Israel’s Failure to Achieve War Goals: The Time for the Search for a Settlement Begins BY Ali Abu Habla Esq. Translated from Arabic by Ibrahim Ebeid Al-Far

Israel’s Failure to Achieve War Goals:

The Time for the Search for a Settlement Begins
BY Ali Abu Habla Esq.
Translated from Arabic by Ibrahim Ebeid Al-Farr.

When the Israeli war on Gaza began, Israeli officials talked about a long war. After entering the third month of fighting, it became possible to say that this war was the longest fought by the occupation. According to all the facts and expectations, the war did not achieve the promised results. There is concern and discontent among the Israeli people about the continuation of the war.
Since the war in the Gaza Strip, the war government of Netanyahu, which practiced a scorched earth policy and its military machine, affected stones, trees, and people. It claimed that its goal was to destroy the Palestinian resistance force and subjugate the Palestinian people. Still, the war government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu found itself mired in the quagmire of Gaza. Its army, especially the elite troops in it, suffered the heaviest losses without achieving the desired results and without providing evidence that convinces the Israelis of the continued feasibility of war as well as “Israel” suffered significant economic losses as a result of incapacity in the movement of the economy and tourism and the cessation of Traffic at Ben Gurion Airport. And the isolation of the Israeli entity by air as well as by sea. The foreseeable losses amounted to billions of dollars.
The war government can no longer continue in this war for long due to many considerations, most notably the internal economy, where warnings emerge from Israeli research centers of the danger of the current economic crisis, which may lead to a broad collapse that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu will not be able to get out of for many years, in addition to the complete economic stalemate and the call for military reserves, there is the displacement crisis and the discontent of the displaced, in addition to the issue of Israeli protesters. This issue worries Israelis and pushes them daily to demonstrate, demanding an exchange deal and releasing Palestinian detainees.
There is a real fear by the Israeli political and military establishment of erosion and diminishing support for Israel. There is talk of Americans grumbling about the continuation of the war at its current pace, inflicting losses on Palestinian civilians, practicing a policy of starvation, preventing water and medicine, and cutting off electricity for nearly one million nine hundred thousand displaced people, as talk has begun within the Israeli entity about setting an American time limit for the Israelis that ends at the beginning of next year or the middle of next month. Suppose Israeli officials are not convinced to stop the war. In that case, they may resort to America’s reduced military support, without which it cannot last long, especially since the Biden administration and the Democratic Party are facing a specific loss due to the Biden administration’s support for Israel in its war on Gaza.
The achievements talked about by the Israeli army in northern Gaza are dispelled daily by clashes with the resistance forces and the heavy losses inflicted on the Israeli army. The Israeli military has not been able to attain any significant achievement, either by eliminating the pockets of resistance or stopping the firing of rockets from the Strip on Tel Aviv, nor has Hamas announced its surrender and laid down its arms. Hence, there is talk, according to follow-up sources, that the Israeli ground attack on Gaza may end in Khan Yunis, stressing this point is precisely one of the most challenging points that the Israelis are getting into. According to the admission of Israeli military commanders, it is one of the fiercest battles fought by the Israeli occupation army.
At this time, it can be said that the severe research of the post-war phase on Gaza has already begun after Israel accepted the need to discuss this issue, considering that the goals it set for its war will not be fully achieved, which has become convinced by Israeli society, which increases its pressure on the government on the street.
The situation in southern Lebanon will not be isolated from the proposed solutions to defuse the conflict and ensure the security of the occupying forces. According to analysts and observers, this settlement, to which the Americans and Iran will undoubtedly be a party, must address the situation in Lebanon, but what is currently being proposed by international envoys does not amount to a possible solution because talking about amending resolution 1701, imposing the application of establishing a buffer zone by force, or making the resolution under the seventh item in The United Nations are all options that will not be able to be implemented on the ground, so the next stage will be to discuss settlements but under “fire”, whether in Gaza or in southern Lebanon.
For his part, Ron Ben-Yishai, a military analyst for the newspaper “Yedioth Ahronoth,” expects a slow and long battle and calls on the public to lengthen the same and not to put pressure on the war cabinet, the government, and the army, and says that the military needs a “time window” not only from the US administration but from the Israeli public because there is still a long way to go.
The long road, which translates chronologically into a few months and perhaps a year, as stated by more than one Israeli official, means, in the concept of many military and political analysts, the drowning of the Israeli army in the mud of Gaza and this context, the American writer, Thomas Friedman, warned Israel against continuing its ground invasion of Gaza so as not to sink into its mud forever, and that all the “ills” of the Strip become under its responsibility, in addition to having to manage its population, which numbers more than two million people suffering under the weight of a humanitarian crisis, as Such a scenario would “tarnish,” as he put it, the reputation of the IDF, which is still seeking to restore Israeli confidence in it.
Danny Rabinovich also predicts that in the absence of what he described as an “exit strategy,” Israel will sink into the mud of Gaza, and points out that despite Biden’s desire to undermine Hamas and destroy the Iranian axis in the Middle East, he is not immune to opinion polls that indicate that the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza weakens him and increases Trump’s power, so on the eve of the elections, he will put Israel in front of a harsh choice, which is either to lay down arms or to complete the war alone without arming and without a carrier. A political withdrawal of this kind would be interpreted in Iran and possibly in Russia and China as a green light to open a multi-front battle that would lead to Israel’s ruin.
Rebenovich concludes that there is no military solution in Gaza. Suppose there is no hope for the Gazans and Palestinians in general. In that case, the impasse will deepen, noting that the success of the Israeli army in its missions would increase the determination of the Palestinians and bring them and their allies closer to launching a regional war, “the battle of Gog and Magog, in which if Israel is found alone, it will not end as Smotrich, Ben Gvir and the extremists in Israel wish