The Mandela solution or eternal war

There are always key moments in human conflict when history seems to waver, leaving the protagonists to choose between the best and the worst.

Such a moment occurred in the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict in 1993. At the time, the choice was between a political solution, i.e. the Oslo Accords, or thirty years of increasingly bloody wars.

The choice of the Israeli Right was to sabotage the two states solution, to opt for brutal colonization in the occupied territories, the strangulation of Gaza and a  soft apartheid in Israel itself. These catastrophic choices led to the war against Lebanon in 2006, against Gaza in 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2023

The So-called normalization with Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have only been reconciliations with despised regimes, not with peoples who remain deeply hostile to any agreement that neglects the rights of the Palestinian people.

The horrors of the last war in Gaza- the Arab Stalingrad – and the wars to come are mainly the result of policies aimed at achieving chimerical and dangerous objectives.

Obviously, The Zionist project dreamed up by Herzl in 1897 and realized by Ben-Gurion in 1948 has reached an impasse.

 Its two objectives – to provide the world’s Jews with a haven of peace and security, and to combat anti-Semitism – have failed.

Today, the only place in the world where Jews are permanently killed, injured and threatened is Israel. This has been going on since the creation of the state, with one war after another becoming increasingly destructive. This is why more and more Israelis are emigrating and fewer and fewer Jews are seeking refuge in Israel.

While cultural anti-Semitism in the West seems to be receding, political anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world is exploding, especially after the Israeli army’s latest atrocities in Gaza.

Given Israel’s policy of imposing itself on the Arab world by force alone, denying all rights to the Palestinian people, these two phenomena are set to worsen, posing a serious threat to Jews worldwide and to all the peoples of the Middle East, including the Israeli people.

The failure of the Arab nationalist project is equally obvious. The legitimate rights of the Palestinian people have not been protected or restored. Slogans such as “throw the Jews into the sea” have been used to install military dictatorships that have not won a single war against Israel, but have won every war against their own people by opposing the democratization of our countries.

To these two failures we can add a third: that of the West, and more specifically of the United States

Instead of promoting peace, notably during the last war in Gaza, it encouraged an extreme right-wing government to pursue a genocidal war. Instead of promoting democracy in the Arab world, it preferred to support all dictatorships accepting normalization with Israel, ignoring the opinion of the Arab peoples and the rights of the Palestinian people.

After this latest catastrophic war against Gaza, we are once again at a crossroads: the political solution or eternal war.

Most of Israeli society, not just the ruling right, stubbornly rejects the right of the Palestinian people to a sovereign state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The blockade of Gaza, continued colonization and soft apartheid in Israel, which claims to be an exclusively Jewish state, seem to be strategic choices common to Israeli society

Believing that we can achieve peace, called normalization, with discredited Arab regimes while subjugating the Palestinians and ignoring the will of the Arab peoples, is more a matter of magic than politics.

Far from being defeated, Hamas, which the West and the Israelis call a terrorist movement, is in the process of becoming an example for an entire nation, for whom it is an example of a great national resistance movement.

 Gaza’s resistance is already inspiring Palestinian and Arab youth, who dream only of avenging themselves against Israeli vengeance.

This is why Unfortunately; eternal war seems to be the most likely future.

Only a political solution can prevent the whole region from drifting towards eternal war, but which one?

You only have to look at the map of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Jewish occupation plan for Jerusalem to understand how illusory and outdated the two-state solution is.

It is simply  impossible to achieve, even if Israel were to accept it. What can be done, given that the millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza will neither disappear nor emigrate from this land that is theirs?

What a paradox it is that it is the most nationalistic Jews who have made a purely Jewish state impossible!

So what political solution?  The answer is simple: a bi-national democratic state where the two peoples, enjoying the same rights and freedoms, can finally live in peace side by side, like French-speakers and English-speakers in Canada, Flemings and Walloons in Belgium, whites and blacks in South Africa. We could call this political choice the Mandela solution

It’s no coincidence that it was South Africa that took Israel to the Court of Justice in The Hague for genocide in Gaza.

Facing the judges of the court meeting on January 11, 2024, the Israeli and South African delegations represented two opposing solutions to the same terrible problem.

What to do when history brings two peoples into violent confrontation, as celestial mechanics does when two meteorites collide?

The “Mandela solution” is based on the principle that nothing lasting or good can be built without recognition of the Other and the establishment of a common framework for life that respects the rights of all, thus rendering violence obsolete.

At the other end of the political spectrum, we have the” Netanyahu solution”. It is based on the principle that the Other must accept to live under occupation, blockade and discrimination. It’s based on the most primitive idea in politics: where violence doesn’t solve the problem, an even greater violence can.

Only the “Mandela solution” can avoid this tragic fate.

Moreover, you’d have to be blind not to understand that the triumph of democracy throughout the region depends on the Mandela solution. If the West wants to win the war of political systems and values against the Russian, Chinese or Iranian models, it won’t do so by arming a state sliding towards a fascist theocracy, or by supporting Arab dictatorships hated by their peoples.

On the contrary, such a policy can only accelerate the hemorrhaging of democracy in Israel, block Arab democratization and ultimately weaken Western democracies themselves

But how can we dare speak of such a solution when the hatred of the Israelis on October 7, and of the Palestinians and Arabs before and after October 7, has never been so powerful?

Let’s remember  that human hatreds are like thunderstorms. Even the most violent and destructive eventually calm down and disappear, leaving behind only damage to repair and bad memories to forget.

 Let’s remember also that the Germans and the French, the Russians and the Germans, the Japanese and the Americans, the Koreans and the Japanese fought terrible wars, but today they are friendly peoples. Berlin, Stalingrad and Hiroshima have been rebuilt, and are more beautiful today than before they were destroyed.

Where are we to find men of the calibre of Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Frederik de Klerk, who made the South African model possible?

There are certainly men and women capable of rising to the level of these giants of history. All they need is courage, tenacity and the knowledge that they alone can avert a catastrophe with incalculable consequences.

Palestinians, Israelis and their respective friends, the true statesmen and women of democratic countries, must start thinking together about this only serious alternative to eternal war and the destruction of the entire Middle East region.

While we wait to treat the root of the evil, we must treat its painful symptoms, which cannot wait. Hostilities must cease on all fronts, all prisoners on both sides must return to their homes, the blockade of Gaza must be lifted once and for all, reconstruction must begin as soon as possible, the wounded and traumatized must receive the care they need, and settlement on the West Bank must come to an end.

Of course, not all great dreams come true, but everything great that human beings have ever achieved has always been a dream. We simply have to dare to dream and get to work so that our dream doesn’t remain just a dream.

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