Almost a month later, the worst omens after the atrocious attack by Hamas in Israel on October 7 have been fulfilled. The Israeli Army has responded with a brutal military operation in the Gaza Strip that began with bombings and has already entered a ground phase. Palestinian deaths number in the thousands, many of them children, and the destruction, especially in the north of the strip, is overwhelming. The effects of the military offensive on the millions of Palestinians living in Gaza are tragic and the humanitarian situation is critical, in a place where before October 7 people were already living in dramatic conditions after more than a decade of blockade. Dark lines of history are written in Gaza.
In regional terms, the feared expansion of the conflict to a regional scale It hasn’t happened (yet), beyond some skirmishes on the northern border between Israeli troops and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia. In the diplomatic arena, the Abraham Accords have been frozen, but far from paralyzed. It’s just a parenthesis. Yes indeed, the unwavering and unconditional support of the United States and European countries to Israel has unequivocally reaffirmed what was already evident: that They are not mediators in the conflict, but rather allies of one of the parties. The medium and long-term consequences of this finding remain to be seen. From the outset, the EU descends without brakes and at full speed to a position of irrelevance in the region, Israel’s second-rank ally after the US and without any influence in Arab countries. The international effect that the double standard has and will have regarding the death of civilians on both sides places Western countries and their interests in a very precarious position in the face of the global South.
In addition, The conflict places Israel before an existential decision. After 7-O, the launching of a very tough offensive was planned for strategic reasons (recovering deterrence), tactical (gaining positions for the next day of the war) and emotional reasons (the “powerful revenge” that Binyamin Netanyahu spoke of. ). The goal of eliminating Hamas is impossible; not so much toppling him from power in Gaza, although the return of Al Fatah and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to a destroyed strip would require an arduous negotiation in which it should not be forgotten that the division of the PNA between the West Bank and Gaza has always been viewed favorably by Israel, faithful to the maxim that the Palestinian division is an asset for the Jewish State.
But what is at stake for Israel is its own nature. Israel is the Jewish State created from the Zionist project born at the end of the 19th century. The Zionist project has two pillars: the land (the Land of Israel, Eretz Israel) and the people: Israel is the national home of the Jews. The two pillars are reflected in the famous Zionist motto, a people without a land for a land without a people. But the land was not empty, millions of Palestinians lived and live there. The history of the conflict is actually the story of how the Zionist project has prevailed until it controls the entire land of Palestine and how it has managed the non-Jewish population that lives there.
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Israel also declares itself a democratic and Jewish state. Since the Six Day War, Israel de facto controls the entire territory. How can you be a democratic State and at the same time manage millions of people who are not recognized as full citizens, rights and freedoms because they are not Jewish? It is Israel’s existential question, to which Zionism has been seeking an answer since at least 1967.
Labor came to the conclusion that to be democratic and Jewish it had to sacrifice land, hence the peace process and the two states. Netanyahu’s right and extreme right argue that it is not necessary, that the Arabs can be treated only as a security problem, the theory of the iron fist. This vision entered into crisis on October 7. True, the iron fist hits harder than ever in Gaza and many in Israel today fantasize about the idea of solving the problem by expelling millions of Palestinians, but it also makes Israel bleed. For this reason, Israel is at a decisive moment in which He needs sincerity from his real friends. Your decision will indicate what kind of country it will be. For now, the iron fist is imposed, incompatible with the democratic character, but the turning point created on October 7 has only just begun.