How do we choose the cover of the weekly newspaper when a major news story like the one we are experiencing in the Middle East seems to dwarf all other news in the world? We’ve been asking ourselves this question every week for over a month. How can we not talk every time about the war between Israel and Hamas, about the number of people that keeps increasing, about the consequences of this war for Palestinians, Israelis and the rest of the world?
It’s a balance that’s sometimes difficult to find and is the subject of much editorial discussion. This week we return (on the 7 Day pages) to the battle for Gaza and the fate of the hospitals that have become hostages to the war. We also offer you (on our Middle East pages) an exceptional article published in The Orient – The Day – accompanied by archival photos, maps and landmarks – to better understand the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An essential historical perspective by Élie Fayad, evoking a long history of missed opportunities from the 1930s to the present day.
“What we must particularly bear in mind,” he writes about the Oslo Accords, for example, “is that between 1993 and 1996 a real peace dynamic was set in motion for the first time in the Middle East.” [Mais] In November 1995, the murder of Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing extremist Jew was the first act of death in the peace process. “The streets will now return to the extremists.”
Extremists, Jews and Palestinians, who have held the conflict hostage for a century, explains Élie Fayad, with the complicity of false Arab (and now Iranian) friends. However, he wants to believe there is a solution.
“This historic compromise, based on the two-state principle and the 1967 borders, is to date the only sensible outcome because it brings the nihilists on both sides back to back.”
A story that you absolutely have to read.
However, we dedicate our front page to a different topic: ecological transition, or rather climate policy, at the center of a new culture war in Western societies, to use Paul Krugman’s words The New York Times.
Today, especially in the United States, lobbyists are no longer the only ones speaking out against the energy transition. A sign of growing hostility to science and elites, “climate protection.” [est] “Today this is seen as an ideological battle,” complains the American economist. In 2022, Joe Biden passed his major climate law. If they win the 2024 presidential election, Republicans have promised to “dismantle nearly all federal clean energy programs and increase fossil fuel production.”
According to Donald Trump, “The transition to electric cars is a ‘transition to hell’ that will destroy our ‘fabulous way of life.’ He is far from the only political leader allergic to green,” he explains The Economist.
In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is making further announcements along these lines. He recently approved new oil and gas production in the North Sea and rejected the ban on the sale of new thermal cars… Green politics is becoming a contentious factor. “We find a certain rhetoric according to which a powerful class would impose its decisions on the weakest, the worriers The Observer. The same as at the time of Brexit.”
Elsewhere in Europe we find the same divide that populist parties surf. In Sweden, a model country when it comes to wind energy, resistance against “steel forests” is being organized, it is said Dagens Nyheter. Within the EU, the European People’s Party is leading the revolt against the nature conservation law.
A big leap back from when you would have thought the heatwaves, storms and floods of summer 2023 would have been enough to convince people of the need to act. “We are experiencing the opposite phenomenon,” he assures The New Zurich Times.
“More and more EU citizens are shying away from new guidelines and bans [du Pacte vert].”
In view of this observation, the Zurich daily calls on “technocratic Brussels” to be inspired by the Swiss method: encourage rather than prohibit. This is the biggest challenge for public policy in the coming years.