Colored portrait of Czeslawa Kwoka, 1943 (©Marina Amaral/Wilhelm Brasse)
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A Palestinian protester confronts Israeli soldiers during the demonstration against Israeli settlements in the West Bank village of Beit Dajan on Jan. 6.
Daliah Scheindlin, head of the study on the Israeli side with Tel Aviv University's International Mediation and Conflict Resolution Program, commented that "Support for a non-democratic system has surpassed the two-state solution for the first time."
Scheindlin's Palestinian counterpart, Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Political and Opinion Research in Ramallah, said it was becoming "increasingly difficult to find public support for peace.”
And this was last Tuesday, during a joint press conference reported by the Israeli daily Haaretz : since then, there have been nearly 20 deaths on both sides.
Ashes of Oslo
On the Palestinian side, there is still a very slight leaning in support for the two states over the hypothesis of a single state dominated by Palestinians: 33% v. 30%.
On the Israeli side however, the study shows a serious discrepancy between the opinions of the Jewish majority and the Arab minority: On the Jewish side, the curves have reversed, with 37% in favor of a single state dominated by Israelis, compared to 34% advocating for two states. Only among Israeli Arabs, who make up 20% of Israel's population, were 60% of respondents in favor of the two-state solution.
And, according to the survey, only one-quarter favored a single democratic state, in which citizens would have equal rights.
Compared with previous side-by-side studies, this year's results express a widening loss of hope, the absence of any prospect of negotiation and peaceful coexistence. This is part of a long process that has been going on since the failure of the Oslo Peace Accords, signed in September 1993, 30 years ago this year, which were intended to lead to the emergence of two states living peacefully alongside each other.
Extremist victors
The difficulties in implementing the Oslo Accords rather quickly undermined confidence, but the final blow came from the fierce opposition of extremists on both sides: the Palestinian Hamas, which carried out bloody attacks in Israel through the 1990s, and the actions of Jewish religious extremists, such as Baruch Goldstein, perpetrator of the 1994 Hebron massacre, and Yigal Amir, the assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. These are the figures who can today claim victory, having helped destroy the very idea of peace among the two peoples.
There is support from a significant minority for violence as a method — on both sides
What last week's study also reveals is the support from a significant minority for violence as a method of action, on both sides. This is yet another disturbing development in the light of history, and the fatal spiral we have been witnessing for months — not to mention in just the past few days — confirms this trend.
In last year's violence, 150 Palestinians died, and the first month of 2023 is particularly bloody: 27 Palestinians died, and seven Israelis died as well, as the cycle of assassination and revenge has been triggered.
Masked Palestinian gunmen from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of the Fatah movement during the demonstration for the Palestinians who were shot dead by the Israeli army in 2022, in Balata refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, on Dec. 24.
Nasser Ishtayeh/SOPA Images/ZUMA
Dreaming of apocalypse
What is worse, there no longer exists any significant political force on either the Israeli or the Palestinian side capable of reversing the course of events. For the past month, Israel has had a government that includes far-right leaders who dream of an apocalypse — in the biblical sense of the word — which they see as a way to expel Palestinians and annex their territories.
Itamar Ben Gvir, Minister of Security, lives in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, on the outskirts of the Palestinian city of Hebron, south of Jerusalem, from where Dr. Baruch Goldstein set off to murder innocent Muslims at prayer in February 1994. His grave, located in the settlement compound, is the object of a cult.
And on the Palestinian side, the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas is completely discredited, lacking both legitimacy and authority, giving way to civil society groups, some of which have chosen a hopeless armed struggle.
International bystanders
The so-called international community, an outdated expression that lost all meaning a long time ago in this part of the world, has little control over the situation.
Where can we look for that rupture that will prevent the conflagration of a land that's already seen too many tragedies?
Inaction in the face of this tragic impasse is one of the grievances of a share of the opinions of countries in the developing world when the West calls on them to defend international law in the war in Ukraine. The UN resolutions on Palestine have remained unheeded for five decades, and everyone looks the other way, starting with the Arab countries that signed the Abraham Accords to open diplomatic dialogue with Israel.
Where can we look for that rupture that will prevent the conflagration of a land that has already seen too many tragedies? Who will be able to instill a bit of hope in two peoples who see no other perspective than violence?
It is impossible to say today: the spiral of confrontation seems difficult to stop. And it is a safe bet that, if nothing is done, the next "Palestinian-Israeli Pulse" study will show even less desire to coexist, and more and more thirst for domination of the other as the only solution.
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