Tahir Mahmoud
Western regimes enabling zionist Israel to commit genocide in Palestine regularly discuss what will take place once the current military phase of the conflict in Palestine comes to a temporary pause. Why temporary?
Palestinians will never stop resisting the apartheid regime. Their history over several decades clearly shows this. Whether zionists and their western enablers like to hear this or not, this is the reality on the ground.
Israel and its genocidal enablers are puzzled by the fact that they have no specific political and military strategy for what they refer to as the ‘day after’. Strategies and tactics being discussed by western and Israeli officials can be divided into three categories.
1. The most frequently talked about strategy is to install a puppet regime to administer Gaza.
2. Direct Israeli occupation in some form, combined with whatever ethnic cleansing can be achieved.
3. Bring in autocratic pro-zionist Arab regimes and have their brutes assist the Israelis in controlling Gaza and its people.
It is quite likely that Israel will attempt to use some parts of all three. On their own, each strategy is doomed to fail because they are completely unrealistic. Their combined version is even more problematic for Israel and the US from a political and logistical point of view.
Let us briefly analyze why each of the three strategies is doomed to fail individually.
The first strategy was attempted in Afghanistan and Iraq and failed miserably. In both locales when Americans captured Kabul and Baghdad respectively, it seemed to the American establishment that it was all going to work out. It did not. Today the Taliban are back in Kabul, while Ayatullah Sistani and Islamic Iran call the shots in Iraq.
The US is far more powerful than Israel. From a political and military standpoint, the Taliban were in a much weaker position than Hamas. The Islamic resistance movement in Palestine also receives backing from Islamic Iran, Syria, Yemen and partly Lebanon (Hizbullah).
For all state and semi-state entities assisting Hamas, they see it as a strategic ally and the Palestinian cause is part of their strategic political equation. The Taliban never received such assistance. True, Pakistan aided them somewhat but it was ad-hoc and delivered in a half-hearted manner. Hamas’s case is different because the Palestinian cause is central to the political culture of the broader Muslim Ummah.
History is one of the best teachers but arrogant despots refuse to learn. