Much has been said about the implications of the raging Israel-Gaza war, with all saying in unison that the war could massively change the already changing geopolitical landscape of the region. This ongoing change was made possible due in part to a series of fatal blunders the Israeli regime has made in recent months and years.
The Israeli blunders were so grave that derailed the apparent US foreign policy principles such as honoring human rights and international humanitarian law. In fact, the developments of the last week delivered a fatal blow to US foreign policy that will impinge on America’s global standing for years to come. That the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, criss-crossed the region to convince its Arab leaders to accept Israel’s planned ethnic cleansing of the Gaza population will always haunt US foreign policy and enable its global rivals - namely China and Russia – to set a score with the US in thorny issues such as Taiwan and Ukraine. At the end of the day, great powers learn from each other.
Aside from US aberrations, Israel made grave mistakes that brought it to this unprecedented level of confusion and weakness.
Underestimating Gaza
For years, Israeli officials have been keen to underestimate the volition and strength of the Gaza Strip. And the irony is that they continue to do so even after the October 7 debacle. Israel has long feared other parts of the Resistance Axis, particularly the Lebanese Hezbollah movement. While Israeli strategic assessments have always taken into account the redoubtable missile deterrence of Hezbollah, they willfully -and hubristically – pooh-poohed the extent to which the power of being suppressed in Gaza could generate strength and determination. Over the years, the residents of Gaza, including Hamas, built a formidable power that feeds largely on the sense of dispossession and suppression. Israelis must have surely seen how devoted and brave were the members of Hamas. And when you have the steely determination and motivation for resistance, you will find the way to that. Israel ignored this brute fact.
Qualitative technological edge
This hubris stems in part from Israel’s sense of technological supremacy. Over the years, the Israelis have built a formidable surveillance and intelligence infrastructure not just in the Gaza Strip but the entire West Asia region. They grappled with enemies much more equipped and organized than the Gazans, whom Israel thought were under its round-the-clock technological watch. Israel relied heavily on technological tools to monitor Gaza and gather intelligence, ignoring the innovative ways human resources would provide. This led to Israeli security and intelligence services being caught off guard in the biggest defeat of Israel since 1973.
The bubble of invincibility
Despite their numerous -and in some cases obvious – defeats, Israeli officials and their media have deliberately worked to foster a sense of invincibility on the part of the Israeli military. This perhaps was intended to create a sense of security for settlers who mostly departed their safe countries of origin to settle in Israeli-occupied territories. The artificial aura of invincibility resulted in overconfidence and as the October 7 incident showed, fatal institutional dysfunction.
The fear perception
In recent years, a panoply of Israeli daring sabotage operations, regional de-escalations, and internal woes in Iran has led Israelis to believe that the Resistance Axis is now more vulnerable than ever, with Iran being on the retreat on many fronts. They thought that American public expressions of support for Israel, combined with large-scale military drills simulating an attack on Iran, would suffice to deter any major escalation with the Resistance Axis.
The Resistance Axis, however, patiently worked to build military power and bolster its deterrence capabilities, without the slightest fear of Israel or its main backer the United States. And when Israel’s oppression pushed Hamas to strike, the Resistance Axis was - and continues to be at its most puissant. The Axis showed that it did not fear US military posturing or Israel’s overestimated prowess.
The burning embers of Palestine
The repetitive normalization agreements with some Arab states had prompted Israel to believe that Palestine was no longer on the regional and global agenda. The now-defunct normalization talks with Saudi Arabia further bolstered this perception. During his September speech at the UN General Assembly in New York, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu credited himself for shelving the decades-long Palestinian question, averring that the Palestinians comprise only a small fraction of the Arab world and that Israel was capable of normalizing relations with the Arab world all while trampling on the rights of Palestinians.
Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, however, showed the opposite. The public support of the Gaza Strip is another reminder of the importance of Palestine.
Annihilating Hamas
Israeli politicians have long competed with each other over how to uproot Hamas as if it never represented a variation of the Palestinian cause. Facing such an existential threat, Hamas worked to buttress itself both militarily and politically.
In all Israeli cases of aggression against the Gaza Strip in recent years, there has been an Israeli desire to destroy Hamas. But they failed to do so, only to double down on the objective now.
Hamas constituency
In a language suffused with genocidal intentions, the Israeli president said in recent days that the “entire nation” in the Gaza Strip should be punished by Israel because they refused to rise up against the Palestinian resistance group in the past. Apart from its inhumanity, this statement clearly shows the futility of Israel’s collective punishment strategy that it is undertaking now.
In all of their past military campaigns against the densely populated strip, the Israelis have resorted, to varying degrees, to collective punishment of the Gaza people with the ultimate aim of pitting them against Hamas. The deliberate targeting of civilians in Gaza can be seen within this context.
Wrong goals
This brings us to another mistake that the Israelis often make in their policy planning. They have a long history of setting unachievable goals when dealing with Gaza. And their current campaign against the Strip is no exception. They have now vacillated between the removal of Hamas to the complete destruction of Gaza and its 2.2 million population, angering Arab leaders and nations and reviving concerns over a second Nakba.
Global Support
Every time Israel starts aggression against the Gaza Strip, its leaders worry about their image in the eyes of the global public opinion. In most cases, they utterly failed to garner global support. With their casualties on October 7, they thought this time, things might be different. But the tide quickly turned in the favor of Palestine. Now some Jewish communities in the world are protesting Israel’s brutality.
Despite playing the victim, Israel will never succeed in covering the truth about Palestine. At the end of the day, the world will see Israel’s atrocities.
The Netanyahu liability
Perhaps the most destructive mistake Israel made was bringing Netanyahu to power. Although his record might well benefit the Resistance Axis, no one can fudge the truth about how he weakened Israel and made it vulnerable.
By Sadegh Fereydounabadi
First published in Tehran Times
09:35 - 2023/10/17
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