistance” and “heroism” of Hamas made you an “objective ally” of the occupier.
Between pitched battles and paralysis, positions became entrenched and magnified. The ensuing polarisation ended up abolishing thought to the point that the “learned” world of researchers and academics found itself restrained in its expression, or even reduced to silence.
Emmanuel Macron has contributed to the creation of this artificial and dangerous division. Rather than bringing people together and seeking to calm things, the French president sowed the seeds of division by supporting Israel for far too long, on the basis that the West was backing a war against terrorism. The old French wounds that had never really healed were immediately re-opened, giving free rein to anti-Semitic and Islamophobic words and deeds.
In the height of grim irony, the far-right Rassemblement National – a party co-founded by a former member of the Waffen SS – took advantage of this unhealthy situation by setting itself up as a bulwark against the hatred of Jews.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Five months after the start of hostilities – which in reality have been going on for decades – France's minister for foreign affairs Stéphane Séjourné continued to sully our country's image by appearing, all smiles and without shame, next to the Israeli prime minister, even though by that time the ICJ had already ordered Tel Aviv to “take all measures within its power” to prevent genocide. And while certain countries, such as Canada, have decided to place an embargo on arms sales to Israel, France continues to equivocate.
The compass of international law
Yet politics urgently needs to emerge through the cracks of this wretched public debate to stop the downward spiral of vengeance, to counter the logic of terror and to build the relationships needed to produce strategies, alternatives and solutions.
This entails agreeing in advance on several principles: despite the structural asymmetry between an occupier and the dominated, the end does not justify the means and a cause cannot be considered a liberation cause when it supports an organisation that resorts to crime, especially when this is mass crime. At the same time, nothing can prevail over the right of peoples to exercise self-determination in borders recognised by international law.
And this law is unambiguously on the side of Palestine, and systematically flouted by Israel. Since 1967 numerous United Nations resolutions have strongly condemned the settlement of the occupied territories. Nearly sixty years later, one can only deplore the fact that these resolutions have never stopped the bellicose ambitions of a state that is today led by fanatics from the far right and, in particular, that they have never found the slightest echo of support in terms of sanctions on the part of the international community. Yet, as the actions carried out against Russia have shown, restrictive measures to delegitimise a state's actions were possible.
In this respect huge responsibility lies with the Western powers, and the United States in particular, but also Arab allies. The “demand”- as late as it was weak – for a ceasefire, which was made on March 25th by the UN Security Council after a major struggle, will not change anything. The resolution by the most important institution in world governance will stay unheeded while Washington continues to support Israel militarily. Yet the Biden administration is not ready to carry out a U-turn on this, as shown by the approval, on the very day of the UN vote in New York, of the delivery of bombs and fighter jets worth billions of dollars to Israel.
It is true that the American president has just banged his fist on the table and obtained the opening of humanitarian aid routes, but to see this as a turning point seems more than a little premature. As for the diplomatic negotiations in Doha and Cairo, they have become bogged down and seem, unless they can show otherwise, incapable of silencing the guns, and instead exude a feeling of unutterable passivity.
So what is to be done? We must count on civil societies to bring all their weight to bear in favour of an immediate ceasefire and the freeing of the hostages. Following on from Spain's lead, recognition of the state of Palestine by Western countries would constitute a major advance, as underlined by the Palestinian writer Elias Sanbar in his book 'La Dernière Guerre?' ('The Last War?') to be published by Gallimard as part of their 'Tracts' collection.
Powerful demonstrations around the world are more necessary than ever to elicit action from leaders who, while they might have lost their compass when it comes to international law, still remain sensitive to political realignments that result from their stances. By not opposing the unfolding disaster, we become unwilling accomplices to it.
Destinies entwined
However, chaos cannot be avoided without the involvement of those most concerned: the political destiny of these two peoples rests, first and foremost, with them. Despite the intensity of the shock of October 7th 2023 and of the hostage taking, it is essential that the Israelis grasp the suicidal nature of the policies being carried out in their name by Benjamin Netanyahu, who is pursuing the war just to save himself.
The current government in Israel is endangering their lives in the short, medium and long term by fuelling rather than destroying the capacity of Hamas, who can only prosper under the bombs. By understanding that this concerns their security and their humanity, they alone are in a position to put enough pressure on their leaders to compel them to respect international law and to reject the illegal policies of settlements and blockades. The demonstrations in Israel in recent days calling for the freeing of the hostages and the resignation of the prime minister, as well as a demand for early elections, are a sign, albeit a fragile one, that an awakening is possible.
An Israeli awakening is necessary so that one day the Palestinians, once they no longer have to worry about their survival, can in their turn admit that Hamas is taking them in the worst of all directions. Some critical voices, including in the enclave, are already making themselves heard. Equality cannot be decreed from on high, even more so in a land where the mechanics of apartheid are so deeply anchored, but the example of South Africa reminds us that, through political desire, what appears insoluble can be resolved. Putting an end to the cycle of violence means going down the route of mutual recognition of each other's legitimate existence, an essential prelude to the construction of architecture that will bring about peace, whether it takes the form of a binational state, two states or a federal state.
It is down to us, as European citizens, to stay on the side of the Palestinians and Israelis who, fighting against the extremism of their leaders, are seeking to escape this “nuit venue” - the words from the title of a film ('The Night Has Come' in English) by French playwright Jean Genet which will never see the light of day – an expression evoked in a recent exhibition at the Arab World Institute in Paris called 'What Palestine brings to the world'. We will continue tirelessly, on Mediapart's editorial pages as in the Club, to make heard those voices who invent possible solutions to build their future, a future that will inevitably be woven with stories, past and present, from each side.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- The original French version of this op-ed article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter