By Armin Sijamić
Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, triggered a series of events in the Middle East and around the world. The consequences are impossible to list, and the entire process with an uncertain end is still ongoing.
Hamas's attack on Israel almost twenty months ago shocked the world. 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and 251 hostages were taken. Israel then attacked the Gaza Strip, and soon a front opened along the border with Lebanon when the Shiite Hezbollah came to Hamas's aid. Shiite Iraqi militias fired rockets and drones at Israel, and the United States intervened against them. The Houthi of Yemen and Iran, which attacked its greatest regional enemy twice directly, joined the war. Israel attacked targets in Iran once, in Yemen multiple times, and countless times in Syria, where Bashar al-Assad's rule was replaced by the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
All these clashes, except for the one between Israel and Hamas, have mostly stopped or been reduced to occasional actions by the warring parties. A short ceasefire in the Gaza Strip was the most that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to. In Israeli attacks since October 2023, nearly 55,000 Palestinians have been killed, including about 17,000 children. The Gaza Strip has been razed to the ground.
Netanyahu does not want to end the war in the Gaza Strip. Under various pretexts, he has rejected various peace offers, as testified by numerous officials. Former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Netanyahu, for example, rejects Saudi Arabia's demand to stop the war in the Gaza Strip and create a clear path towards a Palestinian state in exchange for Riyadh's recognition of Israel. Rejecting even such an offer shows that Netanyahu does not want the war in the Gaza Strip to end.
Western Credibility
That Netanyahu's right-wing government is responsible for the war continuing has become clear even to the West, where any criticism of the Israeli government was systematically suppressed. But after it became impossible to hide the scale of the destruction of the Gaza Strip and the suffering of the Palestinians, some decided to act, joining the majority of countries in the world calling for peace and a state for the Palestinians.
Donald Trump's return to the White House was a tailwind for Netanyahu, leaving Europeans to take care of what French President Emmanuel Macron, at the end of May, referred to as "credibility," which the West will "kill" if it "abandons Gaza."
Macron's statement came after a series of others that Netanyahu's government did not like. Macron has repeatedly spoken about the crimes in the Gaza Strip, the suffering of civilians, the need to end the war, and has never questioned Israel's right to act like any other state.
To similar comments from almost all parts of the world, Netanyahu and his supporters responded that such criticism of Israel is "anti-Semitism." On the list of the accused were the United Nations and its Secretary-General, the International Court of Justice, former Pope Francis, former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, officials from several countries and international humanitarian organizations...
The label of anti-Semitism is recently bothering Germany, which strongly supports Israel. Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul warned the Israeli government about ten days ago not to use accusations of anti-Semitism to pressure Berlin over criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza and the suffering of civilians there.
Suffering That Cannot Be Ignored
"There is no water. There are no medicines. We can no longer evacuate the wounded. Doctors can no longer enter," Emmanuel Macron said in an interview in mid-May, describing the situation in the Gaza Strip and adding that "what is happening is a disgrace." When asked by journalists whether the term "genocide" describes what is happening in the Gaza Strip, Macron said that it is up to "historians" to assess and that "it is not up to the president of the republic to say 'this is genocide' or 'this is not genocide'."
However, many believe that genocide is being committed in the Gaza Strip, and because of this, numerous countries have reported Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu to international courts, despite threats from the United States that court officials involved in these processes will be subject to US sanctions.
Thus, the West found itself accused of complicity in crimes in the Gaza Strip, because support for Israel was present since Hamas's attack, and some countries even intervened militarily to save their ally from attacks by Iran and the Houthis. In addition, the supply of weapons to Israel did not stop.
"I tell you this conscientiously: We cannot act as if nothing is happening. So, we will have to increase pressure on these issues," Macron said in the aforementioned interview when asked about the possibility of sanctions against Israel. A few days later, the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and Canada, Keir Starmer and Mark Carney, joined him, jointly stating with Macron that they would not "sit idly by" in the face of the Israeli government's actions in the Gaza Strip.
Macron, Starmer, and Carney did not spare Israel's allies. They accused Netanyahu's government of wanting to expand military operations in the Gaza Strip, preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid, and warned them that they would take measures against Israel if they continued with the construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian State and Western Morality
However, what angered Netanyahu the most was the announcement by France, the UK, and Canada that they would consider recognizing a Palestinian state. Macron has been talking about this for months, and in about ten days, together with Saudi Arabia, he will organize a conference at the United Nations on the future of Palestine, i.e., on the so-called two-state solution, which Netanyahu persistently rejects.
Some believe that France will recognize Palestine as an independent state then, becoming the first G7 member to do so. On the other hand, some believe that this will not happen and that the West still has no intention of doing so, especially since the Trump administration opposes it.
Last week, Macron tried to explain his involvement in Israeli-Palestinian relations to end the war at a forum in Singapore, where he spoke about the aforementioned erosion of Western credibility. In that speech, he linked the issue of the Gaza Strip and Ukraine, and then went a step further – the issue of Asian countries if a confrontation between the West and China occurs.
Macron said then that the United States and Europe risk losing credibility and being accused of "double standards" if they do not resolve the wars in Ukraine and Gaza soon, referring to future processes in Asia. He appealed to Asian countries to build a new alliance with Europe so as not to become "collateral damage" in the confrontation between China and the United States. "If both the US and Europeans are unable to resolve the Ukrainian situation in the short term, I think the credibility of both the US and Europeans who pretend to solve any crisis in this region would be very low," Macron said.
Macron's actions show that Paris is not dealing with the Gaza Strip for its own sake, but sees it as part of a broader geopolitical arrangement in Eurasia. The suffering of Palestinians is perceived differently by the West and the rest of the world, and Macron is well aware of this.
While Russia's aggression against Ukraine continues and Trump threatens to stop US aid to Kyiv, Europeans need every ally, especially in Asia. At the same time, Trump is heading for a confrontation with China, and this conflict requires the entire West and many countries around the world. The West's "double standards" policy will certainly weaken that front, and the approach to the Gaza Strip could be paradigmatic. In a potential strategic divergence between Trump and European allies, Macron, with his policy towards Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, aims at least to improve Brussels' position.
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