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Introduction - 11 November 2023

Since 21 October, the date of the forum, demonstrations of solidarity with Palestine have multiplied around the world, often on an impressive scale or with frequency (sometimes on a daily basis). The demand for an immediate ceasefire to allow the delivery of massive, multi-faceted humanitarian aid is rallying all elements of solidarity. It’s urgent and imperative.

If I hadn’t been invited to the Mindanao forum, I probably wouldn’t have written about it. After all, I can’t claim any expertise on the subject. I decided to write because, as a Frenchman, I want to add my voice to all those who denounce French policy, and a signature at the bottom of an appeal is not enough. In the face of this paroxysmal crisis, I also want to emphasise the vital importance of Jewish-Arab solidarity. An internationalist position must take this fully into account, otherwise it will remain very abstract.

So I’m going to give a lot of the floor to Palestinians and Jews, who are primarily concerned. I note with surprise that their words are often not mentioned in many left-wing articles. The quotations will often be lengthy, because the way things are said is important for grasping the nuances and scope of their testimonies, which a simple dry summary of their content cannot do. I will formulate my own convictions when I can, knowing that I don’t have the answers to many questions.

Of course, the current crisis needs to be seen in its historical context, which is an oppressive relationship between occupier and occupied, a colonial settlement that has grown steadily over time. The maps below speak for themselves.

The historical context (occupying and occupied) and the denunciation of the Netanyahu government and its international supporters are at the heart of most of the texts to which I refer. However, the following quotations often contain an explicit condemnation of the attack carried out by Hamas on 7 October. If Hamas (and some smaller groups such as Islamic Jihad) had confined themselves to military targets, the situation would have been different. However, civilians were deliberately targeted. The scale of the problem must be taken into account: they make up the bulk of the 1,200 or so people killed during the operation, according to the updated estimate provided on 10 November by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the 240 hostages [2]. To this must be added the number of wounded (around 2,700-3,300 according to sources). This was a mass massacre, well documented by numerous independent sources (videos, eyewitness accounts, investigations by journalists, etc.), whose duration, scale and aftermath (the taking of hostages from all walks of life and of all ages) rule out any possibility of “blunders” or “collateral damage”.

The left is unanimous in its denunciation of the policies of the Netanyahu regime. However, the position on Hamas and 7 October is not. Is it still necessary to come back to this, when the very survival of the people of Gaza is at stake? I think so, because the future of the people living in this region depends in part on what the lasting impact of this attack by the military wing of Hamas, the Al-Qassam brigades, will be. And also because we – left-wing activists – are being challenged: what do we have to say about this?

We rightly denounce the “double standards” to which the Western powers are accustomed. However, this criticism is only valid if we ourselves do not apply this formula by denying or remaining silent about war crimes committed either by movements to which we are politically close (on the left) or by enemies of our enemies (such as Hamas, a right-wing politico-military religious organisation).

I have never found myself in a situation (armed struggle or resistance) in which war crimes could be committed against the political project and strategy of the movement concerned. Judging is therefore neither my role nor my capacity.

I also fully understand that each organisation or individual expresses its positions “in context”, with its own words and silences. I’m not proposing any ready-made formula. Quite simply, as much as I think it is legitimate to demonstrate under the Palestinian flag, I also believe that we can do without waving the Hamas flag – and that we must neither glorify the “achievement” of 7 October nor lie by hiding what happened. It’s a question of our political coherence and our militant ethics.

In an interview with Mediapart, Tamara al-Rifai, Director of External Relations for the UN agency in charge of Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), denounced the “collective punishment” suffered by the people of Gaza, who are bombarded, thirsty and starving, adding: "[W]e are also seeing a form of dehumanisation that worries us deeply. The United Nations took a very firm stance against the attacks committed by Hamas on 7 October, but we must be just as firm against those who treat all Palestinians as ’terrorists’ or ’human animals’. [3]

The dehumanisation of the other is a poison in this conflict. It affects societies and not just the armed forces, the occupied and not just the occupiers, blocking any progressive horizon. It can only be combated by recognising the humanity of the other, despite the trauma of the ordeal. “The moral question”, according to the title of a “Stand Point” by Edwy Plenel [4], cannot be ignored. He is thinking of the role of the journalist. It also applies to activists. It is heartening to see that it is being raised by many committed people on every continent.

Just one month ago, on 11 October 2023, Orly Noy [5], headlined her editorial "Our humanity is being. Put to the test: When it comes to attacking Gaza, Israel’s policy right now is more about damage than accuracy.
We’re living in a hellish reality, driven by a thirst for revenge and manifesting in war crimes. Israel’s goal is not to hit military targets or terrorist infrastructure. The point is to target more than two million people – their children, their elderly. The scope of the catastrophe that awaits is hard to fathom.
In recent days in Israel, voices of otherwise reasonable people – people associated with humanist values and human rights – have expressed that thirst for revenge. They have justified erasing Gaza under a security pretext or even a humanitarian one. I’ve heard others who have adopted the rhetoric of the rightwing extremists who insist that every Gazan is a bloodthirsty antisemite who supports the atrocity that Hamas committed over the weekend.
But our humanity is exactly what is being put to the test. Every picture and every testimony from the inferno in Israel’s south, every desperate and heartbreaking plea from those still searching for loved ones, every update to the death toll that keeps climbing – all of these threaten to pull our values out from under us and deliver us into the demand for vengeance.
Hamas’ criminal attack filled many Israelis with existential fear of a sort we didn’t know before – at least not in this generation. Now, the fear, the rage, the hate, and the pain threaten to wreak havoc not just on Gaza, but on us as individuals and a society.
Morality is never a privilege, a luxury, an accessory that we can don when it’s convenient or remove when less so. Morality isn’t an indulgence we can’t afford during a catastrophe.
Insisting on morality is an insistence on context, without which this horrible violence loses its meaning and gets reduced to “human animals that want to destroy us for no reason.” To insist on morality and context is not to justify a crime. On the contrary – it is to ensure our understanding of reality includes all of the factors that contribute to it, so that we can more effectively change it.
If Hamas’ crimes justify unmitigated destruction through the collective punishment of the people of Gaza, what morality can we claim to condemn Hamas, especially given the harm Israel has inflicted there over the years? If Gaza’s election of Hamas all those years ago justifies erasing its population from the planet, what should the Israeli public’s punishment be for electing fascist leaders and war criminals, who routinely impose destruction and death on Palestinians?
Our commitment to morality and human rights principles can’t be conditioned on our subjective feelings. The whole point is to draw the red lines that can’t be crossed even in times of war. There’s no rage that justifies war crimes.
The need to withdraw into Israeli tribalism, and cling to it, is understandable. But not while sacrificing our political community. The Jewish-Arab solidarity we have managed to build in this land has been hard to come. It is small and fragile, and is facing a terrible test. We mustn’t fail.
No civilian is “collateral damage.” War crimes are an abomination that can’t ever be justified. One can only hope that the day after this toxic dust settles, the so-called “human rights” camp will be able to look at itself in the mirror.
 [6]

Orly Noy [7]

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 Contribution to the online forum “Israel-Hamas conflict” (Mindanao)

Significantly expanded and updated version

Hello everyone,

I’m very happy to see you, even remotely.

I have been asked to address two issues here:

– The situation in France in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a case study of Western countries.

– International solidarity, the need for it, its difficulties and its opportunities.

In doing so, I will have to address issues that are sometimes complex or controversial. My own international solidarity activities are focused on Asia, and in particular the Philippines (which I imagine is why I have been invited to take part in this forum, for which I thank you - it is an honour). I have never been directly involved in any specific Palestine solidarity work and I have no particular authority in this area. However, the question of Palestine has always been present in my political history (which goes back to 1965, nearly sixty years ago) and I hope to be able to usefully cross French, Asian and Middle Eastern points of view. To fuel a debate, rather than conclude it.

The French establishment behind Netanyahu

France is one of the Western countries where solidarity with the Palestinians has been most severely criminalised, just behind Germany [8]. Initially, demonstrations in their support were banned by Interior Minister Darmanin. In a second phase, the Conseil d’Etat (State Councl) [9] rejected this administrative ban, and empowered the prefects, who represent the state in the départements, to authorise or ban them on a case-by-case basis – while providing them with arguments in favour of a ban. Even today, the right to demonstrate is seriously curtailed. In many cases, the police have no qualms about harassing and fining demonstrators. CGT trade unionists were dragged off to the police station. An octogenarian, co-president of the France-Palestine Solidarity Association in Nîmes, was taken into police custody and released. She will be prosecuted for organising a banned demonstration (which she disputes) [10]. Organisations denouncing the fate of the people of Gaza have been and still are threatened with ban for “apology for terrorism”. Conversely, mobilisations in support of the Israeli regime have been very officially encouraged. It’s all quite delirious, but above all very worrying.

Demonstration in Paris. Photo credit. Photothèque Rouge / Martin Noda / Hans Lucas

For a long time, the main television media blacked out the situation in Gaza, talking only about Israeli deaths and hostages. Very rarely have I seen such a blanket of information. This is in stark contrast to the way the BBC (which I watch daily) covered the crisis. The French Presidency has obviously exerted maximum pressure on these media to align themselves with the official discourse in support of Netanyahu and his Likud party. This despite the fact that the current Israeli government is the most extreme right-wing the country has ever seen.

