After Gaza, the war is not over ---- It has changed form, space, and language. The devastation of the Gaza Strip marked a point of no return not only for the Palestinian people, but for the entire political, military, and symbolic structure that supported, justified, or tolerated that destruction. Israel reaffirmed its overwhelming military supremacy, but emerged with a problem far more serious than an armed threat: a profound crisis of political and moral legitimacy. The image of the "democratic" state, a Western outpost in the Middle East, was eroded under the weight of rubble, civilian deaths, and images of children, hospitals, and entire neighborhoods razed to the ground, images that swept across the world, no longer able to be contained within official propaganda channels or reduced to the usual rhetoric of "defense."
Gaza was not just a humanitarian tragedy, nor just another chapter in an asymmetric conflict. It was a groundbreaking event, capable of definitively shattering the language with which the West had long justified its alliance with Israel: that of selective human rights, of permanent exception, of violence presented as necessary. For the first time, this narrative was exposed without filters, unable to contain the impact of the images and testimonies that swept across the global public space.
It is therefore no coincidence that, once the most intense phase of military operations was over, the conflict was far from over. On the contrary, it changed theater. When the military front produces a political disaster, the war reorganizes. It shifts to where it can still be fought effectively: behind the lines, in the social, legal, and symbolic territories of Western democracies that supported Israel unreservedly, transforming into a war of attrition against narratives, bonds, and forms of solidarity.
It is from this perspective that we must interpret what is happening today in Italy and Europe. Not as a collection of isolated incidents, local excesses, or administrative misunderstandings, but as a genuine reframing of the conflict. A low-intensity, widespread war, which does not use tanks and bombings, but rather regulatory mechanisms, judicial proceedings, disciplinary sanctions, administrative interventions, and media campaigns, and which insinuates itself into the very heart of democratic systems.
The diaspora as a new front
The new front isn't geographical. It's social. It's the Palestinian diaspora, and everything around it: solidarity networks, humanitarian associations, political spaces, universities, workplaces, religious communities, intermediary bodies. The diaspora isn't just a dispersed community, nor an indistinct collection of exiles. It's a diffuse, stratified, transnational political entity. It's a vector of memory, narrative, and denunciation. It keeps the Palestinian narrative open even as, on the ground, attempts are being made to close it with military force and material destruction.
Over the years, and particularly after the recent wars in Gaza, the diaspora has assumed an increasingly central role: not only in maintaining family and material ties with the occupied territories, but in generating public discourse, images, and counter-narratives, bringing the Palestinian question into the spaces of education, culture, work, and daily life in Western cities. It is here that Palestine ceases to be a distant conflict and becomes an issue internal to European societies.
This is why the diaspora becomes a political target. Not because it is armed, but because it speaks. Not because it is dangerous in itself, but because it undermines a consolidated narrative, undermines the representation of Israel as a "democracy under siege," and brings back to the forefront words that many would like to see erased: occupation, colonialism, apartheid, self-determination. Attacking the diaspora means attacking the very possibility that Palestine continues to exist as a political issue, and is not definitively reduced to a humanitarian emergency to be managed or a security problem to be neutralized.
Criminalizing solidarity
In this context, solidarity is no longer tolerated as a neutral humanitarian gesture, nor recognized as a legitimate expression of civil and political relations. It is progressively reinterpreted as a suspicious act, if not directly as support for terrorist organizations. This is where the most dangerous qualitative shift occurs: solidarity ceases to be a protected area and becomes a space to be monitored, demarcated, and repressed.
The legal proceedings initiated in Genoa against nine Palestinian citizens, accused of financing Hamas through associative networks and fundraising activities, represent a significant step in this regard. Beyond the trial results, what matters is the conceptual framework that emerges: the distinction between humanitarian aid and terrorist support is progressively eroded to the point of almost disappearing, absorbed into a comprehensive interpretation of the Palestinian context.
