January 15, 2025
Nasser Kandil
• Western leaders and the occupying entity cannot deny that the war nearing its end in Gaza was their shared endeavor. Without the West’s direct involvement, its funding, arming, mobilisation, and deployment of fleets, the entity would not have endured this long. None of them can deny that they collectively invested their political, diplomatic, military, and financial weight into winning a war fought over a mere 360 km2, equivalent to a small neighbourhood in any major city. Yet, the first strike of the Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023 was enough to shake the entity’s pillars of power, forcing the entire West to rush to the region with its leaders, armies, funds, and weapons. They unleashed their media and diplomatic machinery to ensure maximum support for the entity’s front against Gaza.
• This war became the foremost issue on global political, media, and public agendas. Despite the Arab and Islamic world’s betrayal of Gaza, both at the governmental and popular levels, Gaza managed to rally allies who fought fiercely and bore great sacrifices, particularly on the Lebanese and Yemeni fronts.
In Lebanon, the resistance neutralised the occupying army’s ability to wage a ground war, compelling it to accept a ceasefire without gains, while acknowledging the resistance’s continued armament. This signifies a forced return to coexistence with an armed resistance on the northern border – something the entity’s leaders unanimously recognise as an existential threat, a matter of time rather than possibility. Accepting coexistence on the northern front implicitly means conceding the same on the southern front.
• In Yemen, the resistance defied the might of American and Western naval power, imposing its will despite the presence of aircraft carriers, warships, destroyers, and submarines. Yemen’s forces effectively blockaded Eilat Port until it was shut down. Its missiles and drones reinforced what Lebanon’s resistance had already demonstrated: the failure of the Iron Dome, despite advanced technologies and the addition of U.S. THAAD systems. Settlers continued to flee to shelters en masse, exposing the fragility of the entity’s security doctrine. Attempts to exclude Yemen from its role as a support front for Gaza failed, and one of the key drivers for a ceasefire agreement was the recognition that it was the only way to resolve the Yemeni “dilemma”, which had become a source of embarrassment for Washington and Tel Aviv.
• Globally, the repercussions of the Gaza war compensated for the Arab and Islamic world’s failures. Western universities spearheaded an intellectual and cultural movement to affirm Palestinian rights over their entire national territory. Economic boycotts expanded, triggering structural changes in the global corporate network’s relations with the entity. Western capitals witnessed millions marching for Palestinian freedom. Politically and diplomatically, there was a realignment: states cut ties with the entity, closed embassies, recalled ambassadors, and recognised Palestinian statehood. Others pursued legal actions against the entity in international courts, while the International Criminal Court moved to issue arrest warrants for its leaders over war crimes.
• The Palestinian cause regained its prominence, not only as a humanitarian and legal issue but also as a strategic one. Resolving it in a manner acceptable to the Palestinian people is now seen as essential to Middle Eastern stability, energy market stability, and, by extension, global stability. The world has changed, and so has the Palestinian cause. The Al-Aqsa Flood achieved its objectives, leaving the world watching how the war concludes to determine the boundaries of politics and power the Palestinians can seize.
Despite the carte blanche granted to the entity to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure, the Palestinians have imposed terms that preserve their resistance’s arms and deny the occupation any security or territorial gains in Gaza. The entity is now compelled to declare the war’s end, with Washington and Tel Aviv’s leaders left to boast hollow achievements, such as Antony Blinken’s claim of successes in Lebanon, framing the outcome as merely pushing Hezbollah away from the border or cutting supply routes through Syria. Yet Hezbollah’s power remains intact, and the proclaimed “achievement” is merely deferring the threat.
While some shortsighted fools in Lebanon celebrate the notion that disarming Hezbollah is on the table – just as they will eventually parrot the same rhetoric about Gaza, cloaked in narratives of “neutralising immediate threats” – a similar delusion grips certain idiotic factions within the Palestinian Authority. They revel in imagined victories over the resistance, oblivious to the broader reality. The focus should not be on the rhetoric spouted by Unit 8200’s mouthpieces, which fixates on eliminating current threats, but rather on the enduring strength and resilience of the resistance. The critical question is: what about tomorrow? A future confrontation with the occupation is inevitable. The occupying entity can only dream of replicating its perceived gains in this conflict – a conflict where, despite the occupation’s relentless efforts, it ultimately failed to achieve victory.
