Year XXXVIII, Number 3, November 2025

Lucio Levi
Editor of The Federalist Debate. Former President of Movimento Federalista Europeo.

How was it possible that the country that served as a refuge for millions of Jews who escaped the Holocaust the most terrifying genocide in contemporary history was transformed into an ultra-nationalist state, itself the architect of a massacre that seems to be evolving into a full- blown genocide?

In 1947, the UN approved Resolution 181, which envisaged for the partition of Palestine, then under British mandate, the formation of a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, and a special status for Jerusalem. The plan did not materialize because, when Israel declared independence in 1948, the Arab countries invaded it and were defeated. The Jewish state that was formed was larger than the 1947 plan, while large areas assigned to the Palestinian state ended up under the rule of Egypt (Gaza Strip) and Jordan (West Bank). With the Six- Day War (1967), the Gaza Strip and the West Bank came under the control of Israel, which occupied them militarily. This marked the beginning of the authoritarian, imperialist, and colonialist degeneration of the State of Israel.

With the Oslo Accords (1993) between the Israeli government and the Palestinian factions represented by the PLO, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was created, a body of partial self-government of the Territories with the aim of creating an independent Palestine, an embryonic state. Thirty years after Oslo, the Palestinian state has not been established. Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been under the control of Hamas. It took power by force, and separated it from the West Bank.The PNA formally governs the West Bank, but it is greatly weakened, while Israeli settlements are constantly expanding.
 
Today, Gaza has been almost completely razed to the ground and is largely reduced to a pile of rubble, while the autonomy of the PNA is increasingly limited.

Netanyahu’s most recent decision has been to impose thetotal military occupation of the Gaza Strip, which could be described as the ‘final solution’ to the Palestinian question, i.e. annexation and the return of Israeli settlements so that the Palestinian question no longer represents a threat to Israel. The alternative offered to the Palestinian people is a choice between starvation and death under the bombs. Reports coming in (not all of which can be verified) claim that Israeli forces, in addition to daily bombings of Gaza, have repeatedly opened fire on crowds waiting for aid. Each day, civilians risk their lives to obtain a meager portion of assistance. There is a third alternative: the forced emigration of one million Gaza residents to the Horn of Africa. This would allow Gaza City to be emptied of civilians.

David Grossman, one of Israel’s most esteemed intellectuals, recently declared: “For years I refused to use the word ‘genocide’. But now I can’t help using it, after what I have read in the newspapers, after the images I have seen and after talking to people who have been there... I want to speak as someone who has done everything he could to avoid calling Israel a genocidal state. And now, with immense pain and a broken heart, I must acknowledge that it is happening before my eyes. ‘Genocide’. It is a word like an avalanche: once you say it, it only grows, like an avalanche. And it brings even more destruction and suffering.”

Actually, as Israeli historian Benny Morris has clarified, ‘genocide means the destruction or attempted destruction of a people... a political decision... involving the killing of millions of people’. The historical precedents cited by Morris are the genocide of the Armenians by the Turks a hundred years ago and the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews.“That is not what is happening in Gaza,” argued Benny Morris. He concluded that “it could turn into something similar... There has been a process of dehumanization by the Israelis towards the Palestinians and, incidentally, by the Palestinians towards the Israelis, which could eventually result in genocide, but we are not there yet... Undoubtedly, war crimes have been committed by Israel... But these are war crimes, not genocide.”

Currently, the Israeli army controls about 75% of the territory of Gaza. Netanyahu’s new plan is to launch a new military offensive to conquer the remaining 25% of the Gaza Strip, bringing the entire Strip under Israeli military occupation, despite strong internal opposition and the erosion of international support for Israel.

This is no longer a defensive war aiming to secure Israel’s safety. It has become a war of conquest. Until now, Israel has sought to pursue two goals simultaneously: freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas. After nearly two years of attempts, it is clear that these two goals cannot be pursued together.

The terrorist actions of Hamas, which acts in Gaza as the government of a sovereign state on an ethnic basis, have confirmed that the coexistence of two independent and sovereign states on the same territory is not capable of ensuring peace.

Ultimately, the widely supported formula of two peoples and two states – entailing the formation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza – has proved impracticable due to the presence of around half a million Israeli citizens in the occupied territories. The only peace initiative that seems viable is that supported by the European Federalist Movement, which is based on three points:

1. the immediate suspension of Israeli settlements;
2. the start of the constituent process of a Palestinian state, which would include neighbouring Arab countries with the participation of the powers that have supported a peaceful solution to the conflict; this phase represents an opportunity for the EU to regain its role as a peacemaker, which is its most genuine vocation;
3. the launch of the constituent process of an Israeli-Palestinian federation, beginning with the pooling of strategic resources such as energy and water (similar to what happened with the ECSC for coal and steel), as proposed at the time by Jacques Delors to initiate the integration of the countries of the Middle

In conclusion, I return to the initial question. How was this possible? Countless pages have been written on the nature of evil. The disappointing answer is that neither literature nor philosophy can offer definitive answers on anything. A political solution is needed, one that goes beyond the simple establishment of two states, which would not prevent war, but which provides for the creation of common institutions, capable of resolving conflicts peacefully on the basis of law rather than force.