The battle of Stalingrad claimed two million victims. Does that make it a genocide? Obviously not, since genocide is the deliberate elimination of a national, ethnic or religious group, or an entire people, and not a bloodbath that is more atrocious or on a larger scale than others. There were three genocides in the twentieth century, those of the Armenians, the Jews and the Tutsis, to which neither the 7 October massacre nor the bombardment and siege of Gaza can be compared.
Yet even UN “experts” no longer establish this difference, because of the passion and fury aroused by the tearing apart of the so-called “Holy Land” and by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. The fear is so widespread that we can no longer understand each other and we name things so badly that we add, to quote Albert Camus, “to the misfortune of the world”.
Words can clarify a situation or confuse it, stir up hatred or contain it, lock peoples into endless war or help them accept the idea of a compromise. Words have their own weight and dynamics. Just try talking about peace once the word “genocide” has been uttered.
“But what about the hatred?” comes the retort, and if you then recall that hatred was fading and was about to disappear when Palestinians and Israelis believed in peace thirty years ago, and that it would only take the revival of this hope for it to recede once again, the looks on other people’s faces tell you that dreams are nice but that reality is not.
True, reality is not nice at all, yet it is exactly realism that requires us to relaunch the idea of a peace based on the coexistence of two States, because if it is not that, what will it be? A hundred-year war or a bi-national state that nobody wants, and compared to which Lebanon would be a Switzerland. This is so true that the two-state solution is resurfacing today, that Washington is pushing for it, that the European Union is calling for it and that almost all Arab leaders are aspiring to it, discreetly but deeply. There is no denying it. It is a fact, yet you are immediately told that “it can’t work”, because the Israeli right-wing doesn’t want a Palestinian state, Hamas only wants to destroy Israel, the Israeli left has been defeated, the Palestinian Authority is on its last legs and so – even a child would understand this – there is “no one to negotiate with”.
Is that so? Really? Because in politics there are situations that are fixed for eternity? Because the Israeli right should necessarily survive after such a failure? Because the agony of the Palestinian Authority would be endless and Hamas would embody Palestine? Because the Israeli political left could not return to power sooner than we might imagine? Because this earthquake will not totally change the situation, as it did after the Yom Kippur War?
The only certainty is that nothing will change if no one attempts to do anything whatsoever, but what if the United States and the European Union decided to work on peace again, to give back some credibility to the idea of peace and to make it clear that in the absence of negotiations and an agreement, they would suspend their aid to the Israelis and the Palestinians?
On that day, everything will once again become possible because the Palestinians and Israelis are too exhausted to want the war to continue, but at this point in the debate, the chorus of those determined to do nothing is singing the tune of “it is too late”. We have heard this tune for a long time, burying the two-state solution and sobbing that we could not even think about it anymore, given the expansion of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories.
The West Bank, as they say, is “blighted”, but how many settlers are there now?
There are some 500,000, which is a lot, but four times less than the number of Palestinians living in Israel and who are Israeli citizens. If there were to be two states and Jews could live in Palestine with the same rights and security as Israeli Arabs in Israel, why would it be necessary to consider the forced evacuation of the settlers? Those who wish to leave will leave. Those who wish to stay can do so, as foreign residents or Palestinian citizens.
“Absurd”, “unthinkable”, “impossible”, one might say. Yes, absolutely, that is what it would be today, but when we stop adding to the world’s misfortuneby defining appalling killings and odious reprisals as “genocide”, we will realise that the only thing that is impossible is the status quo and that peace forbids nothing.
