Three years have passed since Hamas’s attack shook Israel and triggered the ongoing genocidal war. The image of the Israeli army as an invincible force was shattered. In response, Israel used all its military power – except the nuclear bomb – and mobilised all its Western allies to unleash an unprecedent campaign of death and destruction that has devastated Gaza.
The Israeli army did not just target military positions and fighters of the Islamic resistance, it set out to punish the civilian population through massacres and mass destruction. By now, it has killed more than 74,000 and injured more than 180,000, starved the entire population, destroyed the healthcare system, devastated the education system, and wiped out most of Gaza’s life-sustaining infrastructure, including water treatment and desalination plants and electricity grid. If the purpose of military power is to achieve political objectives, then the measure of success cannot be the number of people killed or the scale of destruction wrought.
It has to be whether the conflict has ended on the desired terms. But three years into this carnage, Israel appears unable to translate its military superiority into a political reality that reflects its stated goals. From the start, the Israeli government made clear it aimed to free the captives, eliminate the Palestinian resistance, impose security control over the Gaza Strip, and establish an alternative administration.
It also tacitly demonstrated it wished to prepare the ground for the eventual expulsion of the Palestinians. First, all captives have been freed. But of the 250 taken to Gaza, the Israeli army managed to free just eight and recovered the bodies of another 12.
It shot dead at least three and killed an unknown number of others during bombing operations. The vast majority of captives – both dead and alive – were released after intense diplomacy and negotiations with Hamas. It is quite telling that the Israeli army’s point man for the captives issue recently said that the captives could have been released a year earlier and some of those who died could have been saved.
Overwhelming military power clearly failed in the captives file. Second, Israel has also been unable to end the presence of the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip despite extensive military operations and the assassination of a large number of its leaders. Hamas continues to be in control of parts of the Strip despite facing continuing Israeli bombing campaigns and attacks by pro-Israel Palestinian militias.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
