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<div class="gmail-inner-article-top"><h1 class="gmail-">Israel’s Gaza withdrawal, a prelude to full-out war</h1><p class="gmail-">Don't
be lulled by the Israeli troop withdrawal from northern Gaza. Tel Aviv
has no intention of ending this war, and is escalating on all its other
fronts, including with Lebanon.</p><div class="gmail-another-name"><p><a href="https://new.thecradle.co/authors/hasan-illaik-104" style="color:rgb(164,4,4)">Hasan Illaik</a> - <font size="1"><a href="https://new.thecradle.co/articles/israels-gaza-withdrawal-a-prelude-to-full-out-war">https://new.thecradle.co/articles/israels-gaza-withdrawal-a-prelude-to-full-out-war</a></font></p></div><div class="gmail-another-name" style="margin-top:16px"><p><span>JAN 3, 2024</span></p></div></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-img"><img src="http://thecradle-main.oss-eu-central-1.aliyuncs.com/public/articles/2e090e5c-aa73-11ee-8000-00163e02c055.jpeg" alt="" width="391" height="185" style="margin-right: 0px;"><span>Photo Credit: The Cradle</span></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-content"><div class="gmail-row"><div class="gmail-col-md-8 gmail-col-sm-7"><div class="gmail-article-content"><span><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">At
the start of the new year, Israel’s occupation army began implementing
the withdrawal of a large portion of its forces from the northern Gaza
Strip.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">This
withdrawal did not mean the end of the war on Gaza, and it certainly
did not suggest calm on the Lebanese-Israeli front. On the contrary,
reducing the pace of the war in the Gaza Strip increases the
possibilities of an Israeli war on Lebanon. </span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">The
battles taking place between the occupation army and Hezbollah along
the southern Lebanese border since 8 October, in support of the
resistance in Gaza, have been increasing in intensity day after day. </span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">Washington
and Tel Aviv have sought to maximize pressure on Hezbollah by warning
of the possibility of a large-scale war between Israeli forces and the
Lebanese resistance. These tactics were in effect long before the
assassination of Hamas’ Deputy Head of the Political Bureau Saleh
Al-Arouri on 2 January by an Israeli air strike in Dahiyeh, the southern
suburb of Beirut. The killing of Al-Arouri now exponentially increases
the chance of the war expanding.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black"><strong>The third stage is coming</strong></span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">The
first stage of Tel Aviv’s war was the mass destruction and occupation
of northern Gaza; the second stage is the occupation of key points in
the south of the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian civilians have flocked
for safety. The current troop withdrawal from the territory’s north
means that the Israelis are cementing their southern plans and preparing
to move on to phase three: the long, low-intensity war. </span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">As
it enters the third stage, the occupation army intends to maintain a
geographical buffer surrounding the northern Gaza Strip. It also plans
to continue occupying the Gaza Valley area (central Gaza), while
completing its operations in Khan Yunis in the south. </span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">The fate of the </span><a href="https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/129537/What-is-the-Philadelphia-Axis-and-why-is-it-strategically"><span style="color:rgb(164,4,4)">Philadelphia axis</span></a><span style="color:black">
– or Salah ad-Din Axis – a strip of land on the border between Gaza and
Egypt which Israel wants to control, will be left to deliberations
between Tel Aviv and Cairo. This is to ensure that incidents do not
occur that lead to tension between the two parties, as well as to
guarantee that refugees do not flow from the south of the Gaza Strip
towards Sinai.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">Israel’s
ground withdrawal from northern Gaza is taking place primarily because
the occupation army’s target bank has been depleted. All targets prior
to the start of the war have been destroyed, and all new operational
targets have been bombed. </span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">Despite
this, the Palestinian resistance continues to carry out operations
against Israeli forces. These organizations remain relatively unscathed
in the entire area of the northern Gaza Strip, which will increase the
ability of the resistance to inflict losses on occupation ranks, now
and in the future. </span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">This
clear Israeli loss – in terms of Tel Aviv’s stated war objectives – has
been made evident by two basic factors: First, that the occupation army
cannot “cleanse” the northern Gaza Strip house by house, tunnel by
tunnel, because this process will take years, expose more of its
soldiers to danger, and cannot be implemented without further displacing
the entire population of northern Gaza or massacring them. It should be
noted, despite Israeli attempts to portray matters otherwise, that
hundreds of thousands of civilians are still present in the north. </span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">Second,
the Israeli government needs to gradually re-inject reserve soldiers
into country’s economy to jump-start it, to ensure that the productive
sectors are not exposed to damage from which recovery will take a long
time, despite the fact that the US and much of Europe appear ready to
monetarily assist Israel’s economy, if necessary. </span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">These
measures are being taken because Israel has patently failed to achieve
the two main goals of its war, namely, eliminating the Hamas-led
resistance in Gaza, and liberating Israeli prisoners captured by the
resistance on 7 October.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">There
remains a basic motive that must be noted: Everything the Israeli army
is currently doing is implementing a US decision to push the war from
its first and second phases into the third phase before the end of
January 2024. This requires the war to be “managed” at a slower boil,
drawing less attention to Israeli carnage and the mass suffering of
