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<div class="entry-header"><h1 class="gmail-post-title entry-title">Has Palestine resistance won?</h1>
<h2 class="entry-sub-title">'Israel' endured a historic defeat at the hands of a unified Palestinian resistance. </h2>
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<p>May 21, 2021 - <font size="1"><a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=25176">https://qudsnen.co/?p=25176</a></font></p><p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>A Unified Palestinian Resistance To Occupation & Netanyahu’s Political Failure</h2>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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’.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=24696">drones</a>, <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=24991">unmanned submarines</a> and <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=24872">new rockets</a> capable of hitting any part of historic Palestine. The armed groups also fired on Israeli warships, <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=25165">gas pipelines</a>, ports, electrical facilities, chemical plants, <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=24786">airfields</a>, military bases and even <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=24961">gave curfews</a> to be followed for residents of Tel Aviv, along with forcing Israel’s airports to close. </p>
<p>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 <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=24648">stopping this march</a>.
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>The Israeli “Ground Invasion” of Gaza</h2>
<p>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 <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=24868">after announcing it</a>,
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.</p>
<p>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 “<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/israeli-military-accused-media-trick-hamas-77698848">miscommunication</a>”, which later turned into Israel’s “cunning plot” to allegedly deal a killer blow to Hamas and its tunnel system.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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 <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=24790">residential areas were heavily targeted</a> during these strikes <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=25106">in the north of Gaza</a>,
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 <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=24917">reported to al-Jazeera Arabic</a>, that they had thwarted an Israeli attempt to launch a ground invasion. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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 <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=5914">they place dummies</a> along the border hoping to trick the enemy into striking dud targets so as to not escalate tensions.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Israel’s Only Real Military Strategy Was Targeting Civilians</h2>
<p>The proof of what really happened is there, on the ground, in Gaza. <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=25153">Over 75,000 people displaced</a>,
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’ <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=24972">bombarded areas like al-Wehda street</a> in the more prosperous area of al-Rimal, in Gaza City, it also destroyed factories, <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=23956">agricultural lands</a>, <a href="https://qudsnen.co/?p=25132">mosques</a>, malls, medical clinics, water purification sites, electrical sites, hit schools, bookstores and the list goes on. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p></div>
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