By Alireza Hashemi
The futility of the Israeli regime’s war on Gaza is what pushed Benjamin Netanyahu to opt for a ceasefire deal with Hamas and will likely force him to extend the truce, says an analyst.
Ali Abdi, an expert on Israeli affairs based in Iran, in an interview with the Press TV website, said the Tel Aviv regime failed to achieve any of its publicly declared goals of the war after seven weeks.
He pointed to the military losses suffered by the regime since October 7 and the bleak prospect of its violent aggression achieving any of the stated goals as the main reason why it agreed to the ceasefire.
The two-day extension of the temporary ceasefire deal between the Netanyahu regime and the Hamas resistance group, announced on Monday afternoon, is further proof of that, Abdi noted.
The Israel regime, early on Tuesday, released another group of Palestinian abductees after Hamas freed nearly a dozen Israeli captives in the fourth phase of a swap deal between the two sides.
“The regime’s intense bombing campaign and its ground invasion of Gaza couldn’t wipe Hamas off the earth. The regime couldn’t take control of Gaza, even its northern part. Also, it failed to achieve the basic goal of the military campaign: securing the release of its captives,” Abdi told the Press TV website.
“The Israeli army was given a good amount of time to penetrate deep into Gaza, but clearly they had no major achievement,” he hastened to add, pointing to the complete failure of the regime.
Abdi asserted that the lack of any military achievements has been accompanied by heavy military casualties, making the prospects of a military solution even worse.
“Israel heavily censors information about its casualties and claims it only lost a few dozen soldiers during the war. But Hamas and Hezbollah say they’ve damaged or destroyed around 500 Israeli military vehicles,” the Iranian analyst stated.
“It’s hard to believe all these deadly attacks – videos of some of which are publically available – have left only several dozen troops dead”, he added, referring to the regime’s attempt to cover up its failure.
At the same time, the regime has been facing mounting international pressure over its genocide of Palestinians and the destruction of the civilian infrastructure in the besieged territory.
“The brutal genocidal attacks on Gaza killed thousands in the strip and destroyed much of the infrastructure in the poor coastal territory, and this triggered an explosion of hatred for Israel worldwide, evidenced by massive anti-war protests in London and elsewhere,” Abdi noted.
“Concurrently, Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu faced strong internal pressure to secure the release of captives through negotiations as people believed the military option was not working.”
On whether the regime may change its mind and resume its war on Gaza after the temporary truce ends, Abdi said Netanyahu is motivated to keep up massacring people in Gaza in the belief that the ceasefire mainly benefits the Gaza resistance.
“It’s a painful situation for Netanyahu, as extremist elements see his cabinet as the loser and Gaza as the winner. This factor encourages Netanyahu to break the ceasefire and resume fighting,” he remarked.
“But on the other hand, the fact is the invasion has had no tangible achievement and its further continuation would escalate international pressure and make it more difficult to retrieve the captives.”
Under the current circumstances, Abdi emphasized, the Palestinian resistance has managed to put an end to Netanyahu’s far-right cabinet and most likely his political career as well.
But more importantly, he further said, Hamas has managed to permanently tilt the balance of power in the region in the favor of resistance, just like what Hezbollah did in its 2006 war with the Israeli regime.
