For a year, the United States has supported the unbearable: the methodical destruction of Gaza, life by life, house by house, as a logical response to the bloody madness of October 7, 2023. Everything was destroyed: schools, hospitals, refugee camps, mosques, churches, archaeological sites, cemeteries. And while tens of thousands of children were left amputated, orphaned, or killed, and Israeli hostages suffered under constant bombardment, we were told it wasn't over as long as Hamas still existed.

Now, it is in Lebanon that Israel is sowing untold death, under the pretext of putting an end to Hezbollah. But what have we witnessed in recent weeks, after 11 months of carnage? A relentless series of assassinations targeting political and military leaders from both Hamas and Hezbollah. One, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas' political leader, the very man who negotiated the Gaza ceasefire, was blown up in his Tehran hotel room; the other, Fouad Shukur, Hezbollah's top commander, as he briefly entered his office in Beirut's southern suburbs. Everything was carried out and sealed off to the second, with no regard, of course, for the dozens of dead and hundreds of wounded among the civilian population. Other officials were killed or disabled en masse, in the spectacular explosion of thousands of wireless communication devices.

Some cried out for a miracle. Some were at the movies while others were in the hospital. In other words, the Mossad [Israel's foreign intelligence service] lived up to its fearsome reputation: they can kill whenever they want, wherever they want. It means that we have every right to wonder why the Netanyahu regime preferred to annihilate the civilian population of Gaza and pursue the annexation of the West Bank, before taking the life of its greatest enemy: Hamas' military leader, now also its political leader, Yahya Sinwar. The goal is becoming increasingly clear: to do everything possible to preserve a distorted narrative, to sideline the issue of Palestine in order to erase it, and to recast it as a conflict between the West and "bearded men." This way, Western nations are left with no choice but to blindly align themselves with Israel, standing in unwavering support.

Benjamin Netanyahu has taken time hostage, manipulating our shared destiny with a diabolical bad faith. The agonizing hours feel the same for everyone – the survivors of Gaza, the Israeli hostages, the residents of northern Israel, southern Lebanon, Beirut and the Bekaa – whether they are Jews, Christians, Muslims or those who cling to humanism in the face of death. Time has the same name in Arabic and Hebrew: zaman.

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