Strategic coup in Palestine

By attacking Israel with unprecedented audacity, the Palestinian national movement has just reached a historic milestone. The facts are there, unthinkable yesterday and yet indisputable today: this is the first time that Palestinian fighters have carried out an offensive of this magnitude in enemy territory, and the first time that they have managed to capture dozens of Israeli nationals.

Until now, the Palestinians’ endless struggle has taken two forms. It was either popular insurrection, where demonstrators sacrificed themselves without hope of victory but to demonstrate the resistance of the Palestinian people. Or the bastion strategy, the resistance taking advantage of its modest ballistic capabilities to challenge Israel and cowering under the bombs thanks to the urban density of the Gazan confines.

On October 7, in spectacular fashion, the main theater of operations was projected into Israeli territory. The strategic initiative passed to the side of the Palestinian armed movements, which in itself constitutes an event of historic significance. Of course, nothing is certain, and the Palestinian forces will undoubtedly retreat in the face of the material superiority of the enemy, the hypothesis of a powerful assault against Gaza cannot be ruled out.

However, the presence of numerous Israeli hostages modifies the data of the military equation. By promising “the destruction of Hamas,” Netanyahu has set the bar very high. In reality, he is condemned to repeat what he has already done so many times, that is to say crush Gaza under a deluge of bombs. The Palestinian civilian losses will undoubtedly be enormous, but we will quickly wonder for what military result, and especially for what political benefit.

If it orders a massive ground offensive against the Gazan stronghold, the Israeli government runs the risk, in fact, of finding itself in a worse situation than in 2014. Because it will have to face a seasoned resistance, galvanized by its coup. outburst of October 7, and which for the first time holds the fantastic bargaining chip of dozens of hostages.

The humiliation suffered by the Israeli army is therefore coupled, on the resistance side, with a real strategic victory. By moving the center of gravity of the conflict to Israeli soil, Hamas shattered the security myth dear to Netanyahu while bringing the conflict back to its true dimension. Tel Aviv may see the Negev as the inviolable property of the State of Israel, but the Palestinian movements, by occupying the colonies in turn, have just reminded it that this territory is part of occupied Palestine.

Besides this strategic victory, the second aspect of the current events lies in their regional and international resonance. From this point of view, the coup of October 7 is like the distant echo, in another theater of operations, of Israel’s lost war against the Lebanese resistance.

In 2006, Hezbollah demonstrated that Zionist troops could suffer defeat when they attacked on Lebanese soil. For its part, the Palestinian resistance has just shown that these troops can undergo correction when they are in a defensive position on territory that Israel considers its own because it has occupied it since 1948.

Cumulatively, these two events shattered the myth of Israeli invincibility. Once again, the Israeli general staff has paid the price for an asymmetrical war between conventional army and popular resistance of which it understands nothing.

The current conflict, naturally, resonates with the geopolitical changes underway. The persistence of the United States and its European satellites in waging an absurd war against Russia has provided a window of opportunity for Palestinian resistance. At a time when Washington is entangled in a proxy conflict that it orchestrated without measuring the consequences, the unexpected offensive of the resistance in Israeli territory highlights the fragility of the settler state and destabilizes the imperialist axis.

The Palestinians’ allies, for their part, provided them with assurances and resources that made this spectacular initiative possible. It is no coincidence that Iran immediately welcomed the surprise operation of October 7. Rear base of the Axis of Resistance, the Islamic Republic is engaged in a long-term standoff with the West. Israeli threats against its territory and the bombings hitting Syria maintain a conflict which Tehran believes will mature inexorably, as the balance of power evolves, until final victory.

However, Iran’s military capabilities, particularly its ballistic capabilities, now make it capable of exercising conventional deterrence which inhibits the aggressive intentions of its adversary. If it is ridiculous to attribute the initiatives of the Arab resistance to a so-called Iranian orchestra leader, it is obvious that the political and military support of Tehran is part of the equation, just like the reconciliation of the Hamas with Syria, still confronted, for its part, with Israeli aggressiveness and the Western blockade.

“Total support”, “strong condemnation”, “we are on the side of Israel”: when Westerners start singing this song in unison, it is because we have touched the sacred cow. The variable geometry sensitivity of Western man is no mystery to anyone. This is not the first time that the selective outrage of custom mourners has been reserved for Israeli victims. For their part, the Palestinian civilians shot down in cold blood are worthless, mere collateral damage attributable to the defense of “the only democracy in the Middle East.”

Once again, the monumental hypocrisy of the “free world” is poured into the media under orders, these servile relays of harmful propaganda. The Palestinian victims, in reality, are the faceless victims of the savagery of the occupier, but also of this Western baseness which covers the colonial crime with the trappings of democracy.

But whatever. The collective lie may reach stratospheric levels, but it has no effect on the balance of power. The global South is not fooled by the rhetorical artifices for which it has been paying the price for ages. And the Palestinians no longer expect anything from the Europeans, because they know that they are headless ducks.

Like all national liberation movements, resistance to the occupier will have to rely on its own strengths, and the current event demonstrates that it does not lack them. Especially since it will also be able to count on its allies, comforted day after day by the decline of a West which believed itself to be master of the world and which sees the crumbling of a deadly domination, doomed to end up in the dustbin of history. .