Israel is losing this war

Despite Israel's violence against the Palestinians, it has failed to achieve its political goals.

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Both Israel and Hamas appear to be resetting the conditions of their political competition, not until 7 October, but back to the status quo ante 1948. What will happen next is not clear, but it is impossible to return to the previous state.

The surprise attack neutralized Israeli military installations, broke the doors of the world's largest open-air prison, and led to a horrific atrocity: about 1,200 Israelis, of whom at least 845 civilians were killed. Hamas's easy breakthrough of Israeli defenses around the Gaza Strip was shocking and reminded many of the Tet offensive of 1968. It's not literal – there is a huge difference between America's expeditionary wars in faraway lands and Israel's wars waged at home to defend the occupation, which are waged by an army of citizens motivated by a sense of existential danger. On the contrary, the analogy is useful in shaping the political logic of the insurgent offensive.

In 1968, the Vietnamese revolutionaries lost the battle, sacrificing much of the underground political and military infrastructure they had patiently built over the years. However, the Tet Offensive was a crucial moment in their defeat of the United States, even though the Vietnamese paid a huge price with their lives. By launching high-profile, dramatic attacks on more than 100 targets across the country in a single day, the lightly armed Vietnamese guerrillas shattered Johnson**'s fantasies of success peddled to the American public. It sent a signal to the Americans that the war, which cost the Americans tens of thousands of their sons, could not be won.

Vietnam's leaders measure their military operations by political influence, rather than traditional military criteria such as losses in personnel, materiel, or territory gained. Thus, Henry Kissinger lamented in 1969: "We fought a military war;Our opponents fought a political war. We seek to physically wear down our opponents;Our opponents seek our psychological exhaustion. In the process, we have forgotten one of the basic maxims of guerrilla warfare: a guerrilla unit wins as long as it does not lose. And a traditional army loses as long as it does not win. ”

This logic leads Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, D.C., which is not the worst, to argue that Israel is at great risk of losing to Hamas

The concept of a military victory for Hamas. It's all about driving long-term remediation results. Hamas sees victory not in a year or five years, but as strengthening Palestinian unity and increasing isolation from Israel by engaging in decades-long struggles. In this scenario, Hamas would rally the besieged and angry people of Gaza around it, while contributing to its collapse by making the Palestinians see the current ruling Palestinian National Authority more as an incompetent vassal of the Israeli military authority. At the same time, Arab countries have sharply distanced themselves from the normalization of relations with Israel, the Global South has strongly supported the Palestinian cause, Europe has flinched from the excesses of the Israeli army, and the United States has erupted in debates about Israel, destroying the bipartisan support that Israel has enjoyed here since the early 70s of the 20th century.

Hamas seeks to "use Israel's own far greater power to defeat Israel." Israel's power has enabled it to kill Palestinian civilians and destroy Palestinian infrastructure and ignore the international community's calls for restraint. All of this advances Hamas's war goals. Altman wrote.

Such warnings were ignored by Biden** and Western leaders. Their unconditional support for Israel's war is rooted in the illusion that Israel was just another Western country peacefully pursuing its affairs before the unprovoked attack on 7 October. It's a comforting fantasy for those who prefer to avoid recognizing the reality they've been conspiring to create.

Forget about "intelligence mistakes";Israel's failure to foresee the arrival of October 7 was a political failure because it failed to foresee the consequences of a violent and oppressive system that was known as apartheid by leading international and Israeli human rights organizations.

Twenty years ago, former Rum Burg, the former speaker of Israel's parliament, warned that violence was inevitable. As a result, the two millennial struggle for survival of the Jews ultimately boiled down to a settlement state, run by an immoral clique of corrupt outlaws who turned a deaf ear to their own citizens and enemies. A country that lacks justice cannot survive. He wrote in the International Herald Tribune.

Even if the Arabs bow their heads and swallow their shame and anger forever, it will not work. Structures built on human ruthlessness will inevitably collapse on their own. Having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, Israel should not be surprised to see them bathed in hatred and detonate themselves at the centre of Israel's escapism.

Berg warned that Israel could kill 1,000 Hamas members a day, but nothing would be solved because Israel's own acts of violence would be the one that would replenish their ranks. His warnings were ignored, even though they have been proven correct many times. The same logic is now at play in the destruction of Gaza. Israel expects the Palestinians to suffer brutal structural violence in silence, which means that Israel's security is forever illusory.

In the weeks since 7 October, it has been confirmed that there is no going back to the previous state. This may have been the purpose of Hamas's deadly attack. Even before that, many Israeli leaders openly called for the completion of the nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine;Now, these sounds are amplified.

