International
Netanyahu Wanted the “Fall” of Hamas, But this War Could Bring Down Israel
Agencies – Sudan Events
The Gaza war was a major miscalculation of Israel and, in addition to being a moral and military catastrophe, fueling resistance and rekindling anger across the Arab world. Nearly 20,70 Palestinians were killed in half the time it took for the PLO to leave Beirut in 1982. The devastation of Gaza lays the foundation for another 50 years of war.
David Hirst, editor-in-chief of the British website Middle East Eye, pointed to what US President Ronald Reagan did after a heavy Israeli barrage of bombardment during the siege of Beirut in July 1982, where he called Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin asking him to stop the bombing, and Reagan said at the time, “Here on television night after night the symbols of this war appear to our people, which is a ‘Holocaust.’
Unlike the Democrats in the White House today, Republican President Reagan was able and willing to back up his words with deeds, so the United States halted cluster munitions and the sale of F-16 jets to Israel.
Standing on the scale of Israeli destruction of Gaza compared to the bombing of German cities by the Allies in World War II, the writer quoted military analysts interviewed by the Financial Times that 68% of buildings in northern Gaza were destroyed by December 4, after only two months of bombing, which is close to the Allied bombardment of Hamburg (75%), Cologne (61%), and Dresden (59%), but what happened to these cities was two years after the bombing.
Fundamental weakness
Hurst added that nearly 20,70 Palestinians were killed in half the time it took for the PLO to leave Beirut in 1982.
Hirst noted that this message was understood by some Israelis, such as former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon, when he identified a key weakness in conventional thinking in Israeli security circles: that while the IDF sees victory through the prism of brute force — the more people it kills and destroys it thinks it wins — Hamas sees victory through the prism of “soft power,” the more hearts and minds gain the greatness of victory.
The Israelis are making the same mistake that the French made in Algeria when they killed more than 1.5 million Algerians between 1954 and 1962, believing that they would win the war, but after the war ended, they had to leave and grant Algeria its independence.
A series of U.S. intelligence assessments confirm Hamas’s popularity has skyrocketed since the beginning of the war.
Officials familiar with the matter say the group has succeeded in establishing itself in parts of the Arab and Muslim world as a defender of the Palestinian cause and an effective fighter against Israel, CNN reported.
This is bad news, Hearst says, for all those countries — led by the United States of course — that think the Palestinian Authority can replace Hamas in Gaza, and this is not just numbers, but the new political reality after October 7.
Israel’s attack on Gaza has changed the entire Middle East as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised, but not in a way that might benefit his or future governments.
For 17 years of the rest of the world forgetting or ignoring Gaza, America and the major European powers have done their best to reinforce Israel’s blockade of the Strip, and for 17 years of Israel’s divide-and-rule policy of separating Gaza from the West Bank and removing all possibility of participating in a national unity government that reunites Gaza and the West Bank today as never before.
Hearst added that even the first and second intifadas, had not had the same success as Hamas in Gaza over the past two months.
The outcome of this war could be a continuing state of conflict, which would deprive Israel of claiming to have become a normal, Western-style state.
Under these circumstances, the expansion of the war will always be present, as evidenced by Houthi attacks in Yemen on Western ships passing through the Red Sea.
Hirst concluded that “Metot Hamas” (the fall of Hamas) is a slogan in Hebrew that is the goal of the Israeli war government, and two months after this destruction they can also modify it to become “Metot Israel,” because that is the impact that this war may have.
