“They will not prevail.” Why Eretz IsraelGreater Israel, is an impossibility
The surprise statement made by President Biden on Friday shocked everyone and, as he himself underlined, forces the two actors, Hamas and the Israeli Prime Minister, to reveal their cards and openly declare their game. The new proposal for a ceasefire, almost a photocopy of the one that Hamas accepted on May 6 and Netanyahu rejected, provides for a two-month truce in the first phase which could become definitive in the second. Biden said he comes from Israel. Judging by the reactions of the Jewish State and its Government, it would not seem that this is the case. Netanyahu immediately made it known, as he has been doing for months in the face of any glimmer of hope that may open up on the Gaza front, that “the war will continue even after the conclusion of the hostage contract until the complete destruction and annihilation of Hamas”. On the other hand, for Yahya Sinwar, leader of Hamas in Gaza, there cannot be an agreement “without the commitment to completely end all fighting”.
Biden’s move seems like a political tactic to corner everyone in front of the world. However, given the results, we find ourselves once again in a dead end. Or rather, there is an exit but it is not the right one, since Israel insists on total annihilation, always and in any case. In this tangle of conflicts, conflicting interests, declared and submerged objectives, and global upheavals that are reshaping balances and alignments, we asked the philosopher and anthropologist Giancarlo Vianello, expert in transcultural dynamics, author of numerous volumes, the latest of which “Contaminazioni”, published by Mimesis in 2023, to help us shed some light.
As a good Venetian, in his latest book, crossing all borders, he takes a journey through a melting pot of philosophical and wisdom currents that intersect, influence and fertilize each other. And he does it within a very large area and a centuries-old time. This ten-year and uninterrupted journey between East and West has allowed her to develop her opinion on the roots of the now almost century-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which culminated in the latest tragic and bloody war in Gaza. In light of your experience, how do you interpret the now declared will of the Israeli Government in office, and of an increasingly significant part of civil society, especially the settlers, to expel the Palestinians and annex both Gaza and the West Bank, thus realizing the plan Biblical of Greater Israel?
Let’s borrow the evangelical expression not praevalebunt to reaffirm, if there was still need, the impossibility of realizing the biblical-ideological plan of Zionism. Eretz Israel, Greater Israel is an impossibility. If, as would be desirable for every person with common sense, we returned to the Oslo agreements and the two states, Israel would be small, but Jewish and democratic: therefore “great” would be lost. If instead Israel annexed the occupied territories and gave citizenship to the Palestinians, it would be large, democratic but no longer Jewish, as the demographic balance would prevent it. The option dear to the criminal delirium of the unfortunately majority of Zionists remains: making a few million Palestinians disappear. This is not only ethically abject, and contrary to any form of democracy, it is simply impossible.
The ongoing conflict in Gaza for 8 months now has caused apocalyptic devastation, a number of civilian victims of proportions never reached before and what’s worse, there is no end in sight.
It sounds like the structure of a Greek tragedy: Hybris, Ate, Katastophē. An original sin that violates cosmic harmony, to which the gods react by sending To you, the blindness that prevents one from realizing one’s own delirium and leads to catastrophe. Paradoxically, it is the protests over the horror of Gaza that benefit Israel, to the extent that they try to bring it to its senses. And, paradoxically, it is the ideological, and often opportunistic, fury of those who encourage the path of dehumanization and extermination of the Palestinians, which increasingly leads Israel into a self-destructive spiral.
Netanyahu says he wants to exterminate Hamas terrorists, yet he is exterminating a population. But who is Hamas?
The situation, as well as tragic, is extremely complex and it is difficult to hypothesize how it will evolve. However, it would be appropriate to clarify some points that the official narrative glosses over. Hamas was originally a social association linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and was supported by Israel to divide the Palestinian world, so that there was no interlocutor to deal with and thus maintain the status quo. Only over time has it transformed into an armed militia and, under international law, is it legitimized to armed resistance against the invader (remember that the control of the borders and attributions of a sovereign reality is considered occupation by international law). That said, Hamas has committed serious war crimes and the international court in The Hague rightly requested arrest orders for its leaders.
The latest proposal, launched surprisingly by Biden, provides for a three-phase truce during which the Israeli hostages and thousands of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are children, will have to be released.
The hostages who have been kidnapped must be released immediately. Their imprisonment is intolerable. Symmetrically, the thousands of people who are detained in Israeli prisons in horrible conditions should be freed, without charges or trial but simply by order of the occupying military authorities. Among them there are around 800 minors, some of whom were sentenced to five years by the occupying military authorities for throwing stones at tanks.
Despite the clear violations of human rights and crimes against humanity committed by Israel since its birth, which also include those perpetrated inside prisons, where torture and humiliation are the order of the day, everyone agrees in say that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.
It’s a myth that needs to be debunked. Israel is not a democracy. Millions of Palestinians live in the area under her control and have no right to representation. Until a remedy has been put in place we cannot speak of democracy: remember the democracy of South Africa in which only whites voted. Arab-Israelis have the right to vote, but they are 20% of the population and therefore irrelevant. It would be another thing to grant the right to vote to all Palestinians including those in refugee camps, such as Sabra and Chatila. The best solution would be for Israel to return to being a small, Jewish and democratic reality and renounce the criminal frenzy of making millions of Palestinians disappear, who have lived in those places for millennia, to take possession of their lands. Eliminating them, driving them out of their territories would give rise to a diaspora of Palestinians around the world who, paradoxically, would end up introjecting the ancient Jewish adage: that of repeating, every New Year, “next year in Jerusalem”.
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