“Le Figaro”: Israel must choose... a state for the Palestinians or permanent war

Renaud Girard, a French geopolitician and writer for Le Figaro newspaper, said that if the Jewish state continues to respond militarily without considering the creation of a Palestinian state, this leaves the specter of endless war.

Chaos and misery continue to grow in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli shooting on February 29, 2024, led to the killing of more than 100 Palestinians during the distribution of humanitarian aid, as two million Palestinians gathered without being able to escape. More than two-thirds of the homes and infrastructure were destroyed due to the Israeli bombing, according to Girard, adding that with the dismantling of the administration of the region due to the war, gangs are multiplying, and today the matter has become untenable.

The writer considered it certain that Hamas bears a heavy responsibility for the current disaster. Starting with the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords in 1993, the movement could play the game of peace and gradually build a Palestinian state, living side by side with Israel in a spirit of mutual respect. But it did not do that, nor did it attempt to turn Gaza into a small Arab Singapore. It stubbornly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist, which is what the Palestine Liberation Organization, led by Yasser Arafat, did in 1988. Then it adopted an armed confrontation line against the Hebrew state, a strategy doomed to failure. Always according to Renaud Girard.

The writer continued to say that since its establishment, the State of Israel has never allowed itself to be intimidated by violence. If Palestinian youth in Gaza and the occupied West Bank had resorted to passive resistance like Gandhi, instead of resorting to bombs and Kalashnikov rifles, the impact would have been much stronger on Israeli society, whose majority spirit is fundamentally democratic, Girard said.

Moreover, during its attack on October 7, 2023, Hamas demonstrated that it was unable to discipline its fighters. Instead of limiting their destruction to military targets or the separation wall surrounding the Gaza Strip, these fighters allegedly committed violations against Israeli civilians, which led to an Israeli response against the entire Palestinian territories. Girard says that collective punishment is not only immoral, but also counterproductive. According to Hamas figures, 30,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the beginning of this new Israeli-Palestinian war.

But the writer considered that there will come a time when Israel must stop, as it is not in its interest to prepare a new generation of Palestinian orphans who dream of avenging their parents, nor to alienate the Arab-Islamic world that has been approaching it again, especially since the Abraham Accords. Westerners have a moral and political duty to stop the massacres in Palestine, Renaud Girard stresses.

The writer went on to say that since 1967 and the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the Middle East has suffered from a vicious implicit division of labor: it is up to Israel to take care of its security; It is up to the West to take charge of humanitarian aid. Today in Gaza, the United States has reached a rare stage of schizophrenia, as it delivers bombs that destroy Gaza's homes, and at the same time drops aid on its displaced residents. With such a division of labor, the conflict can continue for a long time; because no one in the Western world is making a real effort to impose a political solution.

Girard considered that with unparalleled political, financial and military influence over Israel, the Americans could impose a partition on Tel Aviv, where the Hebrew state would agree to give up its control over 22% of Mandatory Palestine in order to create a viable Palestinian state. But for reasons of domestic politics and the near-constant election campaign, they don't. Today, the United States is the only country in the UN Security Council to vote to reject all ceasefire proposals in the Middle East.

Girard continued to say that it is unfortunate that supporters of the two-state solution in Israel are very conservative. The Netanyahu government suggests, without announcing it publicly, that the best solution is to resettle Palestinians in neighboring Arab countries. But this seems like a dream because neither these Arab countries will accept it, nor will the Palestinians themselves, who want to avoid a second Nakba.

Jews who support this solution say that Europe itself witnessed major population transfers in 1945. This is true, but this happened at the end of World War II, a conflict in which the numbers of the well-to-do population were relegated to a secondary position. Today, the UN Charter prohibits forced population transfers, which is strongly condemned by world public opinion. The Arab-Islamic world will never accept such transfers, the writer says.

At the end of his article, Girard considered that, given the weak will of its Western sponsors, it is up to Israel to decide for itself whether it prefers to give a state to the Palestinians, the keys of which can be handed over to Marwan Barghouti, who recognizes the right to the existence of the Jewish state, or choose eternal war. The writer said that he is convinced that if a referendum accompanied by an interpretive campaign is organized in Israel, the first solution will prevail.

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