On 7 October 2023, the Palestinian Hamas movement launched its ‘Flood of Al-Aqsa’ operation, an unprecedented assault on the Israeli periphery of the Gaza Strip. The very next day, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) struck back with their ‘Swords of Iron’ military campaign, which was particularly devastating for the Gazan population and infrastructure. Since then, the Middle East has made its comeback in the news, which until then had been focused on the war in Ukraine.
Three quarters of a century after the creation of the Jewish state, the particularly divisive nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more vivid than ever and is shaking up the daily life of university campuses in the West. At regional level, a new Pandora’s box seems to have been opened, revealing an increasingly problematic degree of coordination between the various links (Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi, Yemeni and Palestinian) of the ‘axis of resistance’ aligned with Iran. At a time when the IDF is planning to strike hard at Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels continue to target international maritime trade in the Red Sea, the beginnings of the first Iranian-Israeli war concern much more than just the Middle East.
To get a better insight into the complexity of the current crisis and the risk of it spreading further, we will have the privilege of listening to Prof. Dr Jean-Pierre Filiu (Science Po Paris), a former career diplomat, historian, specialist of the Gaza Strip, and a key expert on the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Research line: Middle East and North Africa
Source image : © IDF
Evening conference
How Palestine was lost, and why Israel did not win
Conference video
Prof. Dr Jean-Pierre FILIU
Moderator : Didier LEROY
Language: French
Simultaneous interpretation in Dutch and English
25 September 2024, 17:00 – 18:30
> 16:30 – Registration
> 17:00 – Conference
> 18:30 – Reception
Campus Renaissance
Rue Hobbema, 8
1000 Brussels