On the occasion of the publication of his book “Israel-Palestine, Year Zero”, published by Le Bord de l'eau, David Khalfa, co-director of the North Africa and Middle East Observatory at the Foundation Jean-Jaurès, looks back on October 7 and its consequences. Written in collaboration with Israeli and Palestinian researchers, this collective work aims to escape from a destructive binary logic. “Marianne” went to meet him.
Marianne : You publish Israel Palestine, year zero published by Bord de l’eau. In this work, you called on contributors, four Israelis and four Palestinians. What is the genesis of this project and why did you do it this way?
David Khalfa : Writing this book was a form of catharsis for me. This project is first and foremost the result of a feeling rather than a reflection. It was born from a feeling of suffocation and oppression in the face of the radical nature of the public debate and the ideological polarization which quickly saturated the political-intellectual field after the massacres of October 7.
Very quickly, a very Manichean vision of the conflict took hold and two camps crystallized, each locked in a tight information bubble. I found this atmosphere unbreathable. What struck me was the extension, in our latitudes, of the logic of war which prevailed there with a form of collective irrationality, which is partly explained by the pervasiveness of postcolonial memory, of that of the Shoah, but also by the presence of the largest Jewish and Muslim communities in Europe.
