[News] Has Palestine resistance won?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Has Palestine resistance won? 'Israel' endured a historic defeat at the
hands of a unified Palestinian resistance.

May 21, 2021 - https://qudsnen.co/?p=25176

When this Friday’s ceasefire was announced between Palestinian resistance
groups and ‘Israel’, there was only one side celebrating, the Palestinians,
who had taken to the streets to celebrate a historic defeat of Israel’s
military machine.

During the 11-day conflict between Gaza and ‘Israel’, 248 Palestinians in
Gaza were killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, this included 66
children, 39 women and 17 elderly people, in addition to 1,948 people
having sustained injuries. On the Israeli side, 12 casualties were
reported, it is unclear how many Israeli soldiers were killed as ‘Israel’
goes to great lengths to cover this up. Despite the disparity in death
statistics, which clearly indicate much greater Palestinian suffering,
Israel’s military and politicians were left utterly embarrassed and
defeated.
A Unified Palestinian Resistance To Occupation & Netanyahu’s Political
Failure

The Israeli aggression against the people of Jerusalem, specifically with
its provocative attacks on worshippers at al Aqsa Mosque, its backing of
far-right fascist settlers and the planned expulsions of Palestinians from
their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, all triggered a nationwide Palestinian
response.

For the first time, in such a forceful way, the Palestinian citizens of
‘Israel’ joined in with Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem and
the diaspora, to confront ‘Israel’ with all means necessary. National
strikes, confrontations with settlers, mass non-violent demonstrations,
riots, lone-wolf armed attacks and the unified armed groups in Gaza all
piled on ‘Israel’.

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had originally backed the
hard-line settlers in their provocative actions in order to keep himself
aligned with his Religious Zionism Party allies and to maintain support
from right wingers in general. He had just lost his mandate to form a
coalition, which was handed over to his rival Yair Lapid to form an
anti-Netanyahu coalition, a task delayed due to recent tensions, along with
the PM’s corruption trial. It seems that Netanyahu thought he would be able
to buy time politically through an escalation with Palestinians, yet
miscalculated the scale of the response and found himself in an
embarrassing predicament. Instead of gathering more support, Netanyahu has
instead now further divided the Israeli political scene and has entered a
game of pointing fingers, whilst the right-wing is condemning him for his
defeat.

The armed resistance from the Gaza Strip also proved more challenging for
‘Israel’ this time around also, no matter what ‘Israel’ did and up until
the last moments before the ceasefire, the resistance was firing rockets.
The armed groups also revealed new weapons technology, including drones
<https://qudsnen.co/?p=24696>, unmanned submarines
<https://qudsnen.co/?p=24991> and new rockets <https://qudsnen.co/?p=24872>
capable of hitting any part of historic Palestine. The armed groups also
fired on Israeli warships, gas pipelines <https://qudsnen.co/?p=25165>,
ports, electrical facilities, chemical plants, airfields
<https://qudsnen.co/?p=24786>, military bases and even gave curfews
<https://qudsnen.co/?p=24961> to be followed for residents of Tel Aviv,
along with forcing Israel’s airports to close.

The response to Israel’s aggression in Jerusalem was aimed to have ‘Israel’
abandon its settler march planned to raid al-Aqsa compound, the Palestinian
resistance achieved the goal of stopping this march
<https://qudsnen.co/?p=24648>. The goal of forcing ‘Israel’ to accept that
Palestinians will retaliate and put it in its place when Jerusalem is under
attack, was also reached.

The Palestinians are now more unified than ever, with all Palestinians,
regardless of their political affiliation, standing together in order to
confront their occupier. The ceasefire was also agreed to without ‘Israel’
having achieved any victory against the Palestinian resistance in any of
the territories, they simply backed off when confronted with the might of a
unified people.
The Israeli “Ground Invasion” of Gaza

The important takeaway from the latest round of tensions is that ‘Israel’
failed to put a dent in any of the Palestinian armed groups and instead
turned to targeting Palestinian civilians. ‘Israel’ failed to launch a
ground invasion and after announcing it <https://qudsnen.co/?p=24868>, only
then to back track, attempted to paint their failure to do so as the result
of a cunning plan to eliminate Hamas tunnel systems.

Much of the mainstream Western Press, which originally had taken the word
of ‘Israel’ that its ground troops had entered Gaza, on May 14, also
without hesitation published Israel’s excuse as to why it hadn’t done so.
It was claimed by the Israeli military that there had been a “
miscommunication
<https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/israeli-military-accused-media-trick-hamas-77698848>”,
which later turned into Israel’s “cunning plot” to allegedly deal a killer
blow to Hamas and its tunnel system.

Israeli analysts, such as Channel 13 TV’s Or Heller, began to claim that
‘Israel’ had tricked Hamas into believing the ground invasion was coming
through media reports and drew militants into their complex web of tunnel
networks. Then as the Israeli military claimed, it destroyed the tunnels
utilising 130 warplanes, bombing the tunnels for a period of 40 minutes.

