Julia Kassem
The Israeli regime grappling with the embarrassment caused by the unprecedented military operation of the Palestinian resistance on October 7 has not only failed to match up to the resistance but has also been unable to prevent its military and intelligence debacle.
As the regime comes to terms with the weight and pressure of Palestinian resistance in Gaza, taking a few lethal hits in the Red Sea as well from Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, it has continued in its reckless aggression on southern Lebanon.
Since October 8, the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement has had a limited engagement battle against the Tel Aviv regime, hitting many of its military bases.
In a matter of days, Hezbollah fighters decommissioned the Israeli surveillance and military equipment along the southernmost border of the country.
It didn’t take too long for Israel to essentially become blinded on its northern front as well as from Gaza after Hezbollah added insult to injury and blinded them from the north as well.
The four-day ceasefire deal that came into effect on November 22 was in itself a significant victory for the resistance – forced upon the regime after days, if not weeks, of procrastination.
On November 3, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whose remarks are remarkably measured, said the Israeli regime often sets lofty goals for itself only to fail in achieving them.
At the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm (also known as Al-Aqsa Flood), when the Zionist entity was already put into a defensive posture, the Israeli military leaders vowed to flatten all of Gaza and “destroy Hamas”, as well as return all Israeli captives held by the Palestinian resistance group.
Without taking back any of their captives, having turned down Hamas’ offer to release them voluntarily and killing many of those captives with indiscriminate aerial blitz, the Zionist entity finally agreed to free 150 Palestinian women and children in exchange for 50 Israeli captives held on October 7.
The occupying entity, once governed by the Hannibal Directive, wanted its own dead rather than be held as captives, But, it ultimately had to kneel and accept the terms of the Palestinian resistance.
It came as the regime failed to secure or accomplish any of its military objectives in Gaza, despite bombing hospitals, murdering civilians, as well as eliminating many of the captives.
On more than one occasion, Israeli authorities even lied about freeing the captives, claiming, for example, that female soldier Ori Megidish was freed in a ground operation on October 31.
The freeing of 150 Palestinians, mainly women and children, demonstrates the ability of a besieged resistance group with no formal army, no armored vehicles or tanks (yet plenty of strength in destroying those from the Israelis) to force the West-backed regime to release Palestinian prisoners who were languishing in Israeli jails for years on trumped-up charges.
Still worse, Israel’s large-scale genocide in Gaza – intended as a form of leverage against the resistance, a form of collective punishment on the Gazan people, and a brutal tactic to drive a wedge between the resistance and their people – utterly failed.
Each act of brutality, sweeping and indiscriminate bombings, and inhumane acts of genocide the regime committed only strengthened the resolve of Palestinian people to continue their unflinching resistance and once again reject the so-called “two-nation theory.”
A recent poll by a polling firm in the occupied West Bank confirmed that nearly 80 percent of Palestinians are in favor of a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea,” rejecting the two-state solution and any other Western-crafted vision of “solution”.
Palestinians are more likely than ever to reject normalization with the occupier in any form.
US President Joe Biden’s address at the G7 summit on October 25 showed a US position that went from the Abraham Accords and the Deal of the Century to coming to terms with enforcing no reoccupation of Gaza, forced displacement of Gaza, or besiegement (despite funding and bankrolling the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza).
Since October 8, Hezbollah has waged a battle of attrition against the Zionist entity in the north, resistance groups in Iraq and Syria have been striking illegal US military bases in their respective countries, and the Ansarallah effectively put Israel’s access to the Red Sea out of service with their heroic action to seize a vessel owned by Israeli oligarch Ungar.
An end to the aggression on Gaza is the short-term goal, especially amidst the most horrible humanitarian crisis unfolding in the besieged territory.
However, the ultimate objective remains the end of the decades-long Israeli occupation and the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.
Julia Kassem is a freelance writer, having contributed to Detroit’s own Riverwise, Against the Current, and nationally syndicated outlets such as Counterpunch, Mintpressnews, and TruthOut.
(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)