France’s economic interests in Israel and its geopolitical commitments in the region are limited and do not explain this state of affairs. There was a time when, to strengthen the hand of French imperialism in the Middle East, President Jacques Chirac broke his obligatory alliance with Washington by refusing to take part in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was also a victory for the anti-war movement. Those days are gone. Since then, successive French presidents have fallen into line. Emmanuel Macron did try to appear as a possible mediator in the current crisis, but so belatedly that his offers of service were unconvincing. And the pro-Netanyahu virulence of his domestic policy does not help!

Among the reasons for this virulence, I would like to highlight three:

– With elections looming, the institutional political game is dominated by competition between the presidential right, the classical right and the far right. The use of anti-Arab and anti-migrant racism is a constant in such a context.

– The French political system shaped by President Macron is highly authoritarian. Civil liberties are restricted by multiple laws. The right to demonstrate, in particular, is thus regularly called into question. In reality, demonstrating (peacefully) is no longer seen as a right by the authorities, but as tolerance.

– The criminalisation of social movements and organisations has become a recurring theme. The most recent example was the denunciation of ecological associations as “eco-terrorists”. Now it’s the turn of progressive movements that support the Palestinians – despite the fact that most of them have denounced the war crimes committed for ages by the Israeli government, as well as the war crime committed on 7 October by Hamas. They are suspected or accused of anti-Semitism (under the guise of anti-Zionism), even though most of them are actively involved in the fight against anti-Semitism, which has deep roots in French history.

On 31 October, a group of 85 leading French Jews condemned the way in which the legitimate emotions aroused by the Hamas attack on 7 October are being used to cover up Netanyahu’s policies: "As Jews, we are horrified by the violations of international law that the State of Israel is carrying out in Gaza with impunity, and we refuse to allow this massacre to take place in our name. We understand and share the pain and fear felt by many Jews in France as a result of Hamas’ war crimes. The majority of us have family in Israel and we wish to express our deepest sympathy to the families of the victims of the massacres of Saturday 7 October 2023, but this pain cannot justify ethnic cleansing in Gaza. The continuation of the war and occupation will bring neither peace nor the return of the hostages.
Gaza is suffering an unprecedented humanitarian crisis (...) It is urgent to get the Israeli government to stop its bombing campaign and prevent it from launching a ground offensive (...) We are calling for an immediate ceasefire and an end to Israeli impunity. This punitive violence and war crimes were announced by Israeli government officials in dehumanising statements and are supported by our leaders in France. We join our Jewish brothers and sisters in the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel and elsewhere who have denounced their governments’ unconditional support for Israel’s offensive against Gaza, and we recall that expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people as an oppressed people is a right and a political freedom." [11]

On 28 October, people attending a demonstration (which had only been banned two hours before it was due to take place) were massively repressed for “taking part in an illegal demonstration”, with the police fining 1,359 people, according to the prefecture! In fact, the situation is totally arbitrary, with some demonstrations authorised by the prefects and others not.

Two parties in particular are threatened with trial or dissolution by the Interior Ministry: La France insoumise (LFI), which has a large parliamentary group, and a small radical left-wing organisation, the New Anti-Capitalist Party [12] The NPA has just been summoned by the judicial police with a view to a preliminary investigation for “public defence of an act of terrorism”, an absurd charge, but a dangerous one in the current political climate [13]

An Opinion Column signed by 170 leading figures was published, demanding respect for the right to demonstrate in support of the Palestinians and opposing the threats made against the LFI and the NPA. Here is a large extract: "Every life counts, the life of a child in Gaza and the life of a child in Sderot, and we want to express our deepest sympathy for all the civilian victims and their families.
This is why we reject the double standards that are being expressed on this subject in France today, from the highest level of government. A double standard that silences any discourse that expresses solidarity with the Palestinian people, that is even concerned about their current fate, that tends to criminalise any support for the defence of their democratic rights.
We are speaking out against the accusations and slander that are being levelled at any political thought that is not aligned with that of the government, particularly against France Insoumise and the NPA. Elected representatives and political leaders of these organisations are being publicly accused and even threatened.
Even though we may not share the expressions of these organisations, even if they can be questioned or even criticised, no amalgam can be made with any “apology for terrorism” or the slightest complacency with the anti-Semitism that they have always denounced. Both France insoumise and the NPA have clearly expressed their abhorrence of all massacres and war crimes.
In this context, we strongly demand that the investigations for “apology for terrorism” against the NPA and various associations or groups organising solidarity with Palestine, requested by Gérald Darmanin on the basis of Article 40 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, be dropped.
With the same vigour, we call for an end to bans on demonstrations or public meetings in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Demonstrations of this kind have been taking place for several days throughout Europe and the world, and France is one of the few countries to ban them. This is a clear attack on democratic rights and freedoms. It is serious, profoundly illegitimate and dramatically irresponsible".
 [14].

