A "suggestion" for peace

The imposition on one million Palestinians to leave their homes and flock to the south of their tiny territory, the siege of Gaza that is leaving two million people without food or water, the bombardment of civilian populations that has already resulted in more than 4,000 deaths, including 1,400 children, and tens of thousands of homes destroyed. It is an obtuse response even before it is unlawful. War is only between States. Calling the atrocities of 7 October war is tantamount to elevating Hamas to the level of a public army.

To respond by bombing civilians is to lower the State to the level of terrorists and to compact the Palestinian people with Hamas.

Israel would still have a way to break the link between Hamas and the Palestinian people, not to confuse the two million people living in Gaza with criminals, and to recover the identity of a democratic state.

If it considered the 7 October aggression not as an act of war, but as a horrendous crime not shared by millions of Palestinians, it could perform an act of extraordinary foresight and political intelligence: the opening of a gap in the border with Gaza, in order to allow all clearly unarmed Palestinians, first and foremost children and women, to enter Israel, to hospitalise the sick and wounded in hospitals, and to offer the displaced, albeit temporarily, food, water, medicines and assistance.

It would be, if it were possible to delude oneself, a magnanimous act of humanity, all the more noble and unexpected because it was in response to a vicious crime that caused so much dismay and pain. It would be a demonstration, now more necessary than ever, of the radical asymmetry between the uncivilised inhumanity of terrorist acts and the civilised humanity of public institutions. Above all, it would be an enormously effective political act. It would have the effect, more than any discourse, of radically disassociating the Palestinian people from Hamas, and even disarming - politically if not militarily - the criminal organisations that claim to represent them. It would facilitate the release of hostages. It would contradict the enemy's destructive logic. By saving tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians, it would be worth disassociating the Israeli people from the inhuman and irresponsible policies pursued until yesterday by Netanyahu.

It would be the sign of a turning point, a first step towards peace, otherwise unattainable, and in any case towards a political solution to the drama. The spiral of revenge, on the other hand, can only be broken by those who are stronger, and breaking it would be the true manifestation of the Israeli government's strength, incomparably greater than any military success.

Instead, like all rational answers, this hypothesis is totally unrealistic, a dream.

Moreover, institutional illiteracy is generalised: everyone - politicians and commentators - speaks of Hamas' aggression as an act of war, and not as a terrorist act, and indeed they do not even understand the vital need to distinguish between the two things: exactly as after 9/11, when the criminal massacre of the two Towers, immediately called war, was answered with two wars and hundreds of thousands of deaths, instead of with the mobilisation of police forces around the world to identify and punish the culprits.

It is certain that the language and practice of war can only further poison the Palestinian issue, inflame identity conflicts into ever more explosive forms, fuel fundamentalisms, and make the spiral of hatred and revenge endless, at the end of which there will only be ruin and the substantial defeat of both peoples.