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TOPIC: israeli palestinian conflict

Geopolitics

Where To Look When The Very Idea Of Peace Is Gone?

The signing of the Oslo Accords 30 years ago was followed by a failure that set back the very idea of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. A look back at this historic episode and the lessons we can learn from it today.

-Analysis-

PARIS — Thirty years ago to the day, I was standing in Jerusalem's Old City, near the Jaffa Gate. Two young Palestinians were putting up a poster of Yasser Arafat when an Israeli guard appeared.

Everyone froze in fear, thinking a confrontation was about to happen. But the soldiers went on their way without a care in the world for the young Palestinians. Arafat's face appeared on a wall in Jerusalem.

A few hours later, thousands of miles away, on the White House lawn, the famous handshake took place between the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, overseen by U.S. President Bill Clinton.

They had just signed the Oslo Accords, which they hoped would put an end to a century of conflict — just like the scene of détente I had witnessed in Jerusalem.

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This Happened — September 13:  The Oslo Accord Is Signed

The Oslo Accords consist of two main agreements: the Oslo I Accord, also known as the Declaration of Principles, was signed on this day in 1993, in Washington, D.C. The Oslo II Accord was signed on September 28, 1995, in Taba, Egypt. These agreements marked significant milestones in the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, though they didn't ultimately live up to their promise.

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Why Israel's "Splendid Isolation" Is Doomed To Fail

The Israeli army's operation last week in the Jenin camp was particularly striking in its scale and violence, further undermining any hope of appeasement in the region or the newfound alliance with Arab countries, or even among American Jews. What if Israeli politics, instead, was inspired by the nation's Netflix series scriptwriters?

-Analysis-

PARIS — On television screens around the world, the images appear in a steady chain, one after another — and they start to blend together.

There are endless divides between Ukraine and the West Bank: geography, history, geopolitical stakes. Everything except the most fundamental point: civilian victims. By intervening as they did in Jenin a few days ago, the Israeli armed forces were targeting an operational command center of the "Jenin Brigades."

But this intervention, the largest since 2005 (counting between 500 and 1,000 men, accompanied by armored vehicles, under the protection of the air force and drones) took place in the heart of a refugee camp of 14,000 people. Refugees who are often the children and grandchildren of Palestinians who have been – or are still – living in camps since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

This escalating violence is unlikely to lead to a third intifada, but it does make any hope of a political solution even more far-off and abstract. Was the Zionist ideal embodied by Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion to impose survival of the fittest on its neighbors? Could that somehow erase from memory the Jews' own tragic history, in which they found themselves in the position of the weakest? Do children who've been abused tend to reproduce, as adults, the abuses of which they were the victims?

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Israel-Palestine, The Eternal Proof That Violence Is The Absence Of Politics

Israel's military operation in Jenin is the latest escalation of bloodshed. Once again, the language of violence has prevailed because there is no political solution on the horizon.

-Analysis-

PARIS — Who still believes that a military solution is possible between Israelis and Palestinians? No reasonable person, apparently. And yet, once again, the language of violence prevails when there is no political solution possible or foreseeable.

This observation could have been made half a century ago just as it is being made today, following a rapid-fire full-scale war operation carried out by the Israeli army in Jenin, in the northern part of the West Bank. A terrorist attack claimed by Palestinian Hamas islamists has also occurred in Tel Aviv.

We hadn't seen anything like this from Israel in 20 years — airstrikes, tanks, hundreds of soldiers assaulting a densely populated Palestinian city.

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In The News
Yannick Champion-Osselin, Emma Albright, Michelle Courtois and Anne-Sophie Goninet

Israel Raids West Bank, France Riots Abate, Philippines Tourism Lies

👋 Aniin!*

Welcome to Monday, where at least five are killed as Israel launches a large-scale operation in the West Bank, China sees hottest six months on record, and a Filipino advertising agency gets caught using videos from foreign countries. Meanwhile, we look at the origins of France’s particular “tradition” of car burning.

[*Ojibwe, Canada]

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Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

The West Bank On Fire? Ask The 'Pyromaniacs' In Netanyahu's Coalition

In the West Bank, tensions are at a new high after the death of a 15-year-old boy during a clash between Israeli forces and Palestinian protesters. The incident, coupled with the growing influence Israel's far-right political figures and an intensified use of force, is pushing the region to a critical point.

-Analysis-

PARIS — The last time the Israeli army used a combat helicopter against Palestinians in the West Bank was 18 years ago, during the second intifada. That's the sort of violence reached Monday in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, where an Israeli attack helicopter opened fire to free soldiers under attack.

The Israeli army had raided the center of Jenin to arrest a member of the Islamist movement Hamas. They were greeted by explosive devices and gunfire, which stoked a heated battle. Five Palestinians were killed and 91 wounded, as well as several Israeli soldiers. A Palestinian journalist clearly wearing a press insignia was hit in the abdomen.

The escalation may not stop there. Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right minister granted responsibility over the Palestinian territories, quickly tweeted: "We must put an end to one-off actions, and launch a vast anti-terrorist operation in northern Samaria" – the religious name for the West Bank. While settlers agree with this proposal, the army is apparently reluctant to carry out such a high-risk operation.

But this was not an isolated incident: it must be understood in the context of rising tensions in the West Bank – since the beginning of last year – even before the coalition with the extreme right.

