Senior members of the army and intelligence services are leading the protest against Benyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, who is accused of leading the country to ruin. What if salvation were to come from the army?
“Words have meaning”: this reminder from the Quai d’Orsay on the announcement of the first conclusions of the International Court of Justice in The Hague in the case brought by South Africa against Israel, accused of genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. Words have a meaning and, in this case, the word “genocide”, coined in the aftermath of the Holocaust by the jurist Raphaël Lemkin, a survivor of Nazi extermination, has been distorted by the accusing country, a friend of Iran, and by the judges in The Hague. Admittedly, the Court has not yet delivered a final opinion. But it ordered the Hebrew State “to prevent any act of genocide and to prevent and punish its incitement”. Hamas immediately applauded this news, trumpeting the need to “force the occupiers to implement the Court’s decisions”.
I spent ten days in Israel with the great photographer Nadav Neuhaus. We met people who witnessed 7 October at first hand, as well as former hostages held in Gaza. We also viewed footage shot on the day of the tragedy that had never been broadcast. Everything, absolutely everything, adds up to confirm the extent to which Hamas committed the worst abuses.
The Israelis no longer want them. The incendiaries who enabled Benyamin Netanyahu to become Prime Minister again in November 2022 are now hated by a public traumatised by the massacres of 7 October. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister of National Security – Israelis have renamed him “Minister of National Insecurity” – Bezalel Smotrich, in charge of Finance, and Yariv Levin, Minister of Justice, architect of a detestable reform rejected by the public, have a political future as compromised as their master Netanyahu.
Israeli bank Hapoalim has estimated the cost of the current military operation against Hamas at 27 billion shekels (€6.5 billion). This is equivalent to 1.3% of Israel’s GDP in 2022. Other sources consider this amount to be an underestimate: it will have to be at least double that, given the damage caused, reconstruction, compensation and aid for the most vulnerable sections of the population.
You have to get used to it, Israel is not a country like the others. Normalcy, the ultimate goal of the Zionist project, is still out of reach, in the way the world looks at the Jewish state or in the way it looks at itself. Who would have imagined that Benyamin Netanyahu’s downfall would be brought about by the most disparate, original and unlikely coalition on the planet’s political scene?
There’s no need to go to the Armani Hotel’s kosher restaurant unannounced. It’s better to book well in advance. As for the terrace, it is crowded, in order to be able to attend a unique show mixing water jets, sounds and lights. Draped in his white dishdasha, the traditional dress of the men of the Gulf, our interlocutor tells us that in the lounge of a large hotel in Dubai, he recently found himself the only Arab among dozens of Jews. “But if this continues, there will be more of them than us!” he says with a smile. When they signed the Abraham Accords in September 2020 normalising Emirati-Israeli relations, the Emiratis expected to welcome a wave of visitors from Tel Aviv. But it is a wave that has swept through the Gulf. As for the Western Jewish communities, they no longer say “next year in Jerusalem”, but “the next holiday in Dubai”!
On 9 March, a Brazilian plane landed on the tarmac at Algiers airport. Its holds were reportedly full of doses of vaccine delivered by Israel. Algeria is already supplied with Russian Sputnik and Chinese Sinopharm vaccines, which is not surprising. Health logic follows diplomatic logic. But Israel! The country most vilified by the Algerian media, the target of all the conspiracy theories! Is the information, broadcast by the I24 news channel, which broadcasts from Tel Aviv in French, English and Arabic, serious? Even if it is only a rumour, it has the advantage of making people think.
A recent confidential Western memo recounts an incredible story that saw Israel, Iran’s sworn enemy, provide Tehran with sensitive equipment for its military nuclear programme!
It was election day in Jerusalem. A day in the recent past – September 17 – but it could be a near future because Israel is blocked. The Hebrew state fails to give itself a government. He voted in the spring, voted again at the very beginning of the fall and is afraid of a third election.
