Jan. 17, 2025 (EIRNS)—In remarks addressed to the 85th weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition, which she initiated, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche provided a strategic evaluation of the fast-moving developments in the Israel-Hamas negotiations process.
“It is a remarkable shift that is underway,” she began. “The news is that overnight the final problems in the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel were solved—at least to a certain extent. There are all kinds of problems still very much to be solved. But it seems that [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich agreed to stay in the Netanyahu government. He’s against the agreement, but he stayed in the government. [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir is against it, and he left. But this is not enough to bring down the coalition of the Netanyahu government. I think it’s definitely a very important step in the right direction.”
Zepp-LaRouche emphasized the context: “This is a deal which was ready already last May, but it obviously took Trump’s team to intervene to put pressure on Netanyahu to get it through. That is an unbelievable thing, because that totally confirms what we have been saying all along: that all of the horrors would not have been possible without the agreement of the Biden administration. That, I think, will have an aftermath…
“With President Trump coming into the White House on Monday, there is indeed a chance that this could resolve the situation. I think the fact that he did make good on his word that he wanted this deal before he comes into the White House, and that it is happening, shows a certain resolve. And maybe the video which Trump had put on his X account with Jeffrey Sachs accusing Netanyahu of the crimes he was talking about, may have been an additional pressure.”
However, given that many forces in Israel and internationally remain committed to continuing the genocide in Gaza, “it’s still an absolutely gigantic job,” Zepp-LaRouche said, “which I think does require the international peace forces, the International Peace Coalition but also everybody else, to make sure that a real settlement of the crisis can be accomplished.
“According to my view and that of many other people, this does require the immediate recognition of a Palestinian state, and obviously that state cannot function if there is not an immediate not just reconstruction of Gaza, which is completely flattened to the ground; but it does require a real peace order in the entire region, which we have provided with the Oasis Plan.
“If we could somehow encourage the Trump administration to really go into real peace-building by getting the countries of the Middle East together to implement the Oasis Plan, then this has a real potential to solve the situation… So, this is very promising; however, I think it still requires an enormous change in the situation, given the overall destruction of the region by the meaningless wars of the last decades.”
In the course of the IPC meeting, the gathering was informed of the important phone call between President-elect Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, both of whom expressed the desire to build a relationship based on cooperation, and not confrontation, between the two great nations.
Zepp-LaRouche addressed the issue of such great power relations. “Will the adversarial relationship be continued, even if these immediate crisis spots are resolved or at least calmed down? I think this requires a much more fundamental shift.
“I and some of my collaborators have been saying the whole time that in order to get true peace, it is not enough to stop the wars and regional wars. We have to overcome the fundamental antagonism of geopolitics. Geopolitics is a relic of the past; it caused two World Wars in the 20th Century, and it absolutely must go, if the world is supposed to be safe.
“Now, that means that the Western countries must stop the idea that there will be a war between the United States and China; that there will be a decoupling, a de-risking. All of these things are part of this geopolitical thinking. We have to move the world to a New Paradigm where the Western countries are cooperating with the Global Majority in their effort to overcome the effects of 500 years of colonialism. We have to work together to overcome poverty so that the people who are now fleeing as migrants from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, have an incentive to cooperate to build up their own economies.
“If we would get the Western countries to cooperate with such organizations as the BRICS in that project, we would solve the migrant problem in the only human way it can be solved. And such a collaboration could be the basis for a peaceful world order, a new security and development architecture which takes into account the interests of every single country.
“I think what absolutely has to go with that, for it to succeed, is that we need urgently a cultural renaissance in the West. Because under the doctrine of neo-liberal values, we have allowed the best traditions of our respective countries to be forgotten, to be trampled upon. We have to revive the best Classical periods in Europe, the spirit of the American Revolution and the anti-colonial fight against the British Empire. We have to really put the world community on the tradition of the best that mankind ever has produced in each nation, in each civilization; and then have a dialogue of civilizations among them. That, together with an economic reconstruction, is the basis for peace.
“Now, I think that’s a wonderful perspective, and I think if people think that’s a utopian conception, they miss the point of what is going on already in the Global South, where the Asian countries are proudly looking at their 5000-year history, or 3,000 or 4,000 years, and they are taking out of that cultural heritage the strength to define a positive vision for the future. I think we in the West have to do absolutely the same, and then cooperate in crash programs for thermonuclear fusion energy, in international space research and development. Then we can build peace not only on the planet, but beyond.”
