Under the headline: “Netanyahu flees forward in the war,” the French newspaper Le Monde said that the Israeli prime minister, obsessed with his political survival, rejects the idea of a Palestinian state and offers only hypothetical solutions for the future of the coastal strip.

According to the newspaper, “After about two months of war, the results were poor. Less than half of the hostages returned, and Hamas still controls Gaza so well that the truce lasted for seven days without any major violation, before the Palestinian movement decided, anticipating the failure of the negotiations.” Aiming to renew the “humanitarian truce,” on Friday morning, it launched its missiles at Israeli territory, thereby demonstrating that it maintains the initiative,” according to what the newspaper said. With 75 soldiers killed on the Israeli side and more than 15,000 on the Palestinian side, the vast majority of them civilians, this confrontation is already the longest and bloodiest in the series of wars between the two camps, which began in 2008. If Israel’s goals are to “destroy” the Islamic movement The road will still be difficult.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu is consolidating his record as the longest-serving prime minister in Israel's history. Despite his unpopularity, highlighted by the massive demonstrations against Supreme Court reform, and despite his responsibility for the security failure that occurred on October 7, the date of the Hamas surprise attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel, there is no guarantee that he will remain in power. He will eventually resign.

“Le Monde” quoted Ksenia Svetlova, a former member of the Knesset and member of the American Atlantic Council, as saying: “The prime minister is carving out a political space for himself while nibbling on both sides. He (Netanyahu) is fighting for his survival, and allows the extreme right to say that Gaza must be reoccupied and the settlements must be rebuilt. He says that he is the only one who can prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. On the other hand, he is marketing himself as a man of peace, in the context of his competition with former Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, who is a priestly figure, and Benjamin Netanyahu coexists with him within the framework of a national unity government responsible for managing the ongoing war.”

Le Monde continued to say that Benjamin Netanyahu, since entering the world of politics in the early 1990s, has always opposed the establishment of a Palestinian state. But under pressure from US President Barack Obama, in 2009, Netanyahu became the first leader of the Israeli right to publicly accept the idea of a two-state solution - but under conditions so extravagant that this commitment lost all meaning. In 2017, following Donald Trump’s rise to power in the United States, where he was then promising the “deal of the century,” he promised Likud executives that he only wanted to offer the Palestinians “a small state.”

Therefore, the Americans, through the voice of White House Press Secretary John Kirby, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and President Joe Biden himself, are asking their Israeli ally to carry out more cautious military operations in Gaza. However, the chances that Israelis, starting with Benjamin Netanyahu, will comply with the two-state solution are slim […] Benjamin Netanyahu merely repeats his message: “As long as I sit in this chair, the Palestinian Authority, which supports and finances terrorism, will not rule Gaza in the wake of Hamas’ departure.” He said this during a war cabinet meeting during Anthony Blinken's visit to Israel, according to Israeli media, in response to the American plan to return the Palestinian Authority to Gaza after the end of the war.

Le Monde went on to say that Benjamin Netanyahu only has to present a hypothetical strategy and maintain his approach, which nevertheless led to the disaster of October 7. Hamas, which is described as a “hostile entity,” has long served the Prime Minister to divide and discredit the Palestinian national movement. This model of conflict management, designed and maintained by Netanyahu, collapsed on the day of the Hamas attack, as the hostile entity is now considered an existential enemy that must be expelled from Gaza, whatever the cost to the population. Even if it means considering the most radical solutions. According to the Israel Hayom newspaper, Benjamin Netanyahu asked his advisor Ron Dermer for a plan “to reduce the population of Gaza to the lowest possible level,” and to consider opening the Strip’s maritime borders, to allow “large-scale air travel toward European and African countries.”

Meanwhile - “Le Monde” continues - the Israeli army is organizing a new forced displacement operation. After the northern Gaza Strip was emptied of a large portion of its population, Gazans in Khan Yunis, southeast of the Strip, including hundreds of thousands of displaced people, were asked to evacuate this area, in light of the risk of cramming two million people into Rafah, the southernmost part of the Strip. At the same time, Israel informed several Arab countries that it intends to establish a buffer zone on Gaza territory, according to Reuters. What was already one of the most densely populated regions in the world is at risk of shrinking. After dividing the West Bank, the Prime Minister is dividing Gaza.

This government will prefer to remain in the northern Gaza Strip, to control it as much as possible, so as not to give way to the Palestinian Authority and continue to put pressure on Hamas. The solution is to deport the Hamas leadership with the help of Qatar, the Egyptians and the Americans, according to the newspaper. This would bring success to Israel. “In the future, with another government, we can accept the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, the establishment of an international force, and a return to the strategic goal of a two-state solution,” said Michael Harari, a former Israeli diplomat. To do this, it will be necessary to provoke the departure of the irremovable Benjamin Netanyahu, who repeats again and again: “We will continue until the end, until victory. “Nothing will stop us,” without knowing whether he was talking about Israel or himself, as the man had linked his fate to the fate of his country for a long time.

Source: Sama News