January 30, 2025
Nasser Kandil
• Many who speak of the al-Aqsa Flood war and its repercussions, which have gripped the region for over a year and four months, and continue to do so, find it difficult to move beyond comparing the losses on both sides of the conflict to determine who emerged victorious and who was defeated. What often escapes their attention is the need to move beyond superficial discussions about the war’s meaning, as they tend to limit their analysis to the stated objectives of the two sides. From this comparison, they conclude that the resistance has gained the upper hand, while the occupying entity has failed to achieve any of its goals on both the Lebanese and Gaza fronts. These goals included establishing a buffer zone and displacing populations, as seen in northern Gaza and the frontline villages in southern Lebanon, as well as dismantling the resistance, disarming it, or forcibly recovering prisoners from Gaza.
• What deserves deeper reflection is the broader strategic equation: the survival and dominance of the occupying entity, and the persistence of its strategic project, which hinges on maintaining the military resolution of the Palestinian cause as the only option. This path was solidified after the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, when the entity decided to abandon political settlements as a means to resolve the Palestinian issue. Consequently, it rejected the political resolution of the conflict with Arab states based on the “land for peace” formula, which sought stability. Instead, it declared Jerusalem as its unified and eternal capital, annexed the Golan Heights, expanded settlements in the West Bank, and repurposed the Oslo Accords into a security framework that co-opts Palestinian Authority institutions to suppress resistance and legitimise settlement expansion. The entity has relied solely on American support for this project, leveraging U.S. pressure to secure normalisation with Arab states without offering any concessions, thereby disregarding the Arab Peace Initiative’s stipulations for a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and the right of return for refugees.
• Despite the presence of strong Palestinian and Arab resistance, which has demonstrated its effectiveness since the occupying army’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon twenty-five years ago, the project of militarily resolving the Palestinian cause has remained the only option on the table. Even during the timid attempts by the U.S., particularly under President Barack Obama, to revive a political process under the banner of a two-state solution, the entity’s leadership, led by current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, clung to the military resolution of the Palestinian cause. It shut the door on any negotiated political solution, transforming this option into a governing political project represented by organised political forces that secured a majority in the Knesset and formed the current government. These forces, rooted in the most extremist factions within the entity, view the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as the historical land of the entity, non-negotiable and indivisible.
• Netanyahu pursued his soft wars to advance normalisation with Arab states, ignoring the Palestinian cause and treating the challenges posed by resistance forces as mere security threats to be managed situationally, while awaiting the opportune moment for decisive action. When the New Delhi G20 summit announced the creation of an India-Europe corridor passing through Saudi Arabia and the occupied territories, it became clear that this moment was approaching. As Netanyahu, with American support, sought to capitalise on normalisation with Saudi Arabia and subsequently crush the resistance, al-Aqsa Flood operation emerged as a preemptive and successful strike that shattered Israel’s deterrence image at its core, and the supporting fronts that followed underscored the historical and existential nature of this battle: either the military resolution of the Palestinian cause would succeed, or it would fail.
• The resistance in Gaza and Lebanon fought with unparalleled bravery, supported by Iraqi resistance efforts -as much as it could, while Yemen presented an exceptional model in disrupting and exhausting American deterrence capabilities at sea, imposing its will during the process. Despite the entity being granted every advantage it could have hoped for to win this war, it ultimately signed ceasefire agreements that included three clear acknowledgments: the impossibility of eliminating Arab resistance, particularly Palestinian and Lebanese; the impossibility of coexistence with armed resistance forces on its borders, which it now views as an existential threat rather than a mere security challenge; and the commitment to a full withdrawal from southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, along with the abandonment of displacement projects, especially in Gaza, which were seen as essential for altering the demographic balance in historic Palestine as a translation of the meaning of a Jewish state without forgoing its democratic character. All this means that this war was the largest, most significant, and harshest in the region and for the entity. This means that the military resolution of the Palestinian cause failed – a definitive and irreversible failure. There is no opportunity for a better chance in a future war to achieve what was not accomplished in this one.
• In the region, the West, and particularly among Jewish elites in America, there is a belief that the losses at the level of public perception are immense and irreparable. There is no room for another war, and the only insurance for Israel’s survival is to accept regional legitimacy in exchange for the establishment of a Palestinian state – a return to politics and the acknowledgment that the military resolution of the Palestinian cause has failed. However, there is staunch opposition from the majority of ruling and opposition elites within the entity to any political solution. The cessation of hostilities is seen merely as a truce before another war. The entity now faces two choices: either pursue a political plan for a Palestinian state in a form acceptable to the majority of Palestinians and Arabs, opening the door to regional political legitimacy -the West, global Jewish organisations, and possibly the military and secular elites may push to shape a new political leadership that embraces this project – at the risk of settler factions breaking away to form a separatist government or descending into civil war. The alternative albeit inevitable path is one of gradual disintegration, economic erosion, and demographic hemorrhaging and brain-drain, driven by mass migration of human capital of elites and skilled professionals, as predicted by Foreign Affairs magazine.
