Jean Pierre Filiu, a historian in Gaza: "It's the laboratory of a world without rights."

BarcelonaJean Pierre Filiu arrived this morning at Cidob wearing a khaki green sweatshirt with the words "Fight like Ukrainians(Fight like the Ukrainians) to talk about Gaza. The room was packed to the rafters to hear one of the few (probably the only) European intellectual to have set foot in the Gaza Strip in the last two years. A historian and Arabist, he had already risked his life in the Syrian war, and managed to join the Strip.

With this experience of a month and a half on the ground, he has written A story in Gaza (A historian in Gaza), which is leading essay sales in France. "It's much worse than anything you can imagine," he summed up. "When you're inside, you'd faint, and if you stay standing, it's to bear witness: a part of me is still in Gaza." Gaza, says Filiu, has become the "laboratory of a world without rights: the world of beasts where the law of the strongest prevails." With a long diplomatic career and historical perspective, Filiu has seen it all (he risked his life more than once traveling to Syria in the midst of the war), and he doesn't hide his bewilderment: "The dehumanization of the Palestinians has reached a level of atrocity that shocks me."

What is happening in Gaza, says the historian, is not a local or regional conflict, but a global one. In today's world, everything is connected, and Filiu wanted to express this with his clothing. "When I talk about Gaza, I think of Ukraine and vice versa." With his tone as a professor of Middle Eastern history at the Parisian faculty of Sciences Po, the former French diplomat has confirmed what everyone sees and very few European policymakers are willing to admit: "Putin and Netanyahu did everything in their power to bring Trump back to the White House—and now he's in the White House—and suffocate Europe, where the far right is growing relentlessly." And the European far right doesn't entirely agree on Putin, but it does close ranks when it comes to supporting Netanyahu when he implements his plan to exterminate the Palestinians.

Filiu maintains that Europe can only escape this triangle that is tightening its grip by ending the blockade of Gaza and seeking, not a ceasefire, but what he considers "the path to real peace": a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Invoking a two-state solution raises eyebrows among the audience because the Palestinian state has been wiped off the map and today seems like a pipe dream from international leaders who don't seem to have much interest in finding real solutions. But Filiu insists: "Just as one day a decision is made to establish a colony, it can be decided to withdraw it; it's a matter of political will."

The Arabist speaks clearly and is convinced that neither Netanyahu—a "cunning" political animal—nor Trump have any interest in ending the war in Gaza: "If necessary, they will bomb the corpses." And on Israel's horizon, for now, are the 2026 elections. For Filiu, the only actor capable of changing things is Europe. But Europe isn't there, and no one expects it, least of all as a "space of law." "Europe doesn't exist in Gaza. There is Israel, the United States, the UN, some Arab countries, and humanitarian actors. But there is no trace of Europe."

The French historian evokes geopolitics: Palestine is the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and this is clearer in Washington, from a distance, than in Brussels. Palestine is the geopolitical center, and Gaza is the center of Palestine. Gaza is the center, not the periphery, something that neither the leaders of the Palestinian Authority nor those of the Arab countries and the major Western powers have been able to grasp. This is best understood from the long-term perspective of a historian: Gaza, which, as Filiu recalled, was already Gaza in the era of the pharaohs, occupies the center. It is not Jerusalem, it is Gaza. As Filiu states, "everything begins and ends in Gaza."

Borrell doesn't mince his words.

After listening to him, the former head of European diplomacy and current president of CIDOB, Josep Borrell, closed the event with the tone of veterans who have escaped institutional responsibility. He reiterated that Netanyahu contributed to the growth of Hamas: "I saw the UN Secretary General explaining to European leaders how he banned UNRWA trucks from transporting sacks full of banknotes from Qatar for Hamas, with Israel's authorization." The Socialist politician said that parachuting food into Gaza, as several Arab and European governments, including Spain, have done, is "comedy."

Borrell criticized the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, for "waiting for 40,000 more deaths in Gaza before considering suspending trade relations with Israel," a "soft response." And he recalled Europe's historical responsibility for the disaster: "and a people without a land, and this was not true." This is the deep origin of the evil we refuse to accept. What do we do with this people? And he even recommended that Germans "go to a psychiatrist to rid themselves of their guilt complex: you killed the Jews, not the Palestinians."