President Macron has sought to cut funding for Franco-Palestinian cultural initiatives and to enlist the world of culture in the defence of the Israeli regime. In response, more than 4,000 French artists and art workers have expressed their solidarity with the Palestinian people, calling for collective action to bring about a ceasefire and put a stop to the Israeli state’s colonial policy:

"Contrary to what the President of the Republic has said, not all French men and women stand by his side in support of the extreme right-wing Israeli colonial regime whose failure to respect international law has led to this tragedy. It is, moreover, part of a succession of Israeli governments that have also flouted the partition plan agreed by the UN in 1947 and the many resolutions adopted by the UN since 1967.
It is for this reason, and because we reject the injunction that Zionism is an ideology supported by the entire Jewish community, and that Hamas represents the entire Palestinian community, that we are publishing this article today. We assert our right to question the actions of a government whose excesses constitute violations of international law.
We reject the dangerous association that unjustly tends to pit Israeli and Palestinian civilians against each other, and call for a united effort to combat anti-Semitism in all its forms, as well as the hatred towards Palestinians, the dramatic consequences of which can be seen today in the extreme bombardments suffered by the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.
While we are shocked and moved by the violence suffered by Israeli civilians on 7 October, it is with solidarity that we stand up together and with the Palestinians against any policy of vengeance which, as many academics and United Nations experts have pointed out, could turn out to be genocidal, and that we call for the events of 7 October to be properly contextualised. " [15]

Macron has finally decided to hold a humanitarian conference on Gaza at the Elysée Palace, while refraining from calling for an immediate ceasefire. This sleight of hand was denounced by the humanitarian associations invited to the Elysée Palace, as well as by French diplomats (the French diplomatic corps is divided on the policy to be followed in the Middle East). One of them told the daily Le Monde: "It is absurd not to call for a ceasefire. (...) What is happening now will have a huge impact for decades to come on the image and security of France [which] is giving moral and political backing to Netanyahu in his conduct of the war. For another diplomat, the longer we lock ourselves into a position of not calling for a ceasefire, the more we lose partners in the countries of the South, not just Arab countries. To conclude: The Palestinian cause is the yardstick of Western duplicity for the capitals of emerging and developing countries. [16]

Unable to influence the international balance of power, Emmanuel Macron is organising conferences - it’s his way of existing and letting people believe, in France, that he counts. It’s pretty pathetic, as Michel Warschawski points out: “I see in the West, particularly in France, pathetic debates that don’t measure up to the extreme seriousness of the moment. Instead of using all their levers to impose an immediate ceasefire, many political leaders prefer to pledge their allegiance to Israel. Before the eyes of the whole world, they are accomplices in a crime against humanity” [17]

This judgement is perfectly justified. Outside wartime, Gaza needed 300 to 500 lorries a day to deliver the necessary aid. Today, considerably more are needed. As Sarah Château, head of operations for Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders ) in Palestine, notes, “We are in regular contact with our contacts over there, we have 300 Palestinian colleagues and also 22 expatriates who have still not been able to leave (...). Thanks to them, we have a fairly daily, concrete, real description of the humanitarian situation, which is catastrophic. It’s really messages of despair that are shared by our colleagues. We’ve run out of medicines, the hospitals are saturated, overwhelmed and patients are pouring in every day (...), they need urgent care. Meanwhile, all the patients with chronic illnesses and pregnant women (...) remain. In Gaza we have a capacity of around 3,500 beds for 21,000 wounded and other illnesses, such as diabetes, hypertension, decompensation due to lack of access to medicines (...). Added to this is the humanitarian situation in terms of food supplies. Our colleagues tell us about the horror of not being able to eat or drink. There are hours of queuing to find a piece of bread, a maximum of one meal a day, if not a piece of bread a day now, according to what we are told. My medical colleagues had no water all day yesterday, no drinking water, there was a little salt water, but it wasn’t drinking water. Fortunately, they managed to find some for today. But a whole day in the operating theatre without drinking water, operating on patients...” . [18]

Quarter-measures will never respond to such a situation. Without a ceasefire and the mobilisation of exceptional resources, as demanded by all the UN agencies concerned. Gaza is already suffering a major humanitarian crisis, which can only get exponentially worse.

Our responsibility is directly engaged. The martyrdom of the people of Gaza is such that our governments must look officially concerned, but without calling into question their support for the Israeli regime. What is absolutely urgent is to impose a ceasefire and to ensure the massive dispatch of aid in many forms to halt the humanitarian disaster under way and avoid the forced exile of the Palestinians, a new Nakba (“catastrophe”, mass deportation).

