My daughter is twenty-three years old and lives in Chicago. In these days she has enthusiastically participated in the demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinian people that took place in the downtown area.
For her, there are no doubts: the blame for this umpteenth, tragic crisis that is hitting civilians as usual (including children) is all on Israel’s side.
I, who at her age had made the first major manifestation of my life, as a student against a communist regime in search of democracy, now I’m trying to explain to her that, unfortunately, the situation is much more complex than that.
It is true that it all started with the evictions of Arab families from East Jerusalem and the Israeli police attacks on Muslims on the Temple Mount in coincidence with Ramadan.
It is also true that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, accused of corruption and engaged in the fourth consecutive attempt to form a government, has every interest in diverting the attention of his citizens from the political scene and inviting everyone to square up in front of the external enemy.
And finally, it is still true that the hypothesis of a centrist government with the inclusion of the Israeli Arab party and the exclusion of the current prime minister must have seemed to him the worst hypothesis on the table.
With this umpteenth war with Gaza, Netanyahu gets rid of all these problems in one fell swoop and wears the fighter’s helmet while remaining firmly in power.
In recent weeks, voting should also have taken place in Gaza. And the result was obvious: yet another Hamas victory. The elections were postponed and then the war began.
After the death of Yasser Arafat, the PLO and the Palestinian National Authority have progressively lost political weight both internationally and within the Palestinian world. Abu Mazen, who had the thankless task of replacing the Rais, is a longtime politician. With its weapons and its rigid discipline, Hamas has taken over and, by now, the political representation of the Palestinian people is identified with this group considered terrorist by many countries in the world and always ambiguous. And the Palestinians are more alone than they have ever been.
Founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, the highest political Islamist expression of the Sunni world, the group that governs Gaza is certainly connected to the Iranian ayatollahs who supply Hamas and Islamic Jihad group with weapons and use them as they please as a detonator in the heart of the Middle East. And it is certainly not a secret the huge amounts of dollars sent from Qatar to the group. Izrael has always allowed it, thinking about it as the path of deterrence and calm.
In the 1990s, when Hamas was just born (Hamas was founded in 1987), many in and around Jerusalem talked about its clandestine relations with Israeli intelligence. And indeed, even today, some doubts arise.
It is reported that in recent days two thousand missiles have been launched from Gaza towards Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities. The Israeli reports speak of a heritage of approximately 6 thousand missiles in the hands of Hamas and a little more in the hands of Islamic Jihad.
But how is it possible that the Iranians are able to supply their allies with such a large amount of weapons within a territory surrounded and controlled so tightly by the Israelis?
The truth is that neither Netanyahu, who has ruled Israel for twelve years, nor Hamas have any interest in restarting a peace process. While rockets fly and civilians die, the Arab group maintains its hegemony over Gaza and the Israelis pursue their policy of fragmenting and occupying the territories.
Now, with the complicity of Trump (moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem) and the various Arab States that signed the “Abrahamic Accords”, the Israelis are also aiming for the total conquest of Jerusalem, for centuries considered a universal city.
Two people, Israelis and Palestinians, are held hostage by two extremists who use murder to confirm their positions of power.
Hamas does not even have the qualifications to participate in any political negotiations, the PLO does not have the strength, Netanyahu, no desire.
The tragedy of the Middle East today is this.
Many local observers denounced the attacks on Arab Israelis and their violent reactions as the most serious event of recent days. The head of the Israeli Arab party has recently visited the affected Jewish places, bringing an apology and promising the reparation of the damage.
Perhaps the last hope that the doors for a peace agreement will reopen lies precisely in this bet: the birth of a government in Tel Aviv without Netanyahu and with the inclusion of the Arabs. Before Israel finally becomes an ethnic state (surely the Jewish nation-state law of 2018 and the radicalization of Israeli society are not a good sign) dominated by the laws of the Torah.
Then the Palestinians will have to free themselves from the yoke of their jihadists.
Is there hope? The hope of a future of peace is always there, my daughter. But incredible as it may seem to you, it is the most difficult goal to achieve. Especially in the Middle East.
