Michèle Sibony: A second Nakba? The responsibilities of the “international community”
Today, the position adopted by the international community, translating the Western powers, following the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, gives a new blank check to the Israeli government, at a crucial moment. We have known the goal sought for a long time, clearly formulated and translated into actions in the West Bank in recent months by the Israeli regime: as few Palestinians as possible on a maximum of territory annexed from the sea to the Jordan. In other words, a land emptied of its Palestinian inhabitants and open to colonization, a true “great replacement” as some say, others speak of settler colonialism, and the Palestinians call this moment a second Nakba .
The Israeli demand to evacuate the city of Gaza (one million inhabitants) to the south must be read in this paradigm of expulsion to Egypt (or genocide). Western pressure on Egypt to agree to open a “humanitarian corridor” towards the Sinai confirms a common vision with Israel. Yet wouldn’t it be time to impose a ceasefire and the exchange of still living hostages for Palestinian prisoners? Hostages that the Israeli regime has obviously decided to sacrifice, and this is a great first. Wouldn’t helping to get out of chaos rather than maintaining it be the expected role of the international community?
The latter has accumulated responsibilities during all Israeli operations against Gaza.
1time responsibility: never having agreed to take into account the UN reports on the war crimes committed against the civilian population of Gaza by Israel, during the “cast lead” operations in 2009, and the “protective edge” in 2014 , contenting itself with expressing reservations about the “proportionality of Israeli responses” to what it considered to be Hamas aggressions. This maintenance of impunity and this refusal to stop Israeli offensives through the threat of sanctions has reinforced among Israelis, government after government, the certainty that there is no limit to what we can do. in Gaza, and that they risk nothing by exercising all possible excesses there, starting with the use of prohibited chemical weapons such as white phosphorus, but also the use of human shields, shooting and bombing of heavily loaded areas in population… let’s remember Gantz’s boasting about returning Gaza to the Stone Age after the 2014 Operation Protective Edge.
2e responsibility: guaranteeing the maintenance of the headquarters of this territory since 2006, 17 years! By exerting no pressure on Israel to stop, and by simply listing Hamas on the list of terrorist organizations, the international community has taken responsibility for the isolation and demonization of this entire enclave of 2 million 300,000 inhabitants, men, women and children, leaving them no other choice than survival and immense anger against the injustice and violence exercised on them, which grows day by day. The constant silence of this community on the abuses committed by the settlers and the army in the West Bank, moreover, shows that it is not simply a question of Hamas, and of Gaza, but that it abandons to their fate all the Palestinians.
From these two responsibilities arises a third: that of the “savage” Israeli response to the Hamas attack.
The posture adopted by this international community, instead of imposing the protection of all the populations concerned and the search for a peaceful and just solution, allowed and favored the Palestinian attack of October 7 and the blood of all the victims of the conflict which pits Israel against Gaza is also on its hands.
We will have to study (history will tell) what it means to have encouraged and supported the Jewish state to commit such crimes… Personally, I call this anti-Semitism.
Palestine Media Agency