At the end of November, the two sides reached a Taoist ceasefire agreement, and Hamas released some hostages in exchange for Palestinians held by Israel and increased humanitarian supplies into Gaza. When Israel resumed its military offensive and Hamas began firing rockets again, it became clear that Hamas was not militarily defeated. Israel's massive ** and destruction in Gaza shows that their intention is to render the 2.2 million Palestinians living there uninhabitable and to push for evictions through a military-orchestrated humanitarian catastrophe. In fact, the IDF's own estimate is that it has eliminated less than 15 per cent of Hamas's fighting forces so far. The battle has killed more than 21,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, 8,600 of whom are children.

It is almost certain that the Israeli army will drive Hamas out of its rule over Gaza. But analysts such as Tareq Baconi have studied the movement and its ideas for the past 20 years, arguing that for quite some time it has sought to break the shackles of governing the territory from the rest of Palestine in the way the occupying power has set it to be.

Hamas has long shown a desire to move away from its role in Gaza governance, from the massive, unarmed "Great March of Return"** campaign violently suppressed by Israeli snipers in 2018, to efforts to hand over governance of Gaza to a reformed Palestinian Authority, agreed technocrats, or democratically elected** thwarted by the United States and Israel, while it focuses on refocusing Palestinian politics in Gaza and the West Bank on resistance to the occupation status quo rather than custody. If the consequence of its attack is to abdicate responsibility for running Gaza, Hamas may consider it advantageous.

Hamas has tried to push Fatah down a similar path, urging the Palestinian Authority (PA), the ruling party in the West Bank, to end its security cooperation with Israel and confront the occupation more directly. Therefore,The loss of local control of Gaza is far from a decisive failure of Hamas's war efforts: for a movement dedicated to the liberation of Palestinian land, control of Gaza has begun to look like a dead end, like Fatah's permanent limited autonomy on discontinuous islands in the West Bank.

Hamas may feel compelled to take a high-risk gamble to break the status quo that it believes Palestinians will slowly die, Bakoni said. "None of this does mean that Hamas's strategic shift will be seen as a success in the long run," he wrote in Foreign Policy magazine. ”

Hamas's violent destruction of the status quo may well provide Israel with the opportunity to implement another NAKBA. This could lead to a regional conflict or a blow to the Palestinians that may take a generation to recover. However, it is certain that there will never be a return to the way it used to be.

Therefore,Hamas's strategy may be to sacrifice local governance of besieged Gaza in order to consolidate its position as a national resistance group。Hamas is not trying to bury Fatah: the various reunification agreements between Hamas and Fatah, especially those led by prisoners from both factions, suggest that Hamas seeks a united front. The Palestinian Authority is unable to protect Palestinians in the West Bank from the increasing violence and entrenched grip of Israeli settlements, let alone provide a meaningful response to the *** case in Gaza. Under the cover of the West's abandonment of Gaza, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians, arrested thousands, and forced entire villages to leave their homes in the West Bank, while escalating its state-sponsored settler attacks. In doing so, Israel has further weakened Fatah's influence among the population and pushed it toward Hamas.

For years, settlers, protected by the Israel Defense Forces, have been attacking Palestinian villages with the aim of forcing their inhabitants to leave and strengthening Israel's illegal grip on the occupied territories – but such expansion since October 7 has alarmed even Israel's American complicitions。Biden's threat to impose a visa ban on settlers involved in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is an evasion: these settlers are far from isolated rogue actors;They are armed by the State and are vigorously protected by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israeli legal system because they are carrying out State policies. But even Biden's false threats make it clear that Israel is at odds with his.

Hamas has a pan-Palestinian perspective rather than a Gaza-focused one, so it hopes that October 7 will have a revolutionary impact on all of Palestine. Hamas moved in support of this goal during the 2021 Unity Intifada, which sought to link Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the struggle of Palestinians in Israel. Now, Israel** is accelerating this connection, carrying out a paranoid crackdown on any expression of dissent by Palestinian citizens. Hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank have been detained, including activists and teenagers who posted on Facebook. Israel is well aware of the possible escalation of the situation in the West Bank. In that sense, Israel's response will only bring the people of the West Bank and Gaza closer.

It is clear that Israel never intended to accept a sovereign Palestinian state anywhere west of the Jordan River. On the contrary, Israel is strengthening its long-term plan to ensure control over the territory. This, along with Israel's growing occupation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, is a reminder that Israel is fueling any intifada that will follow in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or even within the 1967 borders.