Gaza: beyond the war crime, the genocidal dynamic

Many people believe that the current situation in Gaza is already genocidal, with the policy of ethnic cleansing heralding, if Netanyahu remains free to act as he sees fit, the physical elimination of part of the Palestinian population living there, and the forced eviction of another part to Sinai.

In fact, the situation of the people of Gaza has never been so serious. While famine is taking hold and epidemics are spreading, the population is being subjected to extremely intense bombardments. In one month, Gaza has received more bombs than the United States dropped in a year during the war in Afghanistan. Families have been decimated, entire neighbourhoods and infrastructures destroyed, and half the population has had to flee without being able to find safe refuge. Communications are very unreliable. Hospitals and health services can only function to a limited extent, lacking everything. Doctors are forced to operate on children without anaesthetic, to amputate the leg of a patient lying on the floor in a corridor, to sort out who will be treated and who will not... Civilian victims number in the thousands, of all generations, many of them babies and children. Children whose mothers tattoo their names on their skin so that they can be identified whatever happens...

The south of the Gaza Strip is also under constant bombardment. Here is an extract from the testimony of Salim Saker, working in Khan Younès, gathered by Nejma Brahim (Mediapart): "It’s difficult to make contact. When we try to contact doctors in Gaza for the first time, the messages are simply not delivered: the internet connection is cut; the doctors are also far too busy trying to save lives to pick up their phones. It was 9pm on Tuesday 31 October when a voice was finally heard on the other end of the line. Salim Saker’s voice is broken, exhausted by the frantic pace he has to keep up day and night at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younès, in the south of the Gaza Strip.
‘It’s late here’, says the man as he prepares to sleep. He finally takes the time to recount the hell in which he fights to save as many lives as possible. In any case, ‘you can’t rest here’. The hospital is well beyond its capacity, he warns. His teams are overwhelmed. "Most of the dead and injured are women and children. They are all civilians. I don’t see any soldiers.
The hospital’s head of surgery describes a ‘mass casualty’ situation, in which he sees ‘a lot of people with fractures caused by the bombing, internal haemorrhaging in the head, chest or stomach, broken spinal columns or partial paralysis’. (...)
Although doctors in the Gaza Strip are ‘used to war and death’, Salim Saker says that this time they are facing something that no other doctor has ever experienced. ‘While they are treating people, they may see their son or father arrive at the hospital, injured or dead. And despite this, they continue to do their job because they are responsible and humanists’.
Sometimes the doctors concerned slip away just long enough to bury their dead, then return to treat the hospital’s patients" [19]

To the fury of the Israeli government, which is calling for his resignation, António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, is making increasingly urgent calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. At his press conference on 6 November, he said: "The ground operations of the Israeli Defence Forces and the ongoing bombardments are affecting civilians, hospitals, refugee camps, mosques, churches and UN facilities, including shelters. No one is safe.
At the same time, Hamas and other militants are using civilians as human shields and continue to launch indiscriminate rockets towards Israel. I reiterate my absolute condemnation of the abominable acts of terror perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October and reiterate my call for the immediate, unconditional and safe release of the hostages held in the Gaza Strip. (...)
Gaza is becoming a children’s cemetery. Hundreds of girls and boys are reportedly killed or injured every day. In the space of four weeks, more journalists are reported to have been killed than in any other conflict for at least three decades. More United Nations aid workers have been killed than in any comparable period in the history of our organisation. I salute all those who continue to save lives despite the considerable challenges and risks.(...)
I am deeply disturbed by the rise in anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim bigotry. Jewish and Muslim communities in many parts of the world are on high alert, fearing for their personal safety.(…)
We must act now to find a way out of this brutal, awful, agonizing dead end of destruction." [20]

Seven United Nations Special Rapporteurs, independent experts appointed by the UN, issued an alarming statement on 2 November entitled “Preventing a Genocide in Gaza and a New “Nakba””. They warned: “We are deeply distressed at the failure of Israel to agree to – and the unwillingness of the international community to press more decisively for – an immediate ceasefire. The failure to urgently implement a ceasefire risks this situation spiralling towards a genocide conducted with 21^st century means and methods of warfare” [21]

For David Finkel "Israel’s government of Benjamin ‘Mr. Security’ Netanyahu is the most viciously racist, anti-democratic and incompetent, and one of the most corrupt — although there is competition for that distinction — in the country’s history. It is now probably also the most widely reviled for its catastrophic failures.
In fact, Israel’s mass bombing and invasion of Gaza has one overriding priority beyond all other considerations — keeping Netanyahu’s coalition in power and himself out of prison on multiple corruption charges. Neither Palestinian, nor Israeli, nor hostages’ lives can get in the way of that supreme goal.
Because the coalition depends on the support of the fascistic, open ethnic-cleansing Jewish Power and Religious Zionism Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the dimensions of the war are literally genocidal. That potential has been present in Israeli politics all along, but Netanyahu’s need to hold political office for protection from prosecution (sound familiar?) overrides certain restraints on all-out destruction that global politics and U.S. interests usually impose.
Mustafa Barghouti, a physician in Ramallah and president of the Palestinian National Initiative, has repeatedly warned (for example on “Democracy Now,” October 19) of a scenario where Israel depopulates and annexes northern Gaza, then turns to ethnically cleansing and annexing the West Bank.
“I never thought I would see Israel carrying out ethnic cleansing in the 21^st century,” says Dr. Barghouti, “but I admit I was wrong.”

