Gentle Waves: The Second Setback   ..  Why Is Palestine wailing

By: Dr. Yasir Mahgoub Elhussein

Israel is trying in vain to contain the Palestinian resistance by strengthening the second Arab setback approach. However, this fierce resistance, fortunately, has no organic connection with defeatist Arab countries that are on a creeping train of normalization faced with outrageous rejection by the people, who feel their leaders are trading them in the international slave market.

While the confused run towards the occupation, the youth of Palestine and its children teach them lessons in resistance, provision of land, and adherence to the just cause of the nation, even if international hypocrisy and Arab abandonment reach the sky. So whoever wants to rule and establish his shaky chair and impose his authority, thinks that the gate of Israel is a way for that sinful ambition.

In June 1967, the first “setback” occurred, which a cosmetic term is meant for sugarcoating the painful reality and the terrible defeat of the Israeli aggression against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, and the occupation of the remainder of historic Palestine. The then confrontations ended with the defeat of the Arab armies and Israel’s seizure of 85% of the lands of historic Palestine, an equivalent of five times its area at that time at the expense of Sinai, the West Bank of the Jordan River, and the Golan Heights. Moreover, the setback opened the door to settlement in the occupied West Bank, especially the holy city of Al-Quds. Israel’s insistence on expansion has remained firm since the 1967 war. In the aftermath of the United Nations General Assembly’s decision in 1947 to divide Palestine into two Arab and Jewish states, Menachem Begin, the leader of the Irgun terrorist organization at the time, issued an order stating that the land “was not liberated, but was annexed.” “The Land of Israel will be restored to the people of Israel forever.” He resigned from the government of Golda Meir in 1967 due to the government’s acceptance of Security Council Resolution 242 November 1967, which stipulated the return of occupied Arab lands.

Today, Palestine is experiencing a second setback in the footsteps of humiliating normalization under the umbrella of an Israeli political project aimed at supporting and expanding the circle of normalizing relations with the usurping entity. The recent wave of normalization with the Israeli occupier was based on an agreement called the “Abrahamic Accord”. Israel’s interim political goal was to gain legitimacy for the existence of the Israeli state and secure it to the maximum extent possible while resolving the crisis with a Palestinian entity that does not pose a threat to Israel through unilateral peace agreements with Arab countries. Israel defined the political-military goal of achieving military superiority over all Arab countries, enabling it to pressure them into accepting peace agreements that achieve the interim political goal, while ensuring that Israeli security is not threatened by Arab countries.

With the West and American support, Israel succeeded in building a police state that guards and controls political and social developments in the region. Today, the occupation is living in a very comfortable military situation, focusing on political moves guarded by the military stick. Since Egypt signed the Washington Agreement on 26 March 1979, an Arab military strategy with clear features and objectives has not been crystallized as it is in the Israeli military strategy. Until 1977, there was an Arab military strategy. If it was not comprehensive, more than one Arab country would participate in it or agree to it. However, after November 1977, there were unilateral, non-Arab, comprehensive national policies to deal with the Israeli occupier.

Israel laughs at the Arabs, arguing that relations must be fully normalized before reaching a peace agreement, and some Arab countries, all mired in a quagmire of miserable weakness, aspire that peace means reaching an agreement that ends the state of war, and establishes guarantees that it will not be repeated and therefore is not linked to reciprocal relations or interaction in other dimensions of international or regional activity. However, the Israeli goals evolve and are often confusing and deliberate, with the strategy for achieving them, which makes it difficult to separate these goals from the strategy for their implementation. The dimensions of the Israeli military strategy are represented in regional expansion to gain strategic depth and serve the security, and ensure military superiority, whether in the field of conventional or nuclear weapons, also ensuring the preservation of the Jewishness of the Israeli state and trying to make the Jews the majority in the state by encouraging immigration by the Jews inward and displacing and abusing the Palestinians, objection to the establishment of any Palestinian state on the historic land of Palestine– what dubbed as a two-state solution; in addition to preserving a special relationship with the United States of America and ensuring that the Arabs do not constitute a possible alternative to Israel in the American strategic planning in the region.

One of the objectives of the Israeli military strategy is to transfer the war to the opponent’s battleground, which requires the presence of a military force capable of deterring any Arab force that may try to deviate from the strategic scheme to divide and disintegrate the Arab circles to reinforce the policy of divide and rule, as a wolf prays on astray sheep. Israel has divided the Arab world into three strategic circles: the Nile Valley, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Levant. Israel does not allow any two of these departments to coordinate together.

The goal of the Israeli military superiority over the Arabs is to ensure a deterrent force to bring them to a psychological state over time in which they feel the impossibility of fighting Israel to return the occupied land. Today, Israel spends a huge percentage of its national income on defense. The Ministry of Defense budget for 2022 is estimated at $17.6 billion out of the gross general budget of about $133 billion. This qualitative superiority has not prevented Israel from developing its national security theory according to modern concepts of war represented in economic warfare. In this context, Israel determines the place and time of war with aims to bring about major political changes and not limit itself to issues of deterrence or frustration.