Nasser Kandil
Albinaa’ Newspaper July 22, 2024.
Over the last few weeks the battle was around a maneuver launched by Washington and adopted late by Tel Aviv centered around what was termed the “Third Phase” aimed at reducing the entity’s army’s human and material losses in the Gaza war, abating the anger in public opinion anger worldwide resulting from the occupation’s aggravating and overreaching crimes, and wagering that such de-escalation will be mirrored on the other fronts and hopefully bring about some pacification which will decrease the domestic pressure on the entity’s government to come to an agreement with Al Mukawama.
Benyamin Netanyahu’s bet, shared by the military command, on a victory in Rafah, prevented the adoption of the plan, until the Rafah operation proved is big failure with the increase in Al Mukawama’s operations in all areas in Gaza. This placed Netanyahu between 2 bitter choices:proceeding with an agreement with Al Mukawama and ending the war on Al Mukawama’sterms, thereby conceding failure and defeat, or continuing with a costly and deadlocked war of attrition, after it became crystal clear that the bet on a large-scale war with Lebanon is well beyond the capability of the occupation’s army. This made the Third Phase scheme an ideal choice allowing evasion from difficult decisions and buying time, given the absence of a clear vision and plan.
The response first came from Al Mukawama in Gaza and was followed by Hezbollah Secretary General’s speech which refuted the premise of the Third Phase theory, declaring Al Mukawama’slack of concern about the names the entity gives to the phases of its war, and that its only concern is whether the entity is willing to enter into an agreement to end the war or not. Furthermore, since the Third Phase is intended to evade an agreement, it is incumbent on Al Mukawamato escalate until the entity is forced to succumb to the agreement option. This makes it no secret then that the Yemeni drone which penetrated Tel Aviv’s skies is a representation of the increased pressures which
Al Mukawama is exerting to drive the entity’s leaders towards an agreement with Al Mukawama in Gaza, as is the escalation on Lebanon’s front, and with an identical aim.
Netanyahu is reaping the failure of the Third Phase even before it begins, along with being subjected to humiliating challenges such as the Yemeni drone reaching Tel Aviv’s skies, which simultaneously rendered a blow to the entity’s deterrence capability, security measures, and air defense systems, and said that no place in the entity is secure, that all talk about the immunity of Hetz, David’s Sling, Arrow, Iron Domes, and Patriot is meaningless in view of what has occurred. The entity’s vengeful retaliatory operation was natural, but does not neutralize the realities uncovered by the Yemeni operation about the entity’s fragility, and does not diminish Al Mukawama’sresolve, with Yemen at its heart, to continue the war of attrition until the entity comes to an agreement with Al Mukawama in Gaza.
Yemen and all other Al Mukawama forces are concerned with responding and carrying on with attrition. In view of the particularities in Yemeni-Iraqi cooperation, the integration of Yemeni and Iraqi efforts in an open ended war which has just started between the entity and Yemen seems natural, with Iraq possessing an enormous stockpile, in both quality and quantity, of drones and missiles, and its supply route from Iran is the easiest and shortest. Netanyahu’s actions will ease Iran’s mission of entering the war without seeming that it has entered. It is sufficient for the entity’s leaders to recall the dawn of April 14 and the Iran’s deterrent response to the strike on its embassy in Damascus, to realize the folly they have committed.
In reality, the day Al Aqsa Delugehit, the balance of power lost its equilibrium in favor of Al Mukawama, and the entity is in a dilemma deepening daily, and the current scene before us provides added proof of the extent of this dilemma.