In the immediate shock of 7 October, as news from southern Israel exploded across much of the world and particularly in the United States, years of accumulated support for the suffering of the Palestinian people under occupation began to dissolve. The scale and brutality of the murders perpetrated by Hamas generated instant sympathy for Israel. Within a week, the massive bombing, the ’total siege’ and Israel’s imminent invasion of Gaza turned much of that sympathy into disgust.
In the immediate shock of October 7, with reports from southern Israel exploding in much of the world and especially in the United States, years of accumulating support for the Palestinian people’s suffering under occupation began dissolving. The scale and brutality of the Hamas killings generated instantaneous sympathy for Israel. Within a week, in turn, Israel’s massive bombing, “total siege” and pending invasion of Gaza was converting much of that sympathy to revulsion." [22]

For the British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, "Israeli leaders are demonising the Palestinian people, and that is a precursor to ethnic cleansing and genocide (...)
He calls the opposition of western leaders to a ceasefire “a warrant for genocide” and accuses them of “complicity in Israel’s war crimes”. Through the 1917 Balfour Declaration and its subsequent mandate over Palestine, Britain committed what Shlaim calls “the original sin” of “stealing Palestine from the Palestinians and giving it to the Zionists”.
Once Israel was established in 1947, the US became its “enabler”, Shlaim says. “The trouble with American support for Israel is that it is unconditional. It is not conditional on respecting Palestinian human rights or observing international law. Israel pays no price for its violations. This is why Israel gets away, literally, with murder, and today literally with mass murder, because America doesn’t hold it to account.” [23]

On 10 November, B’Tselem launched a new appeal for an immediate ceasefire: "According to figures released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), about 1.5 million residents have been displaced since the start of the war, and approximately half of them are sheltering in overcrowded UNRWA facilities in numbers far exceeding capacity, and in intolerable living conditions. On average, UNRWA facilities have one toilet per 160 people and one shower for 700. Such conditions exacerbate the risk of infections and epidemics. Thousands of cases of infectious diseases have already been reported. In the northern Gaza Strip, about 160,000 people are sheltering in UNRWA facilities, but the agency is unable to provide them with services, and their condition is unknown. (...)
Despite the dire situation in Gaza, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, has denied any humanitarian crisis occurring in Gaza at all. This claim defies reality not only considering the alarming figures about the current situation but also because the Gaza Strip had already been in a humanitarian crisis for years when the war broke out - a crisis created entirely by Israel when it imposed a closure on Gaza in 2007 after Hamas took power. Gaza’s economy soon collapsed: before the war, about 80% of its residents relied on aid organizations for their subsistence. Most had no access to potable water, and power was supplied only several hours a day. Unemployment rates skyrocketed, reaching about 45% in the general population, and soaring to 60% among people under the age of 29. (...)
Bringing humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip right is not a favor Israel is being asked to extend to the civilian population there. Rather, it is Israel’s duty under international humanitarian law which stipultates that parties to hostilities must allow rapid delivery of humanitarian aid - including food and medicine - to the civilian population. This is certainly the case when one party is putting the area under a blockade that could result in the actual starvation of the residents (...). [24]

Towards the annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem

The situation in the West Bank is also deteriorating, as the army protects extremist settlers who are driving Palestinians from their homes and land. Four ministers in the current government live in these occupied territories, as does the army’s Chief of Staff. They are hard at work! More than 850,000 (non-Arab) Israelis already live in these occupied territories. Colonisation is continuing with a view to annexation.

