September 17, 2024
Nasser Kandil
Practically, as long as Benyamin Netanyahu remains convinced that accepting Al Mukawama’s (the Resistance’s) conditions of ending the war on Gaza, prisoner exchange, and withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and despite their tactical characteristics, these conditions comprise a strategic defeat for the entity and open the door for regional and Palestinian formulas tipping the balance in favor of Al Mukawama, as a choice, and an axis. And as long as he has a Knessset majority protecting his government’s existence, it is incumbent upon him to offer alternatives to the agreement which will gradually become convincing to the entity’s public opinion, military and security establishments, and the West and America. Since total war is beyond the entity’s capability, and the capability of the West and America, what is Netanyahu’s plan?
Netanyahu attempted to find a current counterpart for the theory adopted by the occupation’s military under the title of a battle between two wars, which constituted the theoretical framework for continuous air raids on Syrian targets spanning years, and similarly the theory of fighting days which was prevented from being tested on Lebanon by virtue of Al Mukawama’s threats to convert it into a total war should the theory be implemented. Anyone following the stages of the war on Gaza realizes that at the end of November last year, any hope of achieving an absolute victory, the details of which were drawn by an American-Israeli understandings when Al Aqsa Toufan (Al Aqsa Deluge) occurred, and endorsed by the high-level American and Israeli military and political leadership, evaporated after the elimination of Al Mukawama, and the Hamas Movement in particular, proved beyond the capacity of the military operation planned for Gaza, despite the killing and destruction, and the mobilization of 100,000 officers and soldiers, and 1000 mechanized units. This was the justification for entering negotiations with Hamas is pursuit of a truce and an exchange of prisoners, and since that date, there was no war strategy except for fleeing from the difficult decision of accepting Al Mukawama’s conditions and sipping from the cup of defeat.
Since that date Netanyahu’s war has been based on the invention of alternatives acting as titles for small wars excepting a big war, with the invented alternatives embodied in the stages in the war on Gaza, the names they were given, and the hopes for decisiveness and victory built on each stage. Hence came the slogan of entering Al Shifaa Medical Complex under the claim that it was where the prisoners were held, and later the slogan of getting to Yahya Sinwar in Khan Younis, followed by the slogan of decisive victory in Rafah, all of which received American approval, albeit after some opposition or modification. The results were always disappointing to American and Israeli hopes, resulting in more erosion in the military’s combat capabilities, dispersal in the mass supportive of the war at the beginning, exacerbation in the international scene and streets which grew sick and tired of the West’s indulgence of Israeli criminality, and the West’s governments which arm and finance the entity, asking for clean noiseless killing without clamor and pandemonium, becoming fed up with being tarnished by the shame from the entity’s crimes.
On the side of Al Mukawama forces, the extent of the efforts exerted to avoid a large scale war was evident, as was evident the concern about increasing the pace on all fronts in the war of attrition, and the strife to reinforce the formula which confronted the entity as an aggregation, an army, and a leadership, with intractable dilemmas, by exerting pressure and reinforcing it further, to say that these dilemmas, namely the prisoners, blocked passage of vessels in the Red Sea, and displaced settlers in the north, are not within the entity’s or America’s ability to resolve militarily. Months have passed proving the intractability of these dilemmas, their exacerbation, and the limitations in the entity’s and America’s ability of resolution, with the increasing intractability creating a widening conviction, pressing on Netanyahu’s neck in addition to the pressures exerted by the actual dilemmas, the essence of which is that the only solution is an agreement ending the war in Gaza. This was echoed by blocks of influence in the entity’s public opinion and by military and intelligence high-ranking officers, and got Washington stating that reaching an agreement in Gaza will guarantee a ceasefire on Lebanon’s and Yemen’s fronts, reflecting Al Mukawama Axis’ influence and success in withstanding pressures, and surpassing intimidation and enticement to retreat from steadfastness about this solution to accept division of the fronts instead of their unity.
Netanyahu went to Washington last July carrying a plan centered around the assassinations in Al Dahieh (Beirut’s southern suburb) and Tehran, and using American deterrence, the cover of calls for negotiations, and the attempt to tamper with Hamas’ internal structure after the assassination of her leader Ismail Haniyeh, to reach an agreement freeing him from the worry about a strategic defeat, with remaining in the Phidelphi Corridor being the code for new conditions for the agreement. This plan failed, however, with only the talk about the Philadephi Corridor remaining, after Hamas blocked the attempt to tamper with her internal structure and the course of the negotiations by electing Al Mukawama Commander Yahya Sinwar to succeed Haniyieh, and refusing discussion of any new conditions to the negotiations. Then came Hezbollah’s response and the Yemeni strike, to add a new dilemma to the intractable dilemmas, namely Tel Aviv’s security exposed with Al Mukawama forces’ possession of modern technologies capable of evading radars, air defense missiles, and iron domes.
With deterrence reflected in Netanyahu’s comment about Hezbollah’s operation, stating not wanting war or escalation, then his War Minster Yoav Galant’s statement relegating the war on Hezbollah to the distant future, Netanyahu had to choose between the dossiers of the prisoners and of the displaced, which have a large impact on the already pressing public opinion, and committed to resolution by force in the face of the growing calls that an agreement on Gaza is the magical solution to all problems. His first choice to solve the prisoners issue by force was through individual operations, saying that they will be liberated even if 10 are liberated each month, only to have as outcome the killing of 6 prisoners in the first operation implementing this solution. So he turned to the case of the displaced to say that he will resolve it by force, even though he knew that he is incapable of a real and serious land operation, and impotent in tolerating the consequences of war and exchange of firepower in the depth and on civilians and infrastructure. So, what is the plan?
The plan is escalating the fire exchange under the ceiling of the rules of engagement, but with doubling or increasing threefold the firepower, and a few qualitative operations when the conditions needed for their execution become present. This pattern of combat days devised by the entity’s former Chief of Staff, Aviv Kokhavi in 2020, under the slogan of more lethality and less losses, and with the utmost speed possible, was responded to then by Al Mukawama, through Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Al Sayed Hassan Nasrallah stating : “Not combat days but total war.” Isn’t, perhaps, Al Mukawama’s answer still valid?
