It was a bad time for the impossible and the insoluble, the beginning of this century. We had witnessed the resignation of Pinochet and the end of dictatorships in Latin America, the implosion of the Soviet Union and the regained independence of the Baltic countries, and the reunification of Germany. In Northern Ireland, centuries-old enemies shared out seats in the common government. Apartheid was defeated in South Africa, the vanquished and the victors sharing a Nobel Prize. Individual freedom flourished on the grave of Maoism, African countries experienced alternation.
Why, against this backdrop of global reconciliation, could we not also witness lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, after decades of resentment and bloodshed? There was a window, at the beginning of 2000 exactly, where almost all the parameters were met, resentments sufficiently calmed, goodwill almost completely aligned. At Camp David, Bill Clinton used his charm, his combativeness, his creativity, his insistence and a lot of money to lead the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the Israeli prime minister at the time, Ehud Barak, to within a millimeter of a global agreement.
Arafat’s insistence on the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees would derail everything. It was assumed that Arafat had used this pretext because he felt he could not “sell” the agreement to his troops. We know for sure that he didn’t try and that nothing more interesting was ever put on the table. Three days before Clinton left office, Arafat called him: “You are a great man,” he said. Clinton replied: “You’re talking! I failed colossally. It’s your fault. »
This was before Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu led Israel down the path of intransigence. This was before the Islamist madmen of Hamas took over Gaza and promised to drive the Israelis into the sea. This was before the Jewish madmen for “Greater Israel” became a predominant force and failed to make their own holy war of occupation of the West Bank the official policy of successive governments in the country.
I am not a specialist. But two moments really struck me. My stay in Israel and Palestine in 2012. Discussing with actors from all sides, I was stunned by the renunciation, including by Israelis formerly supporters of peace, of any hope of a negotiated settlement, of any prospect of pacification. At best, they envisaged an uninterrupted succession of periods of confrontation, respite, and confrontations.
In 2013, we received Charles Enderlin, long-time France 2 correspondent in Israel, for his book In the name of the temple on the now predominance of religious influence within what was, initially, a secular Israeli state. The eternal optimist that I was asked him if we could eventually find a crossing point towards peace. He looked at me with the air of someone who has to explain the obvious. The Israelis have won, once and for all. The Palestinians are divided, led in Gaza by the crazy, in the West Bank by the incapable (I paraphrase). The Arab countries took note of the Israeli victory and let go of the Palestinians one by one. It’s inevitable. Under these conditions, I dared to ask, should Canada continue to finance the Palestinian Authority? You are only contributing, he replied, to the Palestinian Authority maintaining the relative peace necessary for Israel to expand its occupation of Palestinian territory. It’s creepy, I said.
It is obviously forbidden to make any equivalence whatsoever between, on the one hand, Hamas, a terrorist organization of crazy murderers and rapists who, if they die as martyrs, will be greeted by 72 black-eyed virgins and exquisite wine and, on the other hand, an advanced democracy offering freedom of expression, of the press, of demonstration.
However, we must dare, even in the aftermath of these abuses. We must dare, again, to say that we expect more from an advanced democracy than from a terrorist group. Saying the state violence deployed year after year not only to make the Palestinians understand that they will never have their own state, their own home, their own dignity, but to wrest from them year after year one more piece of land, one more neighborhood of Jerusalem, one more right to travel in the West Bank.
An Israeli state worthy of the name of a democracy could have taken note of the absence of conditions for peace, especially in Gaza, but at least offered the West Bank the assurance that its territory would be protected from Jewish fools, that the rights of passage would be reopened, that if the situation was politically hopeless, it would not amount to the constant shrinking of the zone of freedom, to the threat now openly mentioned by ministers of the definitive annexation of what is already, for many, an open-air prison.
The Hamas terrorists, financed by Qatar, armed by Iran, probably secretly supported by Russia, appear today, rightly, as the incarnation of evil, hilarious actors in the massacre of broke Israeli civilians. while they were dancing under the stars. They also continually oppress a Palestinian population that is crowding into the Gaza enclave, one of the most densely populated places in the world.
A permanent collateral victim of the conflict, she learned on Monday from the Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, that she would now have no more water, no more gas, no more electricity. “We are at war with animals,” Gallant said. We act accordingly. ” Animals. Hamas? Let’s say. But two million Palestinians, women and children?
Jean-François Lisée led the PQ from 2016 to 2018. He has just published Through the mouth of my pencilspublished by Somme tout/Le Devoir. [email protected]