Two years since the Israeli massacre by Hamas
The macabre event, unprecedented in its magnitude in the difficult relations between Israel and Palestine, exposed vulnerabilities in security protocols and deeply shook the national consciousness of the State of Israel, which is accustomed to living under threat. Above all, it tested the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was politically worn down at the time—he has served the longest in the country's highest executive office—and who wasted no time in announcing Israel's military response in Gaza, with the intention of going all out to hunt down members of Hamas, the militia that has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2006, when they won the political elections.
Netanyahu, whose political survival since then has been tied to the development of Israel's war against Hamas, knows very well that there can be no prolongation of the current state of violence in that Palestinian territory bordering Egypt, as two years have passed since the aforementioned massacre, which has claimed the lives of 65,000 Gazans. Israel has not hidden its power to respond to the massacre of 7 October 2023, despite the mountains of criticism it has received from the international community, led by the United Nations, due to the indiscriminate military actions it has carried out against the Palestinian civilian population in violation of the rules of international humanitarian law, being charged with the crime of genocide twice, namely, the State of Israel by South Africa before the International Court of Justice, and its Prime Minister, Netanyahu, before the International Criminal Court, both supranational courts based in The Hague, Netherlands. Neither depends on the other and they are distinct, as states go to the ICJ and individuals go to the ICC. Both have a judicialised view of Israel.
When addressing the conflict in the Middle East, one must be careful not to lose critical judgement, but also not to renounce objectivity, given the mountain of information that floods the networks, often promoting currents of opinion in favour of or against one side or the other. After two years have passed, with two massacres in tow, regardless of the number of Israeli or Gazan deaths, the open window in diplomacy that my teacher, Ambassador Gonzalo Fernández Puyó, always taught me seems to be opening the way to a solution, where the return of the nearly 50 Israeli hostages plus the bodies of those killed in captivity, still held by Hamas, and the release of the members of this militia considered terrorist by Israel and therefore imprisoned in the country, is the central body of the negotiation. We shall see.
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Mackay, former Foreign Minister of Peru and internationalist
Article published in the Peruvian newspaper Expresso