From Gaza to Rafah, lessons from world youth

After 7 months of conflict, Benjamin Netanyahu launched the military offensive against the city of Rafah without half measures. A diehard, and having nothing more to lose than his political future, no assessment of Palestinian victims or humanitarian distress in Gaza will stop the Israeli Prime Minister. He gives in or satisfies the interests of the most right wing of his coalition, ignoring the protests of a large part of Israeli public opinion, the protests of his American allies to whose remonstrances he no longer even responds, and obviously, the least of its worries, the pro-Palestinian demonstrations which are spreading across campuses almost everywhere in the West.

However, if the international community, all diplomatic efforts, the Security Council, the ICJ, and all negotiations have failed so far to obtain even a lasting ceasefire, the youth who are The ego could well have an unexpected impact.

First of all, never since the start of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has world public opinion taken such a position and been so mobilized, also at the cost of a hitherto unprecedented division which materializes in the reports of strength on campus.

But until now, it is the “Arab street” which in previous conflicts was the loudest defender of the Palestinian cause. The fact that there are now students from campuses of major universities and liberal schools in Western countries, including the United States, is not insignificant. The student communities that are mobilizing are diverse, in the sense that they certainly include members from the Near and Middle East, but they also include African-Americans, South Americans and Asians.

Because the mobilization against the war in Vietnam or May 68 in France, participate in the same mechanisms at work today and ironically it is the boomers who brandished “Make Love and Not War” who today are in charge facing the students indignant.

So what consequences does all this have for the war raging from north to south of Gaza? The most direct could come from the United States where President Biden, who has also courted young students throughout his mandate by canceling debts on tuition fees, could rely on the ongoing protest to accentuate pressure on the Israeli government a few months before the presidential elections.

While the question for Netanyahu is certainly to know which future American president to bet on, playing for time is on the other hand not an option for Joe Biden who risks his place double or nothing and whose campus heat risks setting the chances of re-election.

On the side of Europe, prey to the rise of the far right in power or at its doors, student mobilization disturbs and stigmatizes all the identity paradoxes of the old continent. Thus, in France for example, the mobilized students are “far left” and/or “Islamized”, facing a new nationalist right which does not lack irony and restores its image by positioning itself as the main defender of the struggle against anti-Semitism, since the real danger to combat is the place of Islam in France.

However, the sincerity of the mobilization of European youth, whatever one thinks of it, shakes up the ambient cynicism and can contribute to reshuffling the cards and forcing European decision-makers to commit further to lasting peace. This ongoing daily commitment of thousands of young idealists also has the merit of keeping coverage of the conflict on the front page of the news, so that all the too many victims of this war do not fall too quickly into oblivion.

In the longer term, we must imagine that these cohorts of students, from the four corners of the world, trained on prestigious campuses and with minds nourished by their university commitments, will certainly one day be in charge, here and elsewhere and that could have an impact on the lasting perception of public opinion and tomorrow’s decision-makers on the balance of power in Palestine. In the meantime, we must cherish the hope that the enthusiasm of today’s youth will succeed, like their elders before them, in turning history on the right side. “For the times they are a changin’. »

Zouhair Yata