September 4, 2024
Nasser Kandil
The old way of wining wars decisively when victors entered capitals and imposed on losers conditions of surrender marking victory has changed. The retreat of one of the warring sides from insisting on fulfilling goals as a condition for leaving the war has become enough for the declaration of defeat, with the other side gaining victory through preventing the first side from achieving its goals. That is how the Vietnamese people achieved victory over the American armies, and likewise in the war in Afghanistan, and in the July 2006 war against Lebanon. In these cases, continuing with the war or retreating from it is linked to what occurs on the domestic front of the party which waged the war and defined its goals, and what occurs on its enemy’s domestic front, making the dynamics of unity and division the determinant factor in deciding both victor and loser.
After Al Aqsa Toufan (Deluge), the war on Gaza, the Arab and Islamic region, and Palestinian relations erupted, and under the influence of the dynamic of division, Gaza seemed alone, and it seemed like sectarian divisions in the region took precedence over the position held by the Palestinian Cause, with the Palestinians also at the height of their divisions. Then came Al Aqsa Toufan (Deluge) quickly launching dormant dynamics of unclear direction in the Arab, Islamic, and Palestinian arenas, though it was clear that the war had united what had been divided in the entity, in terms of the structural division resulting from Benyamin Netanyahu’s government’s endeavor to make changes in the judicial system inflaming strong opposition, which rapidly extinguished in favor of cries for war and revenge, and Western leaders, and giant media establishments which guide public opinion, quickly emerged in blind support for the entity. It was what raised the war ceilings and goals on the entity’s side, to reach the slogan of absolute victory, the elimination of Hamas, and the recovery of prisoners by force.
Tracking the dynamics of unity and division in the opposing fronts and looking at their graph lines is able to provide insights about chances for victory and loss. The 11 months of war, by virtue of the winning by points strategy, a strategy created by Hezbollah Secretary General,
Al Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, and which he turned into the adopted strategy of Al Mukawama Axis for approaching war challenges, succeeded in dispersing the sources of power which the entity had accumulated in the war’s first days. Acute political divisions replaced the unprecedented political and popular unity, the army’s human and material build corroded and its fighting spirit and confidence in achieving victory collapsed, and the entity lost its deterrence power and the ability to resolve the problems created by the war such as the issues of prisoners, the displaced in the north, and the closing down of the Red Sea by resorting to the use of power which it has been used to resort to, making the acceptance of exiting the war the only path to the solution for these crises. This came after the entity’s loss of its attraction power as the place of utmost security and luxury for Jews worldwide, or as the best haven for investment, luxury, and security for the West’s capital, or to Western countries as a deterrence force able to protect Western interests, or to the West’s empathy after the Holocaust. What replaced it was the image of children and women killers and the pursuit for crimes of genocide.
On the opposing front, sectarian divisions receded, sedition endeavors received a severe blow, and the image of unity which brought about together Hamas and Hezbollah, the two biggest Islamic armed sects, under the headline of Palestine won, presenting an opposite image from what the opponents of Al Mukawama expected, and while there was no popular outpouring in the streets in support of Palestine, the boycott of goods and services provided by international corporations supportive of the occupying entity expressed the positioning of the citizens of the Arab region and Islamic countries on Palestine’s side and in her support, instead of standing under the banner of normalization and sectarian seditions. Based on Western statistics, boycott reached
95 % in the Gulf countries, and companies like Starbucks and McDonald shut down most of their branches in countries like Egypt. In parallel, a Palestinian unity has arisen and is readying itself to reach an advanced stage with the entity’s war on the West Bank, and the unleashing of settler herds in full savagery of the Gaza war against indigenous Palestinians, targeting any Palestinian presence, including that of the Palestinian Authority. What also became prominent was the emergence of Al Mukawama Axis as a new military and political force exemplifying how a unity of resources among a part of Arabs and Muslins could accomplish equilibrium in the deterrence against an alliance comprising the entity and the Western countries headed by America, and signaling what more unity is able accomplish.
The reverse actions of the dynamics of unity and division on both sides in the shadow of the war, makes the West Bank, which is gaining more points as a result of unity, qualified to reap victory in facing the side which is losing all the elements of unity it had accumulated during the first days of the war. The current scene in the entity is but the beginning of what is forthcoming, according to Foreign Affairs Magazine’s anticipation, in talking about the division and describing it as the scenario of the entity’s destruction.
