By Carlos Fazio on June 10, 2024
Hamas fighters
Nothing stops the “biblical” genocide and the collective punishment and ethnic cleansing operations of Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet in Gaza and the West Bank broadcast live urbi et orbi. However, the black propaganda of the intelligence services and the “fog of war” hide or blur the actions of the Palestinian resistance on the ground. By way of example, it should be noted that, despite the intensification and brutality of the aggression, on May 25, fighters of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, lured, ambushed and confronted at close range an Israeli military force in one of the tunnels of the Jabaliya refugee camp, the largest camp in Gaza located in the north of the strip, and detonated explosives against the group of enemy soldiers who came to its rescue.
Months earlier, the occupation army high command had announced the dismantling of 20 of the original 24 Hamas battalions in Jabaliya, but all indications are that the fighting structure of the insurgency was intact. From a military perspective, the action has a qualitative significance in causing casualties in the Israeli ranks among dead, wounded and imprisoned soldiers, and seizing military equipment, as it strengthens the position of the resistance and destabilizes the image of the Zionist army.
On a political scale, the action constitutes an additional card of the resistance to consolidate its strong position in the negotiations for a ceasefire in case of its resumption. Likewise, the traumatic ambush will accentuate the internal division of the Israeli regime and perhaps deepen the dispute between Netanyahu and the military and security echelons over the conduct of the war and the prisoner exchange arrangement, the first sign of which is the resignation of Defense Minister Benny Gantz. On the psychological level, the operation boosts the morale of the people of Gaza in light of the tragic reality imposed on them by the war of extermination. Conversely, and given the state of confusion within the occupation army, the operation sent a message to the Israeli soldiers that their efforts were in vain, while the resistance remained strong and was able to push the occupying forces back to square one in the north of the strip.
The situation on the ground in Jabaliya reveals more than just a military confrontation between an invading force and resistance fighters waging guerrilla warfare. The deeper implication is that Israel is far more entangled than it wants to acknowledge, mirroring the U.S. experience in its disastrous Vietnam quagmire. But as a report by Khalil Harb for The Cradle points out, unlike the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam, Gaza is a flat strip of land that lacks crossings, mountain passes or forests for the resistance to move personnel and weapons easily across expanses of terrain.
The resurgence of the resistance in Jabaliya caught the Israeli army off guard and exhibits that its strategy of first “mowing the grass” to control the north and center of the strip, before focusing on razing the south (Rafah), was always false and that the resistance still retains strength and leadership and is prepared for a long war of attrition. The occupation troops continue to run up against the Palestinian Viet Cong wall and their relentless deployment of new tactics: deception, ambushes, sabotage, espionage, sacrifice and, most importantly, strategic patience. According to resistance sources quoted by Al Mayadeen, Palestinian fighters are emerging from the rubble and underground to wage a veritable flea war against thousands of Israeli soldiers stationed there.
In turn, the head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, whose capture or death would be the biggest war trophy of the Israeli military offensive, did not change his positions nor was he affected by the punitive operations in Rafah, and remained committed to the central objective: survival; the Netanyahu regime was forced to negotiate with it, if only indirectly, and has been unable to destroy the resistance’s labyrinth of tunnels, with its factories and depots for rifles, portable anti-tank missiles and ammunition, command centers, infirmaries, dormitories and lines of communication.
In addition to the reality of an army with depleted reserve soldiers and signs of indiscipline in its ranks, there is the heavy damage suffered in the north of the occupied Palestinian territories as a result of the military operations carried out by the Lebanese Resistance (Hezbollah) in recent days. The gathering of accurate information by the Hezbollah intelligence unit – as good as the 8200, its equivalent in the occupation army – has allowed it to destroy four installations of the Israeli “iron dome” system (among them the headquarters of the Israeli Military Grouping Battalion of Yarden, in the occupied Syrian Golan), and at least two others were damaged, according to Tel Aviv media which defy censorship. They also confirmed the destruction of the Tel Shamayim balloon at the Ramot Naftali base, out of operation since the Hezbollah attack, which also destroyed almost all the border security camera systems.
The former head of Mossad’s intelligence division, Haim Tomer, revealed that the Israeli air force can no longer operate freely over Lebanon due to Hezbollah’s detection systems, and that in case of an escalation of the conflict, the Lebanese resistance could launch 1,500 missiles per day in the first days of combat, completely paralyzing the colonialist State of Israel and affect ports and airports in the north, putting cities such as Kiryat Shmona, Acre, Tiberias and possibly Haifa and Tel Aviv at risk of destruction. Israeli media admits that the return of the 100,000 armed supremacist settlers who left occupied Palestine (other estimates speak of 80,000) after October 7, 2023, will no longer return, which would mean a hard blow to settlement colonialism, as a strategy of anchoring and leverage to ensure control of the land occupied by Israel. Haaretz newspaper even pointed out that after a possible ceasefire, Hezbollah is on the way to establish a new security zone on the Lebanese-Palestinian border occupied by Israel.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English