“France is ready for the international coalition against Daesh […] can also fight against Hamas”, declared Emmanuel Macron, during his visit to Israel, this Tuesday, October 24. Comments which left many diplomats on the international scene doubtful. The French president chose, during his bilateral meeting with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, to propose associating the coalition against the Islamic State (IS) created in 2014 and intervened in Iraq and Syria, with the destruction of Hamas. At the time, sixty countries had responded favorably to the call, including Arab countries in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Qatar.
But according to Adel Bakawan, director of the French Center for Research on Iraq (CFRI), such a proposal is incongruous in the configuration of the war between Hamas and Israel. Worse, it reinforces the polarization between the West and the States leagued against Israel, and risks widening the conflict to other fronts, a dark scenario in the Middle East. Interview.
L’Express: Why did Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to mobilize the international coalition against IS to fight against Hamas come as such a surprise?
Adel Bakawan : Quite simply because we are here in a different register from that of 2014, when an international coalition was created to fight against Daesh. It was first of all an “ultra-terrorist” organization, if I dare say so, much more powerful than Hamas.
Second, when the international coalition against ISIS was formed, there was not only a Western consensus, but also a consensus among Middle Eastern countries, which was fundamental. For what ? Because all the regional antagonists, that is, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, and the Gulf countries, agreed to engage, directly or indirectly, against ISIS. Even the West’s number one enemy, the Islamic Republic of Iran, had a strong interest in not seeing the fall of the pro-Shia Iranian governments of Baghdad and Damascus, which were threatened by ISIS. And these two governments accepted this international coalition managed by the West.
Regarding today’s Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the context is completely different. The “axis of resistance” against Israel brings together Hamas, Islamic Jihad in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and 80 pro-Iranian militia organizations in Iraq and Syria. There is therefore a very strong alliance in the Middle East against the Jewish state, and public opinion in Arab countries is almost entirely won over to the cause of Hamas. In fact, none of these states would dare to join this international coalition against Hamas, because they would lose credibility in the eyes of their population, and would also expose themselves to unprecedented attacks.
What would be the consequences of Emmanuel Macron’s statements?
Emmanuel Macron’s strategy wants at all costs to avoid widening this conflict, and tries to reduce it strictly to a war between Hamas and Israel. But his statement is totally counterproductive, because by engaging this international coalition, there is a high probability that the front will expand to Lebanon with the intervention of Lebanese Hezbollah, to Syria, to Yemen with the Houthi militias, or other Islamic organizations in Iraq. The worst scenario would be, through these declarations and projects proposed to Middle Eastern countries, to prepare objective conditions for Iran in turn to enter directly into this war. You must therefore behave very carefully, and not mix everything up.
Could the international coalition against ISIS in Syria and Iraq be jeopardized?
Engaging the international coalition against Hamas, as proposed by Emmanuel Macron, will require the support of a resolution in the Security Council, which means convincing all the countries mentioned above. However, if this is what we want to do tomorrow, these countries, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey, will withdraw immediately. This will therefore have direct consequences on the international coalition against ISIS, which nevertheless played a determining role in the defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Without this coalition, neither the Iraqi government, nor the Iraqi army, nor anti-terrorist forces like the Hachd al-Chaabi or Peshmerga, would have been able to confront the Daesh army and inflict a territorial defeat on it.
But does Israel really need an international coalition? Intelligence or military support can already be provided to it by third states without mobilizing such a coalition. Furthermore, the Israeli army is already solid and organized, which was not the case for the Syrian and Iraqi forces who had real technical and physical needs. This is why the Élysée quickly modified Emmanuel Macron’s announcement, refuting the creation of a coalition but instead announcing “to draw inspiration” from what has been done in the past.
Will Western countries support this proposal?
At the moment, no country has officially supported this proposal, in my opinion because it is not yet clear. But the ground is absolutely not ready to engage in such a coalition without risk, I do not think that they will follow France. It is important to emphasize that here, history does not repeat itself: the international coalition against Daesh was forged in a particular context which is in no way duplicable here.
What can we say about Emmanuel Macron’s second proposal, at the same time, to continue the peace process andsupport the creation of a Palestinian state ?
It is as improbable as the previous one. It is a great war that is underway, with on one side all the Israeli forces preparing to attack the Gaza Strip, and on the other the terrorist organization Hamas fully engaged against the Jewish state. For 15 years, the successful creation of a Palestinian state has no longer been the center of gravity of the conflict. France therefore arrives today with the desire to support its creation, and, at the same time, to set up a coalition to fight against Hamas as was done against IS. In other words, Emmanuel Macron wants to satisfy both the Arabs and the Israelis, with the help of these two very ambitious declarations, but which cannot come to fruition.
In reality, Emmanuel Macron went to Israel to differentiate his trip from that of American President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and that of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. He wanted to propose something new, to highlight a French specificity in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But is it useful and relevant? That’s another question. The context being so sensitive, we must at all costs avoid provoking the opening of other fronts so that this war does not widen.
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