The televised messages to the nation in the evening slot continue to have an unparalleled solemnity and solvency, no matter how analog television is, which is why it was the medium of choice last night by the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, to reaffirm a the nation “that there will be ground intervention” in Gaza. And that the worst is not the already seen with the bombings or saturated hospitals. “We have already killed thousands of terrorists – he said -. This is just the beginning.”
Very few Israelis believe that Netanyahu, a born survivor, can continue in power after the war ends after ruling for thirteen of the past fourteen years. Nor is it a relevant matter now. The prime minister himself said that once the war is over, not before, everyone will have to answer for the security fiasco of October 7, “including me”. The country only seems divided between those who are in a hurry to enter Gaza and those who want them to enter Gaza with or without a rush. There are no discrepancies about it.
The prime minister did not give any clue as to when the offensive will begin, a decision that corresponds – he clarified – to a war cabinet, with representation of liberal parties on the sidelines of the executive, labeled the most ultra-right in the history of Israel .
Annoyed these days with the version that it is Washington who manages the times and imposes patience, Netanyahu tried to show that it is he and his government who decide. For the first time, it included the fate of the more than 200 hostages among the priorities, in the line favored by Washington and “rewarded” by Hamas with the release of four of the kidnapped. Perhaps so as not to hurt Israeli sensitivities, President Joe Biden clarified yesterday that he has never asked Netanyahu to delay the ground offensive to facilitate negotiations on the hostages.
“We are in a war for our sovereignty, our existence, and we have set ourselves two fundamental goals: to eradicate the capabilities of Hamas and to do everything possible to bring the hostages back home,” Netanyahu said in a six-minute message. , very to the point.
The families of the abductees have achieved a formidable mobilization, with the rise of the media, and their stories count more and more in order not to put their lives in danger. The Israeli tradition has always prized the rescue of the kidnapped, even if they were soldiers and not civilians, over other higher considerations, so that it is considered equivalent to accepting blackmail. A columnist for Haaretz, a center-left newspaper, Gideon Levy, estimated yesterday that Hamas uses them and will continue to do so as “an exercise in public relations” and wondered “what do they get in return?”. In his opinion, they will be the currency of “thousands of Palestinian prisoners, some terrorists”. According to non-governmental organizations in Israel quoted by Efe, the prisons have gone from 5,500 Palestinian prisoners before the terrorist attack of October 7 to 11,000 today, most of them imprisoned without much legal consideration.
Meanwhile, Israel has engaged in a diplomatic row with the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, over a statement that he has considered misrepresented by Israel since – he said – at no time did he justify the actions of Hamas. Even so, the Israeli ambassador is demanding the resignation of the Portuguese, and on the ground he has been punished by not renewing the visa of a senior United Nations official, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths.
“It’s time to teach them a lesson” to these senior UN officials, the Israeli ambassador went so far as to say to the organization.
The background to the collision is the most serious: the health situation in Gaza, catastrophic according to all international organizations. That is, from the WHO to the UNRWA (United Nations Agency for Political Refugees), mostly included in the United Nations. His allegations about the subhuman conditions in hospitals and the deprivations suffered by Palestinians in Gaza upset Israel, where there is always a retort to any accusation.
The fight will continue in the next 24 hours in New York, where the Security Council is not expected to pass any resolution on the situation in Gaza. So far, the two presented – by Russia and Brazil – were overturned in the same Council and this is what is expected to happen with the two resolutions that the US and Russia are expected to present.
If any of the five members exercise the right of veto, the matter would be put to a vote in the General Assembly, where all the states “retreat”.
The war in Gaza plunges, as always, into the perplexity of whether or not a global body that is never able to avoid a war, contrary to its founding spirit after the Second World War, is of any use. Defenders of the United Nations always claim that, despite its shortcomings, the world would be worse off without the body and its organizations, which have become highly bureaucratized over time. The health and care crisis in Gaza would undoubtedly be worse without the work of United Nations professionals. His allegations – more than 7,000 patients in danger due to shortages, six hospitals on the verge of collapse due to lack of fuel or the saturation of 151 shelters for a displaced population of 613,000 Gazans – are the diagnosis of a drama and the palliative care of the same.
For skeptics about the effectiveness of the United Nations, it will be enough to contrast the images of the Gaza Strip yesterday, today and tomorrow with the diplomatic rhetoric without practical effects of the Security Council or the votes of the Assembly General, a who’s who of diplomacy without great effects on the ground. Israel’s relationship with the UN is worthy of study: it began with the decisive recognition of the State of Israel in 1949 – whether the neighbors liked it or not – and has ended in a bitter, almost permanent dispute that has not it takes Israel to sleep but gives it bad press on a global scale.