It sounds like a triumphant story, but there’s one small problem, there
isn’t any evidence to suggest this happened at all, in fact all of the
evidence points to the contrary. ‘Israel’ did move its reservists close to
the separation lines, but not actually “on the border”, they were nowhere
to be seen close to the physical barriers. The confusion which was caused
also by the countless excuses provided before ‘Israel’ got its narrative
together, as to explain what happened, should also invite more scepticism.

‘Israel’, despite having 24 hour drone surveillance, could not provide a
single photo proving this alleged destruction of “hundreds of kilometres”
of the “metro” tunnel system, nor were there any combatant deaths reported
in Gaza from the strikes. On top of this, anyone who was actually following
the news cycle closely, or who lives in Gaza, knows that residential areas
were heavily targeted <https://qudsnen.co/?p=24790> during these strikes in
the north of Gaza <https://qudsnen.co/?p=25106>, around Beit Hanoun and
Beit Lahia, causing civilian deaths. The strategy which was observed on the
ground in Gaza did in fact look like a ground invasion strategy, that is,
the Israeli military flattens everything in sight so that it can move its
ground forces into an area. Then we have the Hamas sources which reported
to al-Jazeera Arabic <https://qudsnen.co/?p=24917>, that they had thwarted
an Israeli attempt to launch a ground invasion.

The credibility of the Israeli military is also very low, it was able to
even hide the deaths of at least 5 soldiers – killed in February of 2018 –
by the Salahudeen brigades (Palestinian armed group), being forced to admit
the incident only after the armed group released video showing the armed
attack in the month of November. It also yet to release the proper
statistics for its own military losses, soldier deaths, soldier injuries
and most likely never will.

Then we next have to ask the question, if ‘Israel’ could actually pull off
a successful ground operation, why didn’t it do so at any time. Why did the
Israeli military also withdraw from most of the close by areas to the
actual separation lines too, which has been shown by drone footage released
by Palestinian armed factions? The answer is, ‘Israel’ cannot occupy Gaza
and it understands that it likely can’t even defeat the ground forces of
Hamas.

If ‘Israel’ had known where the tunnel system actually was, they would have
had years to launch attacks on it and to prepare for confronting Hamas’
al-Qassam brigades and Islamic Jihads’ Saraya al-Quds, but resorted to
killing civilians.

The truth is, Israel’s military are scared of entering Gaza, or even merely
operating too close to Gaza. Israeli military and political leaders
understand that high troop casualties will mean the end of them
politically, so they do not dare risk it. This is the same case when it
comes to dealing with Hezbollah in Lebanon, ‘Israel’ is petrified of
confronting Lebanese Hezbollah, so much so that they place dummies
<https://qudsnen.co/?p=5914> along the border hoping to trick the enemy
into striking dud targets so as to not escalate tensions.

If a ground invasion was possible, ‘Israel’ would have taken to this
straight away, but it clearly was not. Israeli Premier, Benjamin Netanyahu,
has been dealt a severe blow by this round of tensions and if a ground
invasion would have been an option, he would have taken it to save his own
political life.
Israel’s Only Real Military Strategy Was Targeting Civilians

The proof of what really happened is there, on the ground, in Gaza. Over
75,000 people displaced <https://qudsnen.co/?p=25153>, around half of those
killed were women and children, civilian infrastructure was also pummeled
the most severely, not key military sites. Were there tunnels hit? Yes, but
of real significance? No. ‘Israel’ bombarded areas like al-Wehda street
<https://qudsnen.co/?p=24972> in the more prosperous area of al-Rimal, in
Gaza City, it also destroyed factories, agricultural lands
<https://qudsnen.co/?p=23956>, mosques <https://qudsnen.co/?p=25132>,
malls, medical clinics, water purification sites, electrical sites, hit
schools, bookstores and the list goes on.

After Israel’s announcement of a ground invasion amounted to nothing, the
strategy had clearly been to beat down the spirits of the people of Gaza.
When they had done massacring scores of innocent civilians, and only
killing around roughly 40 members of Palestinian resistance armed wings,
they realised that their military “operation”, called “Guardian of the
Walls”, was leading nowhere and ‘Israel’ was looking for a way out.

It is also important to note that of the members of armed factions killed
in Gaza, ‘Israel’ murdered most of them whilst they were at home and not
actively fighting, which means these were not legitimate military targets,
especially as some of them were at home with their families. Israeli PM
Netanyahu announced, in his first speech after the ceasefire agreement was
reached, that around “200 terrorists” had been killed, but even the Israeli
public knows this to be a blatant lie. Statistically, it’s impossible for
‘Israel’ to argue it killed a significant number of Palestinian fighters
and what is perhaps most ridiculous, is that Netanyahu used images of
bombed roads to try and prove he destroyed significant tunnels.

The conclusion that can be drawn from recent events, is that a unified
Palestinian people can successfully put the Israeli regime in its place and
prevent it from crossing red-lines. A new political awakening has taken
place, a new set of rules have been established. This moment, will go down
in history as an important marker in the road to the liberation of
Palestine and the establishment of Palestinian human rights.
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