2023-10-12 10:05:24
It took three days before we were able to take stock of the Hamas attack delivered on Israeli soil, at the gates of Gaza, on October 7. Three days before being able to access the scene of an unprecedented tragedy in Israeli history to take its full measure. In this harsh light, the observation is implacable: unprecedented massacres have been perpetrated by Hamas militiamen in Israeli localities.
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Unprecedented in the number of victims. Unprecedented in the level of violence deployed. Civilians paid the highest price. On the site of the rave party organized near Gaza, in the kibbutz of Be’eri as in that of Kfar Aza, where The world was able to go with others on October 10, the testimonies of the rescuers and the survivors describe an indiscriminate rampage which fell on children, adults and the elderly.
Added to this is an unprecedented number of hostages transferred to Gaza in order to serve as both bargaining chips and human shields against the operations of the Israeli army. Operations which, in three days, have already caused the death of more than a thousand people, again mainly civilians.
Given the passions that the Israeli-Palestinian drama has always aroused, it was predictable that this horror would fuel controversies over the classification of these massacres. The facts speak for themselves. Mass crimes of incredible violence were committed on October 7. Recognizing this provides the main lesson for Palestinians.
An indiscriminate force
The legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, the freedom to live in complete security within their own state, cannot be contested by anyone who respects law and history, and it is not a question of telling Palestinians who should represent them. . But, after this appalling bloodbath, the worst for them would be if Hamas became the figure and the exclusive voice of their demands.
The inhabitants of Gaza have already experienced its ruthless rule. We can only note that, by its confinement in an irrevocable refusal of the existence of Israel and by its recourse to terrorism and to the violence such as it was unleashed around Gaza, Hamas is the guarantee of an endless conflict. This violence also fuels another radicalism, improperly backed by the Jewish religion, which, on a strict ideological level, comes from the symmetrical refusal of the slightest sharing of the earth as well as the recognition of another people.
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Hamas thrives on rubble. Those left by the Israeli army when it strives to regularly eradicate it in Gaza, using a force which also turns out to be indiscriminate. Those of a Palestinian Authority based on a moribund Palestine Liberation Organization and on a dead party, Fatah, now reduced to the role of security proxy for Israel. Those of peace dialogues which disappeared with the return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu in 2009, after missed opportunities in which the Palestinians took their full part. Those of an international diplomacy, finally, which has turned away from the Palestinian issue by subscribing to the hazardous thesis of its inevitable extinction. But Hamas is not content to thrive on these ruins. He has just added the massacres of October 7 which, by crossing the threshold of barbarism, say what it is.
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