According to this approach, if Hamas exerts widespread control over Palestinian society, then every form of civil assistance-support for families, orphans, the injured, and healthcare facilities-can be reinterpreted as an indirect contribution to its actions. In this way, it is no longer the specific act that is at the center of the accusation, but the context. Not what is done, but where, with whom, and within what networks it is done. Criminal responsibility shifts from the action to the field of belonging.
Criminal law thus ceases to prosecute specific behaviors and takes on a different function: to govern the political arena, delimit legitimate relationships, and discourage solidarity. The proof is no longer the action, but the ideological and relational position. It's not just what one has done that is punished, but what one represents and the world of relationships in which one is embedded.
The trial of the Palestinian resistance
If the Genoa case demonstrates how solidarity is being progressively criminalized, the trial of Anan Yaeesh, Ali Saji Rabhi Irar, and Mansour Doghmosh marks a further step: here, it is no longer just solidarity that is being indicted, but Palestinian resistance itself. Held in Italy and openly characterized by the defense as a political trial, this proceeding demonstrates the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has now entered the courts of justice in Europe.
The case intertwines an extradition request made by the State of Israel, "independent" criminal proceedings initiated by the Italian judiciary, and the extensive use of terrorism charges. After the Court of Appeal rejected Anan Yaeesh's extradition, citing the concrete risk of torture in Israeli prisons-recognized by UN reports and international organizations such as Amnesty International-the Prosecutor's Office immediately reactivated its repressive measures, opening a new domestic proceeding based on Article 270 bis of the Italian Criminal Code. The outcome was paradoxical but politically eloquent: Anan was never released, while two other defendants were subsequently released due to the lack of serious evidence of guilt.
The heart of the trial, however, does not concern specific facts, but a much broader and more crucial issue: the distinction between terrorism and the legitimate struggle for self-determination of a people under military occupation. This distinction has been recognized by international humanitarian law for decades, admitting the legitimacy of armed resistance against an occupying state, provided that civilians not involved in hostilities are not harmed. These principles have also been reaffirmed by the Italian Court of Cassation, but are systematically undermined during the trial.
During the trial, the context of the Israeli occupation-home demolitions, illegal settlements, administrative detention, structural violence-was excluded from the courtroom. The defense was prevented from calling nearly all qualified witnesses, including international law experts and UN observers, while attempts were made to introduce Israeli intelligence material and even interrogation reports of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, notoriously obtained under torture. The attempt, rejected only after fierce opposition, marks a disturbing transition: the idea that a state accused of war crimes and genocide could become a reliable source of evidence in European criminal proceedings.
Even more serious is the court's willingness to admit representatives of the occupying state as witnesses to establish the "civilian" or "military" nature of the West Bank settlements, in open conflict with the July 2024 opinion of the International Court of Justice, which declared the occupation illegal and ordered the dismantling of the settlements. Here, international law is not simply ignored: it is overturned and subordinated to the demands of the criminal proceedings.
The resulting message is clear. It's not specific facts that are being tried, but a political position. It's not proven actions that are being judged, but affiliations, relationships, and contexts. Thus, a principle destined to become a lesson is affirmed: Palestinian resistance, even when directed against military targets in occupied territories, can be recast as terrorism; those who support it, even remotely, can be criminalized; those who seek asylum can lose protection in the midst of a genocide.
In this sense, the trial of Yaeesh, Irar, and Doghmosh is not an exception, but a precedent. It follows the same lines as the Genoa investigation and Hannoun's arrest: the growing integration of Israeli intelligence material into European criminal proceedings and the progressive "Israelization" of criminal law, no longer called upon to guarantee rights, but to politically manage a colonial conflict exported to Western metropolises.
The most profound effect: making solidarity impractical
The true effect of this climate is not direct repression, which always targets a minority, but preventive asphyxiation. The most effective repression is not one that arrests everyone, but one that makes helping difficult, risky, and problematic. There's no point explicitly banning solidarity: simply transforming it into uncertain, exposed, and potentially dangerous terrain.
