The triumph of the will
The festivities in Tel Aviv and Sharm al-Sheikh, Trump's triumphant speech before the Knesset and the signing of the peace agreement in a Red Sea resort in the presence of some thirty world leaders, all this euphoria of power, should be read in parallel with realities such as the one Cristina Mas told us in her Sunday report in this newspaper. It explains how the olive groves of the West Bank, the basis for the survival of so many families, have been razed without ceremony: ten thousand olive trees uprooted in forty-eight hours by squads of bulldozers protected by the Israeli army. For Palestinians, olive trees represent the economy, but also the landscape, heritage, culture, memory, identity. This event reminds us of the fiercely colonial nature of a war that is also one of ethnic cleansing. The worst thing about war is the dead, but war is not only the dead. It is many things at the same time, and anyone who wants to believe that hatred for one side or the other will subside, and that the pressure on Palestinians to leave their homes will no longer be wrong. The children of farmers whose olive trees have been taken from them before their helpless eyes, and who have been abandoned to desolation and the elements, do not jump for joy at the passing of official delegations. They will live with the mark of the humiliation inflicted on their parents.
The ceasefire and the release of Hamas hostages and Palestinian prisoners and detainees are, in and of themselves, excellent news, but they do not, for now, mean the end of anything. They are merely the beginning of a precarious ceasefire, even more so given the authoritarian and fickle nature of its promoter, a Trump, immersed in a narcissistic delusion of being the king of the world who can give or deny life at will. Due to its very magnitude, this delusion can backfire at any moment. On the other hand, we must not forget that Trump's partner in this adventure, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a man of the past. Bibi Netanyahu is an unscrupulous profiteer who now defends the ceasefire and the possible peace agreement strictly because it is more beneficial to his own survival than continuing to listen to his ultra-right government partners, who would rather not stop the war.
Peace in the Middle East remains to be seen: what we do see is a truly historic moment of messianic personality worship for a leader. Trump has managed to be acclaimed as a hero, a providential figure, with attributes somewhere between imperial and semi-divine, which is how he believes he should be seen. If this fact is already dangerous for him, the instability—the fragility, at its core—of the character makes him even more so. Today, Trump displays energy and appears pleased to the world; however, tomorrow, he could be disappointed by anything. The triumph of the will It is the title, with Nietzschean echoes, of the documentary by Leni Riefenstahl that portrays the moment of the consolidation of Adolf Hitler's power as the undisputed leader of the National Socialist Party, in September 1934 in Nuremberg, by acclamation and to general enthusiasm.