Article published in Le Monde dated 31 December 2008
- Michel Tubiana, Honorary President, French League of Human Rights (LDH,
France). - Patrick Baudouin, Honorary President of the International Federation for
Human Rights (FIDH).
Hundreds of deaths, wounded patients filling the Gaza hospitals, words and
more words floating over the media waves and in pictures. Whether they damn,
annoy, justify, condemn, call for vengeance or reason, all these poor words fly
off in the ill-blowing winds of inertia that have been reigning for
decades.
The truce was broken, so it was said. Temporary interruption of a hot war.
Those were the six months during which Gaza was surviving, with the existence
of its inhabitants buried in tunnels that purvey what is needed for both life
and death. Return to the raw reality. We can detest Hamas and its blatant
refusal to accept the very existence of the State of Israel, we can and we
should also reject violence on all sides against civilians. In short, we can
denounce the spiralling violence once again, and start carefully pinpointing
where responsibility lies or curse the negotiators of tomorrow.
In the meantime, the violence goes on, openly and viciously like in the last
few days when it stifles a population that is already imprisoned. We are
overcome by shame because none of this was unforeseeable and we know the
remedies to this disease that is invading this region of the world and
unbridling passions everywhere else. Are we so hesitant, so void of common
sense to let things go on this way?
In the European Union, we have just shown support for the Israeli
authorities by granting them a preferred status. And to keep our conscience
clear, we will pay a few hundred million euros for the Palestinians to rebuild
what the occupiers will have destroyed and then make other investments
endlessly and, actually, without anything to show for it. As if peace, or war,
depended on money paid to hide powerlessness. Yes, no conflict has had such an
obvious solution: the Taba negotiations, the Geneva initiatives plus proposals
for peace made by the Arab Leagues. Nearly everything has already be written,
and the maps just need fine-tuning. But for peace to exist not only on paper,
the fallacious equilibrium must be corrected. The aim of Israeli politics is no
longer just to secure the safety of the State. This requirement is
unquestionably legitimate and is constantly present in the thoughts of these
people and their leaders. But no "reason of security" can justify taking over
Palestinian lands and water, and refusing to let the West Bank and Gaza
develop. Hamas is no longer anything but a convenient alibi. For a long time
already, the security discourse hides, barely veils, a desire to expand and
convince the Palestinians to go away. Beyond ethics that forbid depriving
people of their existence, we find the issue of the permanent existence of
Israel.
Either Israel recognises the existence of a fully sovereign Palestinian
state, installed on the total area of the West Bank and Gaza or the security of
Israel will not last longer than its military might, whose relative power
started to show during the war with Lebanon. Are the women and men who have
made this state an advanced post of the western world aware of what the future
holds? Do they realise that each person who dies in Gaza means a little more
hate against the rest of a world that is gauged according to the extent of its
lies and double talk?
Do they realise that this war enables Arab regimes to keep their people in
the grip of dictatorship and to reject all democratic progress? There is no use
in lamenting, even less of turning the belligerents into die-hard fanatics
while we have the means to end this conflict. And the European Union to start
with. The EU applies agreements of the past. The EU should change its policy
and stop treating Israel as a preferred partner. This is the only way to make
the Israeli government understand that it is a state like other states, with
rights, but also with responsibilities. Then and then alone, perhaps, the
international community will find the political resources needed to ensure
application of the right of all people to live in peace, within recognised
secure borders. This also applies to the Palestinians.