In a context where legal categories are becoming increasingly shifting and the line between legal and illegal remains deliberately blurred, asking for support becomes complicated. Offering it becomes a gesture to be carefully considered. Organizing it becomes a challenge. Not because it's formally prohibited, but because no one is sure where the line lies anymore, nor what consequences it might have on those who help and those who receive help.
This is where the system demonstrates its full effectiveness: it works not only through sanctions, but through individual accountability. The idea creeps in that every act of solidarity can expose others to risks, that every bond can become a weakness, that it's better not to involve, not to ask, not to insist. Solidarity is thus shattered into isolated, silent, private practices, if not abandoned altogether.
This has a widespread disciplinary effect: networks contract, mutual trust weakens, relationships become more fragile. A single strike on a few exemplary cases is enough to render the entire camp unstable. Not only what is organized is paralyzed, but what could become organized.
For Palestinians in the diaspora, this means planned isolation, loss of material and political support, and increasing difficulty in asking for help without exposing themselves. For those who remain in Gaza or the West Bank, it means further abandonment. The war, moved to the rear, thus manages to strike even where the bombs cannot reach: in bonds, in trust, in the very possibility of solidarity.
The State and the discipline of dissent
This mechanism isn't limited to the courtroom. It extends to the administrative, symbolic, and disciplinary spheres, directly impacting the relationship between the state, institutions, and freedom of expression. In Italy, this has been seen, for example, in the proceedings initiated against firefighters who, in uniform, knelt to remember the Palestinian victims.
A gesture of humanitarian condolence, devoid of explicit political claims, has been interpreted as a violation of institutional neutrality. But this is precisely where a crucial point emerges. Neutrality is no longer understood as impartiality in conflicts, nor as the protection of a pluralistic public space. It is redefined as geopolitical alignment, as silent adherence to the position taken by the state and its allies.
In this context, public officials are no longer asked to exercise their roles with balance and critical thinking, but rather to remain faithful to the dominant narrative. Even grief becomes suspect, empathy is regulated, and even selective silence takes on a political dimension. Discipline serves not only to repress overt dissent, but to define what can be expressed, remembered, and shared within institutions.
A European model
All this isn't unique to Italy. It's a European model. France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Denmark exhibit similar dynamics: preventive bans on demonstrations, police repression of demonstrations, administrative surveillance of associations, expansion of the categories of terrorist apology, and criminalization of political dissent and solidarity. National contexts vary, but the direction is the same.
This is neither explicit coordination nor a formal directive, but rather a convergence of doctrine. In the name of security, public order, and the fight against terrorism, European states are restructuring their legal and administrative instruments to make internal repression compatible with unconditional support for Israel. The Palestinian question thus becomes a testing ground for new forms of controlling dissent.
Israel's defense thus requires the compression of internal democratic spaces. Freedoms of assembly, expression, and association are not abolished, but conditioned, made selective, and subordinated to geopolitical loyalty. European states do not act as mediators in an international conflict, but as the political and legal rearguard of a war that, though fought elsewhere, produces its most lasting effects within Western democracies.
When war enters democracies
The Palestinian question is no longer simply a foreign policy issue. It has become an internal issue for European democracies, a test of their legal systems, their freedoms, and the very meaning of words like law, neutrality, and security. When solidarity is treated as a threat, it is not security that is strengthened, but isolation that is created; it is not order that is defended, but a political field that is disciplined.
War today doesn't need to be declared. It doesn't require general mobilizations or formal suspensions of freedoms. It simply needs to enter the language of laws, administrative practices, judicial procedures, and everyday gestures that have become problematic or suspect. It simply needs to transform solidarity into a risk, dissent into an anomaly, silence into a civic virtue.
Gaza may slip off the front pages. The images will become less frequent, public attention will shift elsewhere. But the war will not go away. It will remain here, behind the scenes, in the folds of institutions and social relations, within the increasingly narrow confines of what is permitted to be said, done, and supported. It will remain among us, as a new normality, built piece by piece in the name of security and permanent emergency.
https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/wpAL/
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Link: (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #42 - Gaza, the Rear Area, and the War Entering European Democracies - Totò Caggese (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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