-Analysis-
Throughout a year of Israel waging a brutal war against the Palestinians and Lebanon, the idea of “resistance” has been central to debates across the Middle East and Arab world. What are the tools, structure effectiveness and meaning of resistance?
The topic becomes even more crucial as it comes up against efforts of some factions, especially Hamas and Hezbollah, to monopolize the idea of resistance and limit it to military action.
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And it’s known that this kind of armed resistance creates a dependence on the support of the Iranian regime, despite suspicions of its efforts to acquire regional influence through its sectarian militia and weapons.
It also means a shift from the idea of resistance as a kind of “long-term war of the people” to a war as an army for an army. This is ultimately a trap, lured into the arena in which the enemy excels.
Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack which triggered the war in Gaza, had been seen by his supporters as the ultimate emblem of resistance. But he is now dead, as Israel’s upper hand has become evident in recent weeks and months, with the killing of the military resistance’s top leaders: previously was Sinwar’s predecessor, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyyah, who killed in Tehran and the more recent killing of Hezbollah leader Hanssan Nasrallah in Lebanon.
However such killings don’t mean that the war will come to an end. The killing of Sinwar — like Haniyah and Nasrallah — represented “another big victory” for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Mkhaimar Abusada, professor of political science at Al-Azhar University-Gaza.
“I do not think this will signal the end of the war against Gaza for two reasons,” he said. “Hamas will continue to fight Israel, and Israel already has plans for Gaza, particularly the evacuation of the north of Gaza.”
Ultimately, regardless of the fate of the leadership, the militarization of resistance makes the resisting population a shooting range for Israel’s destructive weapons. There is no accountability that resistance leaders lack a clear, possible and sustainable military strategy. And their choices and policies depend on fatalistic mentalities and delusions that have no relation to reality, nor to the balance of power.
On the al-Rayyan critique
In this context, Palestinian-Syrian writer Shukri al-Rayyan wrote a recent commentary entitled: Was the “Resistance” Axis Really Defeated?, published by Daraj on Oct. 12. He proposes a thesis that defends those he called the victims (the people), and exposes the deceitfulness of the discourse of the “resistance” factions.
Al-Rayyan argues that these military factions are a force of hegemony, with their inability to change the equations of power in the face of the enemy, and their modest ability to instead in invest only in sacrifice, heroism, and the prices paid.
Al-Rayyan starts from the fact that the peoples of this region are not only victims of Israel, but also victims of other projects, including “Iranian hegemony” and the tyrannical regimes that employed Palestine, or the “resistance,” as a vehicle for them.
It’s an attempt to strip the sanctity and magic from the choices people make
Those projects, he argued, resulted in “achieving defeats,” with leaders “who are only defeated by death… but despite that, their projects remain, as we are soon afflicted with a new leader who carries the mantle, and continues the march, crushing all of us, on his way to a victory that never comes.”
In his bold and painful piece, al-Rayyan attempts to strip the sanctity and magic from the choices people make, for such a sanctity that enables those people to dominate and impose their opinions upon society. “Our political entities, which are already collapsing, are not the only ones that are threatened, but also our physical existence itself,” al-Rayyan wrote.
Still, there are two issues, or suspicions, that al-Rayyan might have missed to clarify any remaining ambiguity about his thesis. The first is his reference to what has happened this past year as “the era of Iranian hegemony… with all its militia extensions in our region.”
While acknowledging the horror of that hegemony in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and their serious repercussions on the state, society and culture in those countries, my reservation here stems from the fact that the era of militias or armed resistance, and the sanctification of armed struggle, appeared before the existence of the current Iranian regime — and before Hamas itself.
Main title of our history
Hamas came to the Palestinian national movement 22 years after the launch of the Palestinian armed struggle. Such armed struggle was initiated by the Fatah movement on illusions founded on the ideas of “conscious involvement” of regimes in the conflict against Israel, and that Palestine is a “central issue” for the Arab world.
The second issue stems from his saying: “We, Arabs after the establishment of Israel, were afflicted with resistance as the main title of our story, our tragedy.” I think it is a hasty conclusion, or it came under the pressure of the weight of the catastrophe that the Palestinian people are currently experiencing.
Resistance is a natural and human reaction against occupation, injustice and oppression.
The resistance appeared in the 1920s, as a natural reaction to the Zionist project, the aggressive settlement project, and then as a product of Israel’s colonial, settlement, racist and aggressive nature. It was established by force majeure, with Western support.
The point is that resistance — and I believe that al-Rayyan would agree with me — is a natural and human reaction against occupation, injustice and oppression. It is originally a resistance of a people and not a resistance of factions or fighters only. So it will continue with or without Fatah and Hamas. It existed before them and will continue after them — resisting against colonial, racist and aggressive Israel, at all levels or forms.
What kind of resistance?
Perhaps the real debate is not so much about the idea itself of resistance, but rather about the forms of resistance, the possible, feasible and legitimate and most appropriate options for resisting the oppressor. And it is not with the resistance fighters who sacrifice their lives, but with certain leaders, whose sanctity and ill-considered choices should be criticized. They are the ones who tout the resistance in military form, while the people are exposed to a genocide.
The blame are directed squarely at those leaders who do not care about the suffering and sacrifices of their people, on the pretext that resistance assumes sacrifices without any responsibility, and without any balance between the cost and the return, even in relative terms.
Israel’s grip has become immeasurably stronger.
Al-Rayyan’s loud voice, like many others especially in Gaza, came under the pressure of the reality of the new, resounding catastrophe which is full of pain, oppression and disappointment.
All goals of Hamas attack have dissipated. Instead of lifting the siege on Gaza, the occupation is now in the heart of Gaza, turning it to utter ruin and destruction. Instead of freeing the Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, the number of Palestinian prisoners in the occupation’s prisons has doubled. There are two million Palestinians in Gaza who now live in a state of daily abuse, in the open, in an unprecedented state of defeat, waiting for crumbs of foreign aid, at the mercy of Israel.
Indeed, Israel’s grip has become immeasurably stronger against all Palestinians from the river to the sea. While Hamas demands a ceasefire and a return to reality before Oct. 7, it forgets that nothing remains in Gaza, after a criminal war that spared nothing and nobody.
Unity of arenas
Claims of “unity of arenas” of resistance to Israel across the Middle East — where the Jewish State is weaker than a spider web — are no longer valid. Making such claims does not help to alleviate the horror of Israel’s genocide, which now extends to Lebanon.
This is our reality, unfortunately, in light of leaders dealing with the enemy according to supernatural, wishful and slogan-based perceptions.
In the face of all this destruction and denial, al-Rayyan’s voice and other voices like his may help to shake off the illusions that remain, and stand once and for all before the truth, knowing that reality is more bitter and more terrifying than we can ever describe it with words.