Palestinians. </span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">After
three months of brutalities, Washington has assessed the inability of
the Israeli army to eliminate the resistance, the possibilities of
regional escalation, and the significant harm caused to the US
administration of Joe Biden as he enters the presidential primary
season.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black"><strong>An escalation with Lebanon</strong></span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">As
the Israeli occupation army moves to focus its operations on the
southern Gaza Strip, the intensity of military operations along the
Lebanese border between Hezbollah and the Israeli army have also been
ratcheted up.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">Hezbollah
increased its targeting of occupation soldiers, both in their visible
locations and inside the settlements of northern Palestine.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">Hezbollah’s
information capabilities have developed in both sophistication and
accuracy during the past months. The Lebanese resistance fighters have
employed missile types not previously utilized, which have a greater
range and better destructive capacity than previous generations.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">On
the other hand, Tel Aviv has doubled the firepower used in southern
Lebanon. The Israelis continue to limit their operations to the area
south of the Litani River, and are not expanding their scope except to
target resistance groups that carry out strikes across the border. In
recent weeks, the occupation army’s destructive power has increased
dramatically since the early days of the battle.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">By
increasing its strikes, Israel’s leadership seeks to inflict the
greatest possible number of losses among the ranks of the resistance
fighters, as well as to spread panic among southern Lebanese residents –
displacing more of them, and destroying the largest possible number of
homes. This places a burden on both Hezbollah and the Lebanese state in
the reconstruction process after the end of hostilities.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">But
there is a longer-term goal to this Israeli military performance. The
government in Tel Aviv, according to its official statements, wants
Hezbollah to withdraw from the south of the Litani, to ensure the
security of Israeli settlers in northern Palestine who abandoned their
homes, either voluntarily or under evacuation orders from their army.</span><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"> </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-iran-tensions-rise-as-israeli-forces-trade-fire-with-militias-in-syria-lebanon-9b9b9cb1"><span style="color:rgb(164,4,4)">By some estimates</span></a><span style="color:black">, the number of Israelis fleeing their settlements in occupied north Palestine have reached more than 230,000 people.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">In
parallel with the public statements, messages began arriving in Beirut,
from the US and European capitals, demanding what they call “the
implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701,” meaning
Hezbollah’s withdrawal from the south of the Litani River.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">According
to emerging information, Tel Aviv is betting that Hezbollah will be
deterred, as the 2019 economic collapse from which Lebanon has not yet
recovered and the country’s long-running internal tensions are factors
that will ultimately prevent Hezbollah from waging war. </span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">Therefore,
Israel is hoping that Hezbollah will yield to pressure and meet its
demands regarding the withdrawal of its fighters from the border area
with occupied Palestine.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">This
Israeli assessment of Lebanese affairs preceded its assassination of
Al-Arouri in Beirut on 2 January. But in the same way that Israel
military commanders and politicians have underestimated and dismissed
armed Palestinian resistance initiatives within occupied lands prior to 7
October, they continue to cling to a dated Israeli calculus that
Hezbollah will never fully retaliate, or that it will only do so in a
way that stops short of war. </span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">Granted,
Hezbollah does genuinely seek to limit the scope of the military
confrontation, and has many times pushed for a Gaza ceasefire to end
hostilities throughout the region. Hezbollah is equally concerned about
not disrupting the lives and livelihood of southern residents. </span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">But
while Hezbollah takes into account the complex political and economic
Lebanese reality, it is not prepared to make concessions. Sources in the
resistance axis say that Israel - as Hezbollah sees it - is not in a
position to go to war with Lebanon when it cannot even compensate or
digest the massive strategic losses it has incurred from Operation
Al-Aqsa Flood.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">Despite
its desire to not expand the war, Hezbollah has already begun to
prepare for it. The party’s statement, issued after Al-Arouri's
assassination, indicates this, and field measures and developments will
begin to appear in short shrift. </span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">What
Israel was unable to achieve in Gaza (restoring deterrence) facing the
tight ranks of the region’s Axis of Resistance, it will most certainly
not be allowed to gain in Lebanon. </span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">The
first signs of this will appear in the plans that Hezbollah is expected
to carry out in response to Israel’s 2 January raid on Dahiyeh to
assassinate Al-Arouri, the first of its kind since August 2006, and to
which its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah had previously threatened
he would respond.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0cm"><span style="color:black">The
bottom line is that Tel Aviv’s assessment of a war with Lebanon is
based on its reading that Hezbollah wishes to prevent a major
confrontation at any cost. Not only is this calculus wrong, it has
muddled Israeli minds to the point where this may itself lead to the
outbreak of a destructive war between the two sides.</span></p></span></div></div></div></div>
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