-Analysis-
CAIRO — Look for an easy victory when you’re caught in a difficult trap — that has become Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s go-to survival tactic. Whenever he stumbles in Gaza, he resorts to easy victories with 2,000-pound U.S.-manufactured bombs falling on Palestinians who have nothing to protect them.
A year into the Gaza war, some are saying that Netanyahu appears victorious, or at least on his way to victory. But no one seems to be able to answer these questions: What has he won? How did he win? What goals did he achieve?
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However, the real victory still seems to be eluding the Israeli prime minister, who seems more bloodthirsty than anything else. Victory should be linked to the goals he declared for his war, which have not been achieved after a year of constant bombing and air strikes.
Netanyahu is fighting a besieged opponent that has no supply lines, and yet Hamas has not disintegrated, and remains capable of launching attacks. Israel has also not gotten its hostages back, either through a deal or military operation. It also has not been able to return residents to their homes in northern Israel. On Sunday, in a sign of continued vulnerability, four Israeli soldiers were killed and 58 injured in a Hezbollah drone strike on a northern Israeli army base.
What is indeed noteworthy is that what Netanyahu boasts about and considers a victory has happened outside Gaza, the epicenter and starting point of the war.
He boasts about the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, as well as the pager attacks in the Lebanese capital.
As for Gaza, his greatest achievement was freeing four hostages in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp. But even this came at a great human cost that was not limited to the Palestinians. And this operation had repercussions on the procedures for guarding the hostages.
Collapse of the four principles
Israel’s defense strategy is based on four key principles: deterrence, surveillance, defense and defeating the enemy. These principles clearly collapsed in the October 7 attacks.
1. Hamas showed no heed to Israel’s deterrence, carrying out its boldest operation ever behind enemy lines.
2. Israel’s surveillance failed to detect Hamas’s movements and anticipate its attack.
3. Israel was unable to defend the Gaza envelope, which led to attacks on its own territory.
4. Its enemy is not defeated.
On the night of the first anniversary of the war, Israeli forces were trying to encircle the Jabalyia refugee camp in northern Gaza. They encountered fierce battles with Hamas fighters, despite Israel’s repeated assertions that it had dismantled Hamas’s capabilities in northern Gaza.
A year into the systematic destruction of Gaza, the resistance groups are still able to inflict losses on the Israeli forces who are still being ambushed across the enclave.
Gaza has been out of control, and yet Hamas is still capable of fighting. The strike on Hezbollah’s chain of command and control has not succeeded in neutralizing its fire, which has opened the door to re-evaluating the entire Israeli defense strategy.
Permanent wars
Since the arrival of Israel’s extremist government in 2022 which is supported by religious parties and extreme nationalists, there has been a clear shift in the Israeli strategy towards war. This reflects the change in the general Israeli mood towards more religious interpretations of the world and the conflict.
The religious coalition views permanent war as a necessity to maintain the cohesion of society.
While the secular nationalists who have historically ruled Israel tended towards lightning wars and quick victories, the ruling religious coalition views permanent war as a necessity to maintain the cohesion of society, from which they derive their strength. If they do not find opponents, they must invent them to maintain the spirit of revenge.
Historically, Israel has tried to achieve victories at the lowest possible human and economic cost, by transferring the battle to the enemy’s territory.
However, a year of war in Gaza has shown that the rulers are more accepting of bearing a greater human and economic price, in exchange for continuing the war for as long as possible, even if this leads to transferring part of the battle to the land of Israel, whether through missile strikes or qualitative operations in Israeli cities.
The current Israeli leadership has begun to place less importance on the blood of its citizens than on achieving its vengeful goals. Israel activated the Hannibal Directive, which allows for the carrying out of concentrated bombing operations around areas where Israeli soldier hostages are being held, risking that both the hostages and those guarding them are killed.
Testing the Western alliances
Israel has long presented itself as belonging to the East geographically, but as a daughter of the West in terms of culture, civilization and politics.
It exploited the Western guilt complex and the concept of Judeo-Christian civilization to create an alliance that would always provide Israel with the elements of superiority over its opponents.
It’s the alliance that guaranteed Israel’s survival in a hostile environment such as the Middle East.
With its war in Gaza, Israel has played to the free world’s attitudes against barbarism, and used the analogy of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust to rally the West to support it. This approach was not enough to incite the entire West, but it succeeded in convincing its most influential force: the military-industrial complex and the ruling elite in Washington and some European capitals, especially Berlin.
However, the continuation of the war revealed cracks in this alliance. European countries such as Ireland, Spain, Norway, Slovenia and Belgium condemned the Israeli aggression and called for a cease-fire early in the war.
And France eventually bowed to pressure from the left, as President Emmanuel Macron has called for the suspension of arms sales to Israel. The British Labor government also stopped 30 arms export licenses to Israel.
In a symbolic move, Germany and Canada announced a suspension of arms exports to Israel over concerns of violations of international humanitarian law.
The United States alone continues its absolute support for Israel, providing it with the most lethal weapons, wiping out entire neighborhoods, with the aim of psychologically shocking Israel’s opponents, and reinforcing the euphoria of victory for the Israeli biblical rulers.
But it is a victory without goals. These are simply acts of revenge.
A war with no horizon
No, Israel has not eliminated its enemies; instead it has merely strengthened the brutality of its oppressive war machine that has helped create these enemies in the first place.
The war has turned into a seemingly eternal bloodbath.
The front of its allies is cracking and voices of opposition are beginning to rise within their ranks. After a year, it is not possible to say when the war will end, but we know that it will end without achieving Israel’s declared goals.
The war, which was supposed to be a quick one, has turned into a seemingly eternal bloodbath, which is just what’s required by the biblical rulers to remain in power as long as possible.
