Gaza is under total invasion, but the Italian government remains silent.

You don't have to be an experienced geopolitical analyst to understand that these are crucial weeks for defining the new balance of power in the Middle East and, even more so, for a possible solution to the Palestinian question.

First and foremost, however, Netanyahu would need to fully clarify the long-term exit strategy for the Gaza Strip following the announcement that the Israeli army is beginning to complete its occupation. In the coming days, the Strip, already tiny and further deprived of a large buffer zone and military security corridors, will be transformed into the set of a horror film , a splatter subgenre, with two million people even more crowded into the remaining patches of territory, monitored from above 24/7 by killer drones, perhaps already equipped with software to automatically eliminate suspects or potentially dangerous individuals. A sort of Big Brother with bloody suppression of competitors, or a gigantic Truman Show for the drones' remote operators.

For years, Israel has been waging a campaign of extrajudicial killings of its declared or perceived adversaries wherever they are, based on unilateral, unquestionable, and arbitrary decisions, even when they are sitting at the same negotiating table. This practice has been widely condemned internationally but continues unabated. Netanyahu has reiterated that his government firmly opposes the creation of a Palestinian state, considering it an existential threat to Israel . But if the option of two states for two peoples is ruled out, the only option left is a single binational state encompassing both Israel and the occupied territories, with equal rights for all residents. The numbers suggest that in this case, the Jewish population, approximately seven million, would equal the Arab population. Unless the undeclared objective is to annex Gaza (currently excluded) and the West Bank after ethnically cleansing the Palestinian and Bedouin communities.

For too long, the Palestinian question has been allowed to fester, guilty of hiding behind the hypocritical cover of a dead-end negotiation process that should have proceeded with a stalemate, that is, maintaining the status quo. Instead, Israel has used this process to increase its penetration and expand settlements. The resolution adopted by an overwhelming majority in the Knesset on July 28, calling for the extension of Israeli sovereignty to "Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley," as the West Bank is called by the Israeli media, merely spells out an annexation plan that the Tel Aviv government is only waiting for the right moment to formalize . Following two resolutions from the United Nations General Assembly, the international community attempted to make its voice heard in the same days as the Knesset. The " High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Resolution of the Palestinian Question and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution " held at the UN headquarters resulted in the New York Declaration, signed by the 22 members of the Arab League, the 27 member states of the EU, and 17 other countries, including Canada, Great Britain, Brazil, and Turkey. Israel and the United States refused to participate, with the latter launching a shameful boycott campaign, using all kinds of diplomatic pressure to prevent the initiative from taking off .

In addition to unequivocally condemning the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, and demanding the release of all Israeli hostages, the text calls on Hamas to transfer weapons and supplies to the Palestinian National Authority in the Strip. It reaffirms its rejection of any action that would lead to territorial or demographic changes, including the forced displacement of the Palestinian civilian population, which constitutes a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law . It supports the deployment of an international stabilization force under UN auspices, reviving the two-state solution. Unfortunately, as has often happened in the past, nothing is said about how to translate words into action. The EU, as usual, is trailing behind the Arab League, which itself demonstrates a lack of determination. A convenient excuse that, however, individual countries can evade. France, for example, announced its recognition of the Palestinian state in September, followed by Malta and, perhaps, Portugal and Finland; Slovenia has halted all military cooperation with Israel; Belgium has advocated suspending Israel from the European Horizon program; and even the right-wing Dutch government has gone so far as to impose sanctions on the Jewish state's supremacist ministers, Smotrich and Ben Gvir. And Italy? Yes... Italy... For Giorgia Meloni, any recognition of Palestine "is counterproductive." It's better to postpone it, therefore, until there are no Palestinians left in the occupied territories.

AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi/LaPresse

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