The French historian Jean-Pierre Filiu, specializing in the Middle East, analyzes in his latest book “How Palestine Was Lost and Why Israel Didn’t Win” the boundaries of Israeli military and political success and the current reasons for the failure of the Palestinian cause. He emphasizes that the troubled dynamics of Arab powers and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of a political solution have created a deadlock that can only be resolved through international will.
Filiu delves into the internal Palestinian conflicts and the fragility of Israel’s apparent victory. He explores the narratives and different confrontations between the adversaries, viewing them as crucial for the resumption of the peace process.
The historian recalls the existence of a Palestinian entity on the land before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994 under the Oslo Accords, mentioning how the Zionists clearly defined Palestine as their objective in the late 19th century. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 historically supported the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.
Following the Nakba in 1948, more than half of the Palestinians were forced to leave their homes, leading to Israel’s control over 77% of the Mandate Palestine, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Egypt managed 1% of Palestinian land in the Gaza Strip, which would soon become a center for reviving Palestinian nationalism.
Filiu’s book, released last Friday, details the continuous process of land expropriation over more than a century, highlighting how the Palestinian population “lost” their land, especially with the Palestinian Authority having limited sovereignty in a small part of the West Bank, only to the extent delegated by Israel. Hamas now only governs a devastated land in Gaza.
The French historian discusses the strong relationship between evangelical Anglo-Saxonism and Jewish Zionism, illustrating how evangelicalism tied its individual and collective salvation to the return of the Jewish people to their land, forming a historical alliance with the Israeli right.
He further mentions how Israel, since 1973, consciously encouraged Palestinian political Islam as a counterweight to the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s nationalism, even after the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood transformed into Hamas in 1987.
Filiu concludes that the current violence underscores the existential necessity of a two-state solution, as leaving both peoples head-to-head will only lead to a destructive downward spiral. He asserts that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a zero-sum game, and neither party automatically gains when the other loses. Israel faced its worst test during a moment where the balance of power was overwhelmingly in its favor.
