The tragedy of Gaza contains two others and it is not known which is worse: unfortunately, Netanyahu does not have a plan; and unfortunately, Biden has a plan. The Israeli prime minister has the Strip bombed blindly because he doesn’t know what else to do (eradicating Hamas is a pious illusion, as demonstrated by Israel’s seven attacks on Gaza in the last 15 years), but he must show that he is doing something (a massacre that will multiply followers and Hamas suicide bombers, also in the West Bank) and above all he knows that, once the war is over, his political career will end (therefore the war must last as long as possible). The US president, with the ignorant arrogance typical of neocons and democrats, thinks of resolving the issue by parachuting the eighty-eight-year-old Abu Mazen into Gaza, more shabby and discredited than him, weakened by the Americans and Israelis themselves, and telling Hamas: “Slide over, we’re coming.” It is the ingenious solution adopted in Afghanistan and Iraq: our people arrive, they place a puppet that they like tens of thousands of kilometers away, they delude themselves that the population likes it for this very reason, then they discover that they don’t like it and react badly (in Iraq the Sunnis overthrown by the Shiites founded ISIS, in Afghanistan the Taliban swallowed up the famous “regular army” which cost the Western coalition an arm and a leg in half a day).
While Sleepy Joe invites his friend Bibi to learn from the US mistakes in the “war on terrorism” which has been multiplying it for twenty years, he is the first to go down that road again. Otherwise he would stop playing Risk with the world and would face the number one problem, at least for those who export democracy throughout the globe: the will of the people. If voting were held today in Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas would triumph more than in the 2006 elections, the last ones. Of course, you can tell the Palestinians that they have to suck Abu Mazen without electing him, otherwise they will make another mistake in voting. But so even the best willing understand that, to make themselves heard, there is only armed conflict: and Abu Mazen lasts as long as a cat on the freeway. The idea that, after all the hatred and massacres, the Palestinians willingly accept a “moderate leadership” (the one we choose for them) can only come from a sick mind: in fact, it came to Biden. A leader of average intelligence would take action to give them a good reason not to vote for Hamas and choose better representatives. That is, he would cut the ground under the feet of Hamas which lives on hatred and misery, eliminating the causes. How? By stopping the massacre and launching a Marshall plan for reconstruction and investments in Gaza and the West Bank, to bring development, jobs, and infrastructure. For Palestinians to vote well, they must be well. It is the only reasonable solution: in fact, no one talks about it.
Il Fatto Quotidiano, November 8, 2023
English translation from the original Italian article
