Columns of flames, children burned alive and women dying on the ground. This May 26, a new vision of hell emerged from the bowels of the Gaza Strip, where several Israeli missiles sowed death in a refugee camp. Dozens of victims, in what Benjamin Netanyahu described as a “tragic accident”. But for a “tragic accident” filmed and broadcast around the world, how many remain invisible in this besieged islet?
Since October 8, Israel has been waging a merciless war to eradicate Hamas in the Palestinian enclave, at the cost of thousands of innocent lives. But the legitimate objective comes up against the cynicism and incompetence of the Netanyahu government. Its own army, observing that Hamas is redeploying itself in supposedly “cleaned” areas, is demanding a political solution. After seven months of war, the terrorist organization seems far from being defeated, as shown by its new rocket attacks on Tel Aviv on May 26. “With what we are doing in Gaza, without realistic plans or discussions for the future, we are creating a hundred times worse than Hamas,” an Israeli source involved in the hostage negotiations recently told us.
This Prime Minister, prosecuted in three corruption cases in Israel and soon under an international arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, bears an enormous responsibility. By allying with the messianic extreme right, whose stated objective is to create a “Greater Israel” without Arab populations, Netanyahu is dragging 9 million Israelis down with him. He knows well that the massacres committed by Hamas on October 7 and the dozens of hostages still captive in the Gaza Strip have made part of Israel blind to the violence inflicted on Palestinian civilians and deaf to the criticism of its allies. The consequences will be crushing.
Netanyahu, who theorized the strategy of a country “alone against all” to rally behind him, is playing an extremely dangerous game by isolating Israel from the rest of the world. However, the Jewish state had observed the power of its alliances when, on April 13, a Western and Arab coalition intercepted hundreds of missiles fired from Iran towards its territory. Risking losing this support, from Washington to Abu Dhabi, seems suicidal. Yet this is the path taken by Netanyahu.