–Analysis–
CAIRO — A year after Hamas’s devastating October 7 attack, Israel’s devastating war on Gaza shows no signs of ending.
It appears that this war will continue for many years and expand to include Iran and the United States. It’s a scenario wanted by Israel’s prime minister and regimes of the oil-rich countries in the Arab Gulf, who hope to get rid of Iran and the entire “axis of resistance” in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq.
The feeling of defeat left by the Hamas attack — with the killing of an unprecedented number of Israelis in a single attack since the establishment of the Zionist state in 1948 — created something similar to an earthquake inside Israel.
The domestic opinion in Israel agreed that the response should be very harsh, in order to restore Israel’s deterrence, and to consolidate its expansionist policies in seizing the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, especially in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
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Before October 7, and despite his internal crises, Benjamin Netanyahu thought that he had closed the Palestinian state file forever through the consolidation of settlements on the ground. At the same time, he moved forward with normalization agreements with almost all Arab countries — with different degrees of rapprochement.
But the attack showed that the Palestinian file was in fact not closed. And Netanyahu’s determination to take revenge increased with an attempt to consolidate the “peace for peace” equation that he has long presented as an alternative to the “land for peace” formula. He had even succeeded in pushing the Arab countries reluctantly to accept his formula, and stop seriously demanding a Palestinian state on a third of the historical lands of Palestine.
No one able to stop Israel
It would be easy to say that the continuation of this war, the disregard for the horrific Palestinian human losses, and much of the world normalizing it are evidence of the failure of the international system and the absence of any credibility for international institutions, the laws of war and human rights.
It’s clear that no one is able to deter Israel and force it to stop its war, because it has always been protected by its ally and partner, the United States, regardless of any rulings and decisions issued by international courts. In short, Israel is an exception with no one being able to hold it accountable even for its stark and blatant violation of international law.
At the same time, Russia is preoccupied by its internal problems and its war with the West in Ukraine. China also hasn’t intervened, opting instead for a strategy of patience.
Biden’s administration became more embarrassed
Throughout the past year, analysts, observers, and diplomats have been competing to assess whether Joe Biden’s administration was willing or able to push Netanyahu to stop the war, after he has relatively achieved most of his declared goals.
The day after the attack, Biden offered full support to Israel and made no secret of his bias towards it. The 82-year-old president belongs to the generation of Americans who are so impressed by the success of the Zionist experiment that he constantly repeats that he is a “proud Zionist”.
It is true that official U.S. policy considers Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rest of the Iran-backed resistance groups to be terrorist organizations. But Biden has provided generous support to Netanyahu, by forming a joint operations room to monitor the movements of Hamas leaders in Gaza, helping to identify the locations where Hamas is holding the Israeli hostages.
But after months of genocidal war and the scenes of the brutal, indiscriminate killing of Palestinians, Biden’s administration has become more embarrassed and his crises more complicated. He did not hide his annoyance with the description of “genocide” that the U.S. supporters of Palestine repeated in front of him in most of the public events he attended during this year.
Because this year of war is a hot year in the United States, where Palestine has become, for the first time, an internal election issue. Both candidates, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, are interested in ensuring victory in the swing state of Michigan, where the bloc of Arab and Muslim voters can tip one candidate over the other.
Notable change in the U.S.
Yes, the ruling American institutions are still completely subject to the influence of the Zionist lobby supporting Israel. But there is a noticeable increase in the awareness of a large segment of U.S. society, especially among the youth and intellectuals, of the tragedy of the Palestinian people.
They have realized that their country’s absolute “iron-cast” support for Israel is in reality support for a racist regime, based on occupation and forceful expulsion of its inhabitants.
Although Netanyahu continued to reject U.S. initiatives and directed insult after insult at Biden, secretly and publicly, Washington gave Israel long months to satisfy its thirst for revenge on the Palestinians.
It’s as if Biden’s long-standing relationship with the Israeli prime minister resembles his relationship with his son Hunter, who was convicted in tax evasion cases and is suspected of exploiting his father’s position for profit. Biden continues defending him no matter what crimes he has committed.
Since the beginning of this year, Netanyahu has been steadfastly rejecting the American calls for a ceasefire, after he achieved almost all of the goals of his war. Hamas is no longer able to launch an attack like its October 7 one after the destruction of Gaza and most of the group’s military capabilities. But that alone does not bring him the “image of victory” that he wants in order to stay in office for more years.
What looks like victory?
For many months, everyone was talking about the image of victory being the assassination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and the groups’s declaration of surrender. But over time, the difficulty of the long-awaited goal became clear.
Netanyahu escaped the growing calls to stop the war in Gaza and bring the hostages back, by launching another war on Hezbollah, pushing the entire region to the brink.
The signs of this plan began in July, with the targeting of Hezbollah military commander Fouad Shukr, and the assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in a bold and sophisticated operation in the heart of Tehran.
Netanyahu tested Hezbollah’s response to the targeting of the Lebanese capital, and Iran’s response to transferring the confrontation to its territory.
Netanyahu keeps pushing
Iran announced that it would respond forcefully. However, the Iranian president later acknowledged that Tehran heeded to the U.S. demands to postpone this response and avoid escalation in order to make room for mediators’ attempts to reach a ceasefire agreement in Gaza.
But Netanyahu decided to continue pushing the confrontation towards Iran, which some of its neighbors in the wealthy Gulf consider the “head of the snake” more than Israel itself. The Saudis will never forget that it was Hezbollah that developed the Houthis’ combat capabilities in Yemen, specifically in the use of drones that targeted their oil facilities.
The most significant turning point was, of course, the terrorist pager attack on thousands of Hezbollah fighters without dropping a single bomb, then the painful assassination of the party’s face and symbol, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and finally the launch of its current ground offensive and relentless bombing campaign in Lebanon.
For reasons that are no longer understood, Israel’s alarming penetration of Hezbollah’s top-tier leadership has continued, with Nasrallah’s potential successor, Hashem Safieddine, and several other prominent military leaders being targeted.
Gaza sidelined
This deliberate escalation against Iran and the quest to eliminate Hezbollah, its most powerful and advanced arm, left Tehran with no choice but to respond.
Iran’s latest missile attack targeted the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv and several other military airports. And now the world is waiting for Israel’s response that Netanyahu promised will change the course of the coming months, if not years.
This war began in Gaza a year ago. There, the occupation forces continue their daily massacres. And while the war extends and escalates on other fronts, the daily human losses of the Palestinians in Gaza are no longer the main story.
Those casualties have become a side screen among several other screens that show what is happening in Lebanon, Iran and inside Israel, with the escalation of the Palestinian suicide operations through which they confirm their adherence to the option of resistance with all its forms.
A year into the genocidal war in Gaza, we know that more wars await us in the Middle East.