Palestinians leave the Palestinian Bedouin community of Ein al-Rashash, east of Ramallah, following incessant attacks by Israeli settlers from a nearby illegal outpost, which intensified during the war on Gaza, 18 October 2023. (Oren Ziv)

A solidarity activist wrote in the columns of L’Anticapitaliste: "The Oslo agreements, with their division into three zones A, B and C, gave the Israeli army of occupation the possibility of dividing the area into as many Bantustans cut off from each other. Every town and village can be cut off from the rest of the world in a very short space of time. The army blocks the slightest road with mounds of earth and stones, the soldiers occupy all the watchtowers pre-positioned at crossroads and that’s it: the West Bank is frozen. In the current circumstances, this system is compounded by the fact that the settlers have been given 20,000 weapons of war by the fascist minister Ben Gvir. The soldiers have been instructed to shoot on sight.
In Jerusalem, the same kind of arrangements are in place: border guards are omnipresent at every crossroads and the “Arab” neighbourhoods are cordoned off. Provocations by Zionist supremacists increased in the Old City and on the Esplanade of the Mosques. Real hunts for Palestinians are being organised, even in hospitals. This also applies to Palestinians with Israeli nationality.
A witch-hunt in the universities, dismissals, lynchings, arrests, a bill to withdraw nationality: the slightest expression of compassion for the inhabitants of Gaza leads to immediate repression. Jewish activists in the anti-colonialist bloc have not been spared.
The unconditional support given to Israel for its operation against the inhabitants of Gaza by Western governments gives it carte blanche: it seems that there are no more limits" [25]

Demonstration in the West Bank

A veritable policy of terror is being implemented, which Israeli human rights organisations are denouncing, documenting cases of torture in particular [26].

Palestinians are seen blindfolded, handcuffed and stripped down to their underwear during hours of torture by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the village of Wadi al-Siq, in the occupied West Bank, on 12 October 2023. (Image taken from social media)

B’Tselem and a group of humanitarian organisations in Israel have launched an “urgent appeal to the international community to stop the forced transfers [of Palestinian communities] to the West Bank”: "For the past three weeks, since Hamas’s atrocities of October 7^th, settlers have been exploiting the lack of public attention to the West Bank, as well as the general atmosphere of rage against Palestinians, to escalate their campaign of violent attacks in an attempt to forcibly transfer Palestinian communities. During this period, no fewer than thirteen herding communities have been displaced. Many more are in danger of being forced to flee in the coming days if immediate action is not taken.
Palestinian farmers are particularly vulnerable at this time, during the annual olive harvest
season, because if they are unable to pick their olives they will lose a year’s income. Yesterday Bilal Muhammed Saleh from the village of As-Sawiya south of Nablus was murdered while tending to his olive trees. He was the seventh Palestinian to have been killed by settlers since the current war began.
Unfortunately, the Israeli government is supportive of these attacks and does nothing to stop this violence. On the contrary: government ministers and other officials are backing the violence and in many cases the military is present or even participates in the violence, including in incidents where settlers have killed Palestinians. Moreover, since the war has begun there has been a growing number of incidents in which violent settlers have been documented attacking nearby Palestinian communities while wearing military uniform and using government-issued weapons.
With grave concern and with a clear understanding of the political landscape, we recognize that the only way to stop this forcible transfer in the West Bank is a clear, strong and direct intervention by the international community.
Now is the time to act.
"  [27]

In Israel itself, Arabs are threatened with pogroms. Samah Salaime, a Palestinian feminist activist and author, describes an atmosphere of lynching, although no deaths have yet been reported. On 4 November, on the Netanya campus, hundreds of Israeli Jews attacked a Palestinian student dormitory, shouting “Death to the Arabs, go back to Gaza”. Since the onset of the war, Israeli authorities has launched a massive arrest campaign targeting Palestinian citizens who express any kind of identification with their brethren in Gaza. Jewish students at colleges and universities have been enlisted into cyber armies to hunt for culprits. The police chief, Kobi Shabtai, has threatened to bus to Gaza any Palestinian citizen of Israel who goes out to the streets in protest.
Prominent public figures have not been spared from this persecution. Palestinian singer and neuroscientist Dalal Abu Amneh and actress Maisa Abd Elhadi were both arrested over social media posts. Many others who dared to quote from the Qur’an, a poem, or even a fairy tale about a biblical tyrant who met his demise because of evil actions — as Dr. Jawad Atrash of Sha’are Zedek Hospital shared on social media — have fallen victim to the campaign of incitement.
The crackdown is being led by right-wing Knesset members, who have wasted no time in seizing the opportunity presented by the state of emergency. It was reported last week that Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Interior Minister Moshe Arbel are even exploring the possibility of advancing legislation to revoke the citizenship or residency status of anyone who “engages in terrorism, supports terrorism, incites terrorism, or identifies with a terrorist act” — “terrorism,” of course, being an extremely broad term that can be weaponized against anything that even remotely expresses Palestinianness.(...)
I decided to focus on my inner thoughts and feelings to digest the magnitude of the tragedy that occurred to us, and to mourn alone for the victims of this cursed conflict, Jews and Palestinians alike. I decided to support those who need me and to be in solidarity with those who also want real peace, and are tired of another war and the murder of innocent men, women, children, and elderly people. (...)
For Shabtai, Ben Gvir, and Netanyahu, it doesn’t matter that Arab doctors are treating wounded Israelis; that Arab psychologists and social workers are helping to support war victims; that Arab teachers are still educating for peace, tolerance, and love; or that Arab workers are continuing to build, remove garbage, and cultivate the land. All this is insignificant. As far as they’re concerned, there is a seat reserved for all of us on the buses to Gaza." [28]

