The Diplomat
“The objective is to destroy Gaza, this absolute evil,” said Dror Eydar, former Israeli ambassador to Rome from 2019 to ’22, on Rete4. Not to destroy Hamas, but Gaza: a territory inhabited by 2.3 million Palestinians who, in the vast majority, have no connection with Hamas. A significant portion of adults at most voted for Hamas in the last and only legislative elections for the Palestinian National Authority in 2006 when we Westerners explained to them that they should become democratic and freely elect their representatives. Then, since Hamas won both in the Strip and in the West Bank, the USA and the EU began to economically boycott not Hamas, but the Palestinian Authority, starving and pushing people further toward extremists. However, half of the population consists of children who do not vote but will vote. And, by continuing to treat them this way, we can imagine for whom, provided someone still calls them to the polls. “We,” the former ambassador added, “are not interested in rational discussions. Anyone who threatens a Jew, who wants to kill a Jew, must die.” But he forgot to explain how to recognize among those 2.3 million civilians, almost all unarmed, who wants to kill Jews – unless one assumes that they all want to and must all be exterminated.
Just the idea that such a person who uses such language is a diplomat, if it were not tragic, would be comical because it is the antithesis of diplomacy, even the most hypocritical one that uses persuasive tones and soothing expressions to conceal the worst atrocities of the country it represents. But the fact that the Israeli government sends figures like Eydar around Europe to explain its reasons speaks volumes about the obtuseness of Tel Aviv’s current leadership. Even if we momentarily forget the horrors taking place in Gaza, it does not pose the slightest concern about international consensus, convinced that any war crime will be allowed to avenge the terrifying “pogrom” by Hamas on October 7. It is the terrible summary of the Israeli-Palestinian history of these 14 years of the Netanyahu-Hamas era: the systematic bipartisan sabotage of the 1993 Oslo Accords, signed by Arafat and Rabin on the principle of “two peoples, two states,” and continued by Sharon with the withdrawal from Gaza. That principle, so popular in the West, has long disappeared from the Middle East’s radar: Israel is as large as Apulia but has the population of Lombardy; the West Bank is the size of Liguria, and Gaza is a tenth of the Aosta Valley, each with the population of Calabria. Far from “two peoples, two states,” today the most likely outcome is “no people, no state.”
Il Fatto Quotidiano, October 28, 2023
This is an automatic-generated translation from the original Italian article
