AN ARTICLE in Haaretz says Israel is fatally weak against the Axis of Resistance, which includes the Palestinian and Lebanese movements.
Writing in the leading Israeli daily, Dr. Gil Murciano also said the ‘War between the Wars’ doctrine followed by Israel is greatly limited in shaping an endurable reality for the regime.
While the strategy is underpinned by an assumption that Israel is destined to experience significant, temporary escalation every few years in its confrontation with the Axis of Resistance, the policy has failed to achieve its far-reaching goals in recent years, he said.
According to Murciano, Israel’s position has eroded further with each new round of fighting with resistance groups as the Gaza-based Hamas movement grows stronger in the domestic Palestinian arena, while Israel grows weaker on the international stage.
Israeli politicians are getting closer to an agreement on a coalition cabinet to oust Premier Benjamin Netanyahu after the recent Israel military fiasco in Gaza.
He pointed to the March 3 decision by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, to launch a formal inquiry into Israeli crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories as a proof that the Tel Aviv regime’s standing is deteriorating.
Murciano noted that Israel’s recent acts of aggression against Palestinians in East Jerusalem al-Quds coupled with a bloody military onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip have caused a deep tear in the fabric of Jewish-Arab relations within the occupied territories.
Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad resistance movement, he said, have upgraded their capacity to inflict damage on Israeli military forces, both in terms of quantity and
quality.
Iran’s defence minister says Palestinian missiles, drones and defensive capabilities will haunt Israeli settlers like a nightmare.
Murciano is about to take over as the new chief executive of Mitvim, the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies.
In his article, he said the main flaw of the ‘War between the Wars’ does not lie in the strategy’s failure to achieve its operational goals, but in the adoption of its underpinning logic by Israel’s political leadership in lieu of diplomacy.
The strategy, he wrote, constitutes a desperate attempt to freeze reality with the best case scenario that things will not get any worse.
The ‘War between the Wars’ lacks the vision or the desire for long-term policy, and its adoption fits the anti-solutionism approach adopted by the Israeli administration over the past decade, he added.
Murciano underscored that the policy creates a false sense of proactivity, and sanctifies military creativity and initiative in eliminating operational risks.
It, however, enables the political echelon to avoid diplomatic measures.
‘This illusion of proactivity collapses with every escalation. While we are busy trying to preserve the status quo, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are learning, adapting and improving conditions for the next round,’ he said.
A senior official of Hamas says Israel’s security vulnerability was revealed during the regime’s latest war on the besieged Gaza Strip.
According to Murciano, the next round of fighting could present Israel with an active new front on the West Bank as Hamas is growing in power in the territory.
He advised Israeli authorities to turn normalisation deals it has struck with a number of Arab states into a strategic tie-breaker, and to forge military alliances against Iran and the Axis of Resistance at large, and rope Saudi Arabia into the normalisation agreements.
- Leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah resistance movements, Ismail Haniyeh and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, met in Lebanon last year to draw up a plan for the liberation of the Israeli occupied territories, a Lebanese paper reports.
According to Beirut-based al-Akhbar daily, the recent blow dealt to Israel during the 11-day Gaza war was part of the liberation plan.
The Palestinian resistance adopted tactics used by Hezbollah during the 2006 war by setting up mock rocket launch sites to deceive the Israeli air force, the report said.
Yemen’s Ansarullah also communicated with Hamas and requested coordinates for the sites it wanted to target with missiles and drones, but Hamas told the popular movement not to intervene as long as the Israeli army had not crossed the ‘red lines.’
Tel Aviv began bombing Gaza on May 10, after Palestinian retaliation against violent raids on worshippers at the al-Aqsa Mosque and Israel’s plans to force a number of Palestinian families out of their homes at the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem al-Quds.
Apparently caught off guard by unprecedented rocket barrages from Gaza, Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire on May 21, which Palestinian resistance groups accepted with Egyptian mediation.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 254 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli offensive, including 66 children and 39 women, and 1948 others were wounded.
In a televised speech last week, Lebanon’s Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned that any aggression against Jerusalem al-Quds or the city’s holy sites would mean a regional war.
‘When holy sites face serious threats, there are no red lines,’ he said. ‘All the resistance movements can’t sit back and watch if holy sites are in danger.’
The secretary general of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement warned Israel that any aggression on holy sites in the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds would lead to a regional war and destruction of the Tel Aviv regime.
Similarly, Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, warned of a regional war in case holy sites were attacked and that all resistance groups would coalesce in any future battle.
‘Nasrallah should be taken seriously; he is Israel’s most credible enemy, he usually doesn’t make empty threats,’ a senior Israeli security source told al-Monitor news website on the condition of anonymity.
‘The fact that he joined Sinwar at this time and announced that any unilateral Israel move in Jerusalem would lead to war should be treated … as a very serious warning.’
Former Israeli lawmaker Zvi Hauser said: ‘This is probably the last time that Israel will confront Hamas alone.
‘In the future, Israel will be challenged at the same time on additional fronts, such as the northern front, making the challenge much tougher.’
In a TV programme, al-Akhbar editor-in-chief Ibrahim al-Amin said that a joint operation room for the recent Gaza war was established in Beirut, where officers from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) oversaw the conflict.
The operation room was not only a place to exchange experience and tactics, but also somewhere that intelligence apparatuses operated, he added.
General Ismail Qa’ani, the head of the IRGC’s Quds Force, visited Beirut twice during the war, Amin said, noting that the Lebanese resistance also managed to transfer high-ranking Hamas officers to Beirut through ‘special routes’.
The head of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says ‘Israel knows that the first outcome of Gaza’s victory is not Gaza linking with al-Quds, the West Bank and the 1948 Arabs – namely the resistance’s connection with other parts of Palestine – but the rest of Palestine joining the resistance axis,’ he said.
‘Nasrallah said the resistance in the Arab world should support Gaza. It means that this front is obliged to support Palestine even if there is no need to enter the war,’ Amin added.