Then, ironically, the United States' insistence on giving the Palestinian Authority control of Gaza in the wake of Israel's devastating war – and its belated weak warning of settler violence – reinforced the idea that the West Bank and Gaza are a single entity. For 17 years, Israel's policy of separating the docile West Bank, which is controlled by the Palestinian Authority, from "Gaza under the control of the Palestinian Authority" has failed.

Hamas-led attacks shattered the myth of Israel's invincibility and the expectation of calm among its citizens even as the country strangled the lives of the Palestinian people. Just a few weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was boasting that Israel had successfully "managed" the conflict to the point that Palestine no longer appeared on his map of the "new Middle East." With the Abraham Accords and other coalitions, some Arab leaders began to embrace Israel. The U.S. was pushing ahead with the plan, with both Donald Trump and Joe Biden focusing on "normalization" with Arab regimes willing to subject Palestinians to Israel's increasingly strict apartheid regime. October 7 was a brutal reminder that this is untenable. The resistance of the Palestinians constitutes a veto to the efforts of others to determine their fate.

It is too early to gauge the impact of 7 October on Israel's domestic politics. It has made the Israelis tougher, but at the same time, they have become more distrustful of the country's leaders after a colossal failure of intelligence and response. The families of the Israelis who had been taken captive to Gaza launched a massive mobilization against ** before the military operation was suspended and an agreement was reached for the release of the hostages. While many political and military leaders are determined to continue the war, dramatic and high-profile disagreements within Israel over the hostage issue and Israel's demands to ensure their release are likely to increase pressure for further release agreements or even a comprehensive ceasefire. The Israeli public remains confused, angry, and incomprehensible.

The second is the impact of the war on Israel's economy. Israel's economic growth model is based on attracting high levels of foreign direct investment into its technology sector and other export sectors. Last year's uncertainty over social and constitutional disputes has been cited as the reason for the 68% year-on-year decline in foreign direct investment (FDI) over the summer. Israel's war has mobilized 360,000 reservists, adding a new layer of shock. Economist Adam Tooze writes in his substack:

Israel's tech lobby estimates that one-tenth of its workforce has already been mobilized. Construction work has been paralyzed by the segregation of the Palestinian labour force in the West Bank. And as people stay away from restaurants and public gatherings are restricted, the consumption of services has dropped significantly. Credit card records show that in the days following the outbreak of the war, private spending in Israel fell by nearly a third. Leisure and recreation spending** up to 70%. Tourism, the backbone of Israel's economy, has come to an abrupt halt. Flights are cancelled and shipping cargo is rerouted. At sea, Israel** ordered Chevron to halt production at the Tamar gas field, resulting in a loss of $200 million in revenue per month.

Israel is a wealthy country with plenty of resources to weather the storm, but with wealth comes vulnerability – it will lose a lot.

The Israeli army poured into Gaza with a battle plan, but there was no clear war plan after the invasion of Gaza. The goal of some Israeli military leaders is to maintain the kind of "security control" they enjoy in the West Bank of the Palestinian Authority. In Gaza, this will put it up against the trained rebels supported by the majority. Many in Israeli circles advocate making Gaza uninhabitable by creating a humanitarian crisis and forcibly transferring most of Gaza's civilians to Egypt. The United States has said it has ruled out such a possibility, but no smart gambler would have underestimated the possibility that Israel might seek forgiveness after carrying out large-scale ethnic cleansing, rather than asking permission before that. This is in line with Israel's long-term demographic goal of reducing the Palestinian population between the West Bank and the West Bank.

The United States** has reached for its former prayer book to put 88-year-old Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas back in charge of Gaza and promised to renew the illusory two-state solution. But the Palestinian Authority has no credibility even in the West Bank, because it acquiesces in Israel's ever-expanding occupation. Then, the reality is,Preventing Palestine from having true sovereignty anywhere in history Palestine has long been the consensus of the Israeli leadership across most of the Zionist political spectrum. There is also no need for Israeli leaders to live up to the expectations of the United States, which is likely to be overthrown by a vote next year. Even if Biden is re-elected, Israel has proven itself capable of being a great hero. The United States has chosen to act as a co-pilot in Israel's war machine, the destination of which may not be clear, but certainly not a Palestinian state of any kind.

Israel and the United States may have convinced themselves that the world has "stepped out" of the Palestinian predicament, but the energy unleashed by events since October 7 suggests that the opposite is true. The call of solidarity with Palestine echoes through the streets of the Arab world, and in some countries it is a coded language of dissent against rotten authoritarianism. In the Global South, in Western cities, Palestine now occupies a symbolic place as the embodiment of a post-colonial order that rebelled against Western hypocrisy and injustice. Since the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq, never before have so many people around the world taken to the streets**. Challenging the delivery to Israel**, organized labor has demonstrated the power of its internationalism and reminded itself of its ability to change history, while legal mechanisms such as the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and even the courts of the United States and Europe have been used to challenge their policies that have enabled Israel's war crimes to be carried out.