Palestinian workers employed in Israel are being dismissed and arrested, the number of administrative detentions without trial continues to rise, the legal rights of political prisoners are not being respected at all - as for their lawyers from the Adalah association, they are threatened with disbarment (and worse) by the bar [29], accused of being apologists for terrorism, since they defend “terrorists” (CQFD). In the prisons, the jailers impose inhuman conditions on the inmates, a daily torture.

 The rotting?

“The Greater Israel scenario is the one that most appeals to Benjamin Netanyahu and his cronies on the Israeli far right”, notes Gilbert Achcar, "The Likud party is the heir to the Zionist far right, known as revisionist Zionism, whose armed branches perpetrated the Deir Yassin massacre, the most infamous mass murder of Palestinians in 1948, in the midst of what the Arabs call the Nakba (catastrophe).(...)
In his recent speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, just two weeks before 7 October, Netanyahu held up a map of the Middle East showing a Greater Israel including Gaza and the West Bank. What is even more relevant in the context of the new Gaza war is the fact - barely mentioned in the international media - that Netanyahu had resigned from the Israeli cabinet led by Sharon in 2005 to protest the latter’s decision to evacuate Gaza. [30]

From this point of view, the policy of ethnic cleansing knows no boundaries. This is acknowledged in a document dated 13 October, published by Local Call and +972. It concerns the forced and permanent transfer of the 2.2 million Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip to the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. These are recommendations made by the Ministry of Intelligence, a small government body that produces policy research and shares its proposals with intelligence agencies, the army and other ministries. It is currently headed by Gila Gamliel, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

The document “assesses three options for the future of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in the context of the current war, and recommends a complete population transfer as the preferred course of action. It also calls on Israel to obtain the support of the international community in this endeavour.”. The influence of this Ministry (which does not direct the intelligence services) is considered to be relatively weak. “However, the fact that an Israeli government ministry has prepared such a detailed proposal in the context of a large-scale military offensive on the Gaza Strip, following the deadly Hamas assault and massacres in southern Israeli communities on 7 October, shows that the idea of a forced population transfer is being elevated to the status of an official political discussion.”(...)
“The document recommends that Israel act to “evacuate the civilian population to Sinai” during the war; establish tent cities and later more permanent cities in the northern Sinai that will absorb the expelled population; and then create “a sterile zone of several kilometers … within Egypt, and [prevent] the return of the population to activities/residences near the border with Israel.” At the same time, governments around the world, led by the United States, must be mobilized to implement the move"(...)

The details of the recommendations are very much in line with what is actually happening. The transfer plan is divided into several stages "The transfer plan is divided into several stages. In the first stage, action must be taken so that the population of Gaza ‘evacuates south,’ while the air strikes focus on the northern Gaza Strip. In the second stage, a ground incursion into Gaza will begin, leading to the occupation of the entire Strip from north to south, and the ‘cleansing of the underground bunkers of Hamas fighters.’
Concurrently with the re-occupation of Gaza, Palestinian civilians will be moved into Egyptian territory, and not be allowed to return. “It is important to leave the travel routes to the south open to enable the evacuation of the civilian population toward Rafah,” the document states." .
However, Yuval Abraham, the author of the +972 article quoted here, believes that the chances of implementing such a plan are negligible. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has declared that he is firmly opposed to opening the Rafah crossing to absorb the Palestinian population of Gaza. He argued that moving Palestinians to Sinai would threaten peace between Israel and Egypt, and warned that it would lead Palestinians to use Egyptian territory as a base to pursue armed confrontations with Israel.
The document explores two other options. The first is to allow the Palestinian Authority (PA), led by the Fatah party in the occupied West Bank, to govern Gaza under Israeli auspices. The second is to cultivate another local Arab authority as an alternative to Hamas. According to the paper, these two options are not desirable for Israel from a strategic and security point of view, and will not constitute a sufficient deterrent message, especially for Hezbollah in Lebanon. [31]

What we can fear is that Netanyahu, faced with a deadlock, will allow the situation to deteriorate and death to take its toll on the Palestinians, not only in Gaza, of course, but also on the West Bank and in Israel. However, this will not be without growing international or national tensions, as shown by the mobilisation of hostage families who do not accept that their loved ones should be sacrificed, or of soldiers’ families.

In this context, the global anti-war and solidarity movement can make a real contribution to the ceasefire.

Pierre Rousset

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