The World-Historical Significance of the War on Gaza
4 November 2024. From 12:00 | Conference | English | IEMedGilbert Achcar is Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS University of London). He obtained a degree in Philosophy (École Supérieur de Lettres, Beirut), and in Social Sciences (Lebanese University, Beirut). He holds a PhD in Social History/International Relations (University of Paris-VIII). Achcar has taught and researched in several universities and research centres in Beirut, Berlin and Paris. His research interests cover Globalisation, Global Power Relations, MENA countries, Sociology of Religion, and Sociology of Revolution. He has written extensively on politics, development economics, social change and social theory, and has collaborated with newspapers and magazines such as Le Monde Diplomatique and The Nation. His latest book is: The New Cold War: The United States, Russia and China, from Kosovo to Ukraine (ed., London: Westbourne Press, 2023). Among his publications: The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising (Saqi Books, 2013, 2022); Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in The Arab Uprising (Stanford University Press, 2016); Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism (Saqi Books, 2013); The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (Saqi Books, 2011)
ABSTRACT
The war that Israel has been waging on Gaza since October 2023 is of tremendous historical significance. It is, of course, a major turning point in Palestinian and Middle Eastern history with an impact comparable to that of the 1948 Nakba. The latter led to the destabilization of the whole region. No Arab-Israeli “peace process” will have any plausibility thereafter and nearby Europe will be directly affected. But the Gaza War is also a major turning point in the history of international relations. Its contemporaneity with the war in Ukraine has irremediably exposed the double standard of Western attitudes. By condoning a genocidal onslaught on a powerless population, with the United States even taking full part in it, Atlanticist liberalism has lost whatever credibility it still retained, thus invalidating the attempt to give the New Cold War an ideological dimension.