Ivan Rioufol returns from Israel, a country more threatened than ever, while the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has just requested an arrest warrant against his Prime Minister.
Return to Sderot (Israel). A few days after the pogrom of October 7, 2023, which devastated this Gaza border town, I made my first visit there.[1]. At the time, 90% of the inhabitants had to flee the fanatical cruelty of Hamas. The cars abandoned in front of the police station, itself razed after the attack by jihadists, were marked with the bullets of the killers who appeared that morning.
Seven months later, the dead city breathes again. The majority of residents have returned; the same in the surrounding communities. If the artillery still thunders this Tuesday, the noise no longer startles the resident. The army has essentially ensured control of the responses. But Hamas’ resistance remains, despite six months of shelling. Israel did not win the war. As explained by Colonel Olivier Rafowicz, IDF spokesperson, met Monday evening in Tel Aviv: “The enemy is sophisticated. He has evolved more than us.” On the border with Lebanon, I was able to see that the country still lived under the threat of Hezbollah: 1,700 attacks (drones, missiles, rockets) have been launched by this heavily armed arm of Iran since October 7. The 60,000 Israelis evacuated from the communities closest to the border cannot return to their homes. Only certain kibbutzim in Galilee maintained their populations, under the protection of poorly armed “civilian interventions”. There remains a country which resists, youth in the lead, and which refrains from losing this war deemed existential.
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The people we met affirm: Israel will not bend to external pressures which play into the hands of Hamas. France’s choice to support the proposal of the president of the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants indiscriminately against the leaders of Hamas and those of Israel was seen as a betrayal. The possibility of a ceasefire is seen as a capitulation. The perspective of two States, reactivated yesterday by recognition of a Palestinian State in particular by Spain, is in reality no longer on the agenda. The determination to drive out the terrorist movement remains intact. This strategy involves, according to the soldiers met, the takeover of Rafah, in the south of Gaza: an operation feared because of the high density of the population.
According to Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, seen on Wednesday, Israel is not only waging a local fight, but “defends the free world”. He says : “We are experiencing a clash of civilizations.” He nevertheless recognizes that Israeli society, which has 20% Muslims, has “managed to live together”. A diagnosis tempered by the Minister of the Interior who, although he admits that “the clash did not take place”, recognizes the heterogeneity of Israeli Arab society which includes a “camp hostile to the Hebrew State”.
What future for Gaza? the question remains unanswered. But Israel rules out the return of Hamas or any other Islamist movement. The prospect of a civil administration of the territory under Israeli control is emerging. While waiting for a possible alternative from the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia. But can Israel, which has become the symbolic target of the Global South united against the West, still trust its few Muslim “allies”? The doubt is palpable.
[1] At the invitation, renewed these days, of the Israeli NGO KKL
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