“Palestine should encourage caution when it comes to promises: promised land or conquered land? In any case, a battleground,” said Ben Gurion, founding father of the State of Israel (1). Three quarters of a century later, the battle continues, with complete disinhibition. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has returned to the heart of the news, since the atrocious attack of October 7, 2023 by Hamas terrorists, inflicting on Israelis the bloodiest mark since the Shoah.
Without restraint, Netanyahu’s government responded with war. A head-on response. An above all existential response from a democracy whose destruction Hezbollah and Hamas have sworn to destroy. The massive reprisals on the part of the Jewish state should surprise no one. Netanyahu or anyone else, the survival reflex would have been similar.
The prudish diplomats evoke the disproportion in the Israeli response, so as not to offend Western opinions disoriented by the violence of the images. Should we recall the list of terrorist acts committed by Hezbollah or Hamas? Should we forget the armed arms that controlled these madmen of God? Because far from being limited to a new confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians, the battle we are witnessing resembles a rehash of the Cold War, or rather, as the editorialist of the New York Times Thomas Friedman, from the “post-post-Cold War era”.
Where to stand in this global battle?
Exit Stalin, exit Truman. Yesterday’s East-West war gave way to a clash between a distraught West where the United States stands and a “resistance camp”, formed by Iran, Russia, North Korea, with tacit support from China. Naivety would consist of practicing “at the same time”, a French doctrine, which has provided no proof of its effectiveness, and above all misses the essential point. To know where to stand in this global battle. And name the terrorists, especially when it comes to Hassan Nasrallah, at the head of a movement which “has French blood on its hands”, reminds MEP Nathalie Loiseau to L’Express.
The United States has chosen, even if it does not want to shout it too loudly before the presidential election. Since October 7, 2023, they may have demanded a ceasefire and protested against Benyamin Netanyahu’s ukases, but they have given him arms and ammunition. For a simple reason, reports Fabrice Balanche, lecturer at Lyon II University: “If the United States lets go of its Israeli ally, it is an avenue for the Iranians, and behind them, the Russians and the Chinese.”
Benjamin Netanyahu is detestable, more than Donald Trump. But the blows against the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah have shaken “the axis of resistance”, and “the moral foundations of 1945 are no longer operative”, judges Gilles Kepel, author of World upheaval (Plon). “The world after remains to be rebuilt, provided first of all that peace is made.”
(1) The Secrets of the Creation of the State of Israel. Diary 1947-1948, ed. La Martinière, 2012.
.