What was expected to happen did happen. The unleashing of repression and abuses by the Israeli army in the occupied territories since the takeover of the coalition government composed of racist, supremacist, and ultra-religious far-rights was retaliated against on the evening of January 27, by the bloody attack on a synagogue in a settlement on the outskirts of Jerusalem, followed by other attempts to attack Israeli settlers. 

This vicious circle was unsurprising. On the one hand, the deliberate provocations of Israeli ministers eager to demonstrate to Palestinians that they have the upper hand in terms of power, and on the other, the rise of deadly despair in the face of  deteriorating  living conditions in the West Bank and the absence of any outlook for peace  have led to the current escalation. If nothing is done, there are risks that the conflict will reach unlimited proportions that no one will ever be able to contain. 

Nothing will be done though, and for several reasons. The first is that the Extreme right is deeply rooted and endlessly anchored in  monitoring Israeli opinion, whatever the scale of the demonstrations against the current government. Such anchoring lies in the policy adopted for more than fifty years by the Hebrew State to subjugate and humiliate at will a population that refuses to be reduced to a non-human condition. “A people who oppress another cannot be free ,” Marx once wrote. The explicit or tacit approval of the majority of Israeli society with regard to the settlement enterprise has led to the rise of its most extremist fringes, which have become the majority over the decades. The Israeli people are today under the control of the latter, just as they knowingly placed under their control the millions of Palestinians in the territories conquered in 1967. The democrates' protests against the way state leaders have established a military theocracy will be of no avail if they fail to relate to their long-term held beliefs concerning the other side of the “green line”. 

Cowardice and lack of insight 

Another reason for this escalation is the silence of Western governments in response to the extremist drift of the current Israeli government. Not a word was spoken in their capitals against the daily deaths, under IDF bullets, of Palestinian civilians, including children and the elderly. Though not legally binding, the  vote on the latest resolution of the United Nations General Assembly  against the continuation of the illegal colonization of the West Bank revealed how France abstained, giving a green light to this flagrant violation of international decisions. Worse still, the president of the French republic, Emmanuel Macron, received Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with all honors a few weeks later, without even mentioning what his government is doing to Palestinians. 

As for the United States, by rightly condemning the death of Israelis during the January 27 massacre near a synagogue in East Jerusalem, President Joe Biden dared to speak of an attack "against the civilized world", as if the Palestinian dead were not part of this world. By this yardstick, and given the frequency of mass crimes committed on their territory, the United States had overcome this issue a long time ago. Once again, the leaders of Europe and North America, who rush to condemn attacks on the rule of law whenever it suits them and claim to defend the values that they pretend to adhere to, are using this scandalous double standard, which makes the rest of the world shy away from their declarations. I was one of those who immediately condemned the Russian aggression against Ukraine and I am well aware of the threats that Putin’s imperialism represents . But we must be consistent: if we denounce here an invasion and an occupation, we should at least not turn a blind eye to other invasions and occupations. However, not only does the West refuse to see the series of oppressions going on in the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan, but it encourages it with its boundless indulgence vis-à-vis Israeli policy. 

Eventually, everyone will have to bear the consequential burdens of such cowardice and lack of insight: the Palestinians in the first stance will continue to suffer the destructive assaults of the occupying soldiers, but also the Israelis and their state itself, which will not will be able to endure  if it permanently uses the war tool. Additionally,  Jews throughout the world are likely to become victims of those who conflate the necessary criticism of Zionism and its excesses with intolerable anti-Semitism. 

Today, Palestinians are left to their fate. Arab states abandoned them after taking advantage of their struggle for their own benefits and needs. In addition to their short-term strategic reckonings, Westerners are still crippled by their desire to remain oblivious to how anti-Judaism was one of the basic fundamentals of European culture, to such an extent that they have become obsessed with the Nazi genocide. They believe that if the most atrocious Israeli policies are left unpunished, this can atone for their past crimes. When the cynicism of some is coupled with the lack of insight of others, this paves the way for the abyss. Nothing can put an end to this tragedy unless we recognize, whatever the cost, that so far everyone has been on the wrong track.