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Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

A New Palestinian Martyr, And Israel's "Other" Crisis That Won't Go Away

A Palestinian has died from a hunger strike in an Israeli prison, exacerbating the cycle of violence in the region. Israeli's protesting Benjamin Netanyahu''s right-wing government have little to offer to resolve the eternal crisis of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

-Analysis-

Khader Adnan, a 44-year-old leader of the radical Palestinian organization Islamic Jihad, had been imprisoned in Israel for the 10th time when he began his third hunger strike on February 5, which would prove to be fatal. The resident of Jenin in the West Bank was found unconscious in his cell Tuesday, and declared dead upon arrival at the hospital after 86 days of refusing food and medical care.

Israeli authorities claim that Adnan had refused all assistance, but an Israeli medical NGO asserts that Israel denied a request for hospitalization as his condition deteriorated.

Islamic Jihad immediately declared Adnan a "martyr," though he was accused of "endorsing terrorism," and rocket fire was reported after his death from Gaza , the organization's stronghold. However, the widow of the Palestinian activist addressed the leaders of the jihadist group: "You did nothing to save him while he was alive, so do nothing after his death," she said. "It is my nine sons who will avenge their father in due course."

The ancient "eye-for-an-eye" law of revenge is still holding strong.

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In The News
Emma Albright & Renate Mattar

Trump Pleads “Not Guilty,” Zelensky In Poland, Forbes’ Richest

👋 Talofa!*

Welcome to Wednesday, where former U.S. President Donald Trump pleads not guilty to 34 felony counts, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrives in Warsaw, and Elon Musk is dethroned as world’s richest man. Meanwhile, Ukrainian journalist Anna Akage looks at why Vladimir Putin continues to delay a second round of nationwide mobilization, even as Moscow’s troops continue to suffer major losses in Ukraine.

[*Samoan]

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Society
Catherine Cornet

On Israel's 'Phony' Fight For Democracy

Praise in the West has been heaped on the popular protests in Israel that have halted undemocratic judicial reform proposed by the Netanyahu government. But this supposedly noble fight for democracy doesn't apply to 20% of its citizens, not to mention the policies carried out in the Occupied Territories.

-OpEd-

Protests against proposed justice system reforms have rocked Israel for weeks. Opposition to the reforms proposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government — the most right-wing, xenophobic government in Israel's history — have been described in newspapers around the world as an example of people fighting to defend their democracy.

But for many Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, who have largely chosen not to participate in the protests, these are not demonstrations for democracy.

Palestinians, who make up 20% of Israel's population, have stayed home during the anti-government demonstrations because “the protesters are not calling for democracy for all citizens of the country, but only for the Jewish ones, thus perpetuating inequality and occupation," Ibrahim Husseini writes in Al-Araby Al-Jadid.

“Even before the current government of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel was a phony, reprehensible and completely anomalous democracy," the Balad party, a nationalist, left-wing Arab political party in Israel, wrote in a statement.

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Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

Israel And The West: The Crisis Is Real

Israel's judicial reforms by its far-right government have been met by widespread protests. Now the country risks breaking long-formed bonds with key allies in the West.

-Analysis-

PARIS — Which country in the world has just refused to receive Josep Borrell, Europe's top diplomat? Which country has a finance minister who travels to the United States and France without making any contact with the governments of these two countries?

That country is Israel, which is not used to being a near pariah in the Western world. It is true that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was received in Paris by French President Emmanuel Macron, and also in Rome by Italian Council President Giorgia Meloni, and is currently in Berlin to meet with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

But if Israel's head of state, with decades of personal relationships with both European and American leaders behind him, is received, it might not always be to have his government's choices praised.

At the heart of the problem lingers the political crisis that was triggered by the coalition that Netanyahu has built with the far right in Israel: the latter is carrying out a judicial reform deemed undemocratic by a large part of Israeli society. The protests that have been going on for weeks have a real international impact.

It is a sign of real unease when it did not even take three months to see such a deterioration in relations.

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Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

Israel's Parallel Crises, And The Whiff Of Civil War

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's return to power with the most right-wing government in the country's history has revealed a deep schism in Israeli society between settlers and secularists.

-Analysis-

Israeli society is facing an intense and unprecedented moment in its history. There have been other protest movements in the past, such as the hundreds of thousands of people gathered against the war in Lebanon in 1982 or the economic demonstration of tents on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv in 2011.

But in the current wave of protests, there is an existential dimension. It's different than during wars, where it's been literally the physical survival of the Israeli state; this is rather existential in its identity, political system, and the weight of religion.

This is sometimes difficult to understand from the outside, where we often view this part of the world through the lens of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is also escalating. An attack in Tel Aviv on Thursday reminded us that the two crises are evolving in parallel.

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In The News
Ginevra Falciani & Laure Gautherin

Ukraine Denies Pipe Sabotage, Georgia Protests, Holi Kickoff

👋 Hoi!*

Welcome to Wednesday, where Ukraine responds to a report about its involvement in the Nord Stream gas pipe sabotage in November, protests over press freedom rock Georgia's capital Tbilisi and the beginning of Holi celebrations coincide with International Women’s Day. Meanwhile, Karl De Meyer in French daily Les Echos takes us on a trip to Umeå, Sweden, a city where urbanism and feminism are words that go together well.

[*Dutch]

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