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Stéphane Amar: "The Palestinian Islamic Jihad constitutes a real threat to the State of Israel"

2022-08-08T16:31:47.268Z


INTERVIEW – From August 5 to 7, the Jewish state carried out targeted raids in Gaza against leaders of the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad, considered terrorist by Western countries. The latter retaliated by launching numerous rockets at Israel. The journalist, who lives in...


Stéphane Amar is a journalist, he has lived in Jerusalem for more than 15 years.

He published

The great secret of Israel, why there will be no Palestinian state (

ed. of the Observatory, 2018).

FIGAROVOX.

- From Friday to Sunday, the Israeli army shelled the Gaza Strip as part of a "preemptive attack" in the words of the Israeli authorities.

What triggered this confrontation?

Stephane AMAR.

-

No particular event.

The Israelis wanted to do battle before the Islamic Jihad significantly improved its offensive capabilities.

Since the last major confrontation in May 2021, Hamas has observed some restraint.

It no longer fires rockets at Israeli territory and has not led a campaign of attacks.

Islamic Jihad, on the other hand, has intensified its attacks on Israel.

Both by firing rockets from Gaza and by staging deadly attacks in the heart of Israeli cities from the West Bank.

In recent months, the Israeli army has increased the arrests of militants and the targeted assassinations of leaders of Islamic Jihad.

Operation "Dawn" is in a way the culmination of the Israeli campaign against this armed Islamist group.

Prime Minister Yair Lapid said he was carrying out a "precise counter-terrorism operation against an immediate threat", that of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, "an auxiliary of Iran" which wants to "kill innocent Israelis".

What is the reality of this threat?

Both of these statements are correct.

Islamic Jihad targets civilian populations and is financed by Iran, which may seem paradoxical because all Muslims in Gaza and the West Bank are Sunni.

Islamic Jihad shares Tehran's radical hostility to the Jewish state and wants to wipe it off the map.

In this sense, it constitutes a real threat to the State of Israel because I remind you that Gaza is located only about thirty kilometers from the Tel-Aviv agglomeration.

That said, the Islamic Jihad remains a small armed group with limited military capabilities, as we have seen in recent days.

In addition, it evolves in territories strictly controlled by the Israeli army.

This control is exercised from the inside in the West Bank, from the outside in Gaza and it prevents any massive import of heavy weapons.

This is the big difference with the other armed arm of Iran, the Lebanese Hezbollah, which has taken on the dimension of a real army because it evolves in an almost autonomous territory.

Islamic Jihad shares Tehran's radical hostility to the Jewish state and wants to wipe it off the map.

Stephane Amar

The Israeli government has decided to spare Hamas.

How does the latter position itself in the current crisis?

Hamas' attitude may seem surprising.

The Tsahal carries out murderous raids under its nose and it is content to react with condemnations.

I think that this strategy responds to a double interest.

On the one hand, Hamas takes a dim view of the anti-Israeli outbidding of Islamic Jihad.

After all, Hamas built its popularity by exposing Yasser Arafat's PLO's supposed weakness to Israel.

He would not like the Jihad to do the same and should not be too upset to see it taking the battering from the Tsahal.

In addition, Hamas has been talking for several years about the possibility of a long-term truce with Israel.

Detente took on a concrete dimension this year with the daily entry of several thousand Gazan workers into Israel.

This "immigration" implies a form of agreement between the two parties.

The current Prime Minister, the centrist Yair Lapid, openly wants a new era of economic cooperation with the Palestinian enclave.

These two factors, military and economic, undoubtedly explain the moderation of Hamas.

A ceasefire was approved on Sunday;

are we heading towards a lasting cessation of hostilities?

There can be no definitive cessation of hostilities without a political settlement.

However, the conditions are still not met.

The two-state solution, the unsurpassable diplomatic horizon of the last fifty years, will never see the light of day.

Israeli colonization has reached a point of no return, particularly in East Jerusalem.

It mortgages in advance any compromise based on a division of the territory.

For my part, I think that the solution to the conflict lies in the creation of a single state over Israel and the West Bank with equal rights for all citizens.

From a position of demographic strength, Israelis are beginning to consider this solution.

In this view, Gaza would become an independent state.

But it will probably take several decades.

While waiting for the conflict, the intensity of which is decreasing year by year,

Who would have imagined just two years ago that delegations of Moroccan businessmen would follow one another in Tel Aviv, that the Emiratis would receive Israeli tourists with open arms or that Saudi Arabia would open its airspace to Israel?

Stephane Amar

A little over a year ago, in May 2021, similar clashes opposed Israel and the Gaza Strip.

What has changed since?

Has the situation changed?

I note two major developments.

First, the growing attachment of Jews to Jerusalem and more specifically to the Esplanade of the Mosques, to the Temple Mount.

Amid the clashes on Sunday, more than two thousand Israelis, including two nationalist lawmakers, marched to the holy site to commemorate the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and pray for its reconstruction in place of the mosques.

For its part, Islamic Jihad said in a press release that the blood of military leaders killed by the Tsahal "would

fuel the campaign for Jerusalem

".

This conflict began in Jerusalem in 1929 and the holy city is back in force at the heart of the tensions.

At the same time, and this is the second major development, we are witnessing the consolidation of the Abraham Accords.

This process, which involves no concessions on the part of the signatories, produces spectacular effects.

Who would have imagined just two years ago that delegations of Moroccan businessmen would follow one another in Tel Aviv, that the Emiratis would receive Israeli tourists with open arms or that Saudi Arabia would open its airspace to Israel?

We are witnessing a profound geopolitical upheaval in the region.

If nothing comes to stop the process, it should lead to the constitution of a vast zone of prosperity and peaceful coexistence in the Middle East.

This cooperation will necessarily promote Israeli-Palestinian rapprochement and, why not, a settlement of the question of Jerusalem.

SEE ALSO -

Residents of Gaza and Tel Aviv react to the truce between Israel and the Islamic Jihad

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2022-08-08

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