The world was horrified by Israel's actions in Gaza, which alarmed Israel and its supporters, who in turn accused those who challenged Israel's atrocities of anti-Semitism – but everything from mass marches to Jewish verbal opposition to polls about Biden's handling of the crisis showed that equating solidarity (with Palestine) with antisemitism is not only factually wrong;This is not convincing.

A series of countries in Latin America and Africa, symbolically severed relations with Israel. And Israel's deliberate bombing of civilians to deny them access to shelter, food, water and health care has alarmed many of its allies. The level of violence against the beleaguered people of Gaza that the West is willing to support is a stark reminder to the Global South of their outstanding accounts with Western empires. Israel is even in danger of losing parts of the Western world when France's Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly plead with Israel to stop "bombing babies." In the short term, it will be difficult for Arab and Muslim countries to maintain open relations with Israel, let alone expand.

Bolivia's Deputy Minister Freddy Mamani (right) speaks alongside Minister of the Ministry of State of Commerce María Neira Prada at a press conference on October 31, 2023, announcing that Bolivia will sever ties with Israel. (AFP**).

Putting oneself in line with Israel's response to October 7** also bursts the bubble of illusions that the United States has regained hegemony in the Global South in the name of "we are the good guys." The U.S. response to the Russia-Ukraine crisis and the Israeli-Palestinian crisis are in stark contrast. There is a consensus that hypocrisy is at the heart of American foreign policy. This produced an extraordinary spectacle of Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim rebuking Biden to his face at the APEC summit for failing to stand up against Israel's atrocities.

In particular, Ibrahim warned that Biden's response to Gaza has created a serious trust deficit between countries that the United States wants to be allies in its competition with Russia and other powers. Showing Arab allies that their Washington patrons will side with Israel even when it bombs Arab civilians could reinforce the tendency for countries in the Global South to diversify their geopolitical portfolios.

By breaking a status quo that Palestinians cannot tolerate, Hamas has put politics back on the agenda. Israel has a strong military force, but it is politically weak. Many of the U.S. establishment who supported Israel's war believed that violence from an oppressed group could be eliminated by exerting overwhelming military force on that group. But even Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was skeptical of this assumption, warning that Israeli attacks, which killed thousands of civilians, could push "them into the arms of the enemy and replace tactical victory with a strategic defeat."

Western politicians and ** like to fantasize about Hamas as ISIS-es, i.e. nihilistic backbones holding Palestinian society hostage;In fact, Hamas is a multifaceted political movement rooted in the fabric of Palestinian society and national aspirations. It embodies the conviction that has been coldly confirmed by decades of Palestinian experience that armed resistance is at the heart of the Palestinian liberation plan as a result of the failure of the Oslo process and the stubborn hostility of its opponents. Hamas's influence and popularity have risen as Israel and its allies continue to obstruct the peace process and other nonviolent strategies for Palestinian liberation.

Israel's actions will weaken Hamas's military capabilities. But even if it's going to kill the top leaders of the organization (as it did before),Israel's response to 7 October also affirmed Hamas's message and its place among Palestinians in the region and beyond. In Jordan, for example, the large-scale pro-Hamas campaign is unprecedented. It does not take endorsement or support for Hamas's action of 7 October to recognize the enduring appeal of this movement, which seems capable of making Israel pay some price for the violence it inflicts on Palestinians on a daily, every year, generation after generation.

History also shows such a pattern:When a political solution is sought, the opposition sees it as a representative of the "** movement" (e.g. in South Africa or Ireland) and will still be at the negotiating table. It would be historically unreasonable to bet that Hamas, or at least a version of the political and ideological current it represents, will not come to the negotiating table.

It is far from clear what will happen after the horrific violence, but the Hamas attacks of 7 October have forced a resumption of a political race to which Israel seems reluctant to respond beyond a devastating military strike against Palestinian civilians. With eight weeks of revenge going on, it cannot yet be said that Israel is winning.

By Tony Karon is the editorial head of Al Jazeera AJ+ and a former senior editor at Time magazine. He was also an activist in his native South Africa's anti-apartheid liberation movement.

Daniel Levy is the chairman of the U.S. Middle East Project, and he served as Israel's negotiator with Palestine in the Taba peace talks led by Prime Minister Barak and the Oslo peace talks led by Prime Minister Rabin.

Translator: yaqi, **人, queer. Focus on international politics, gender issues and their intersectionality, as well as the ways in which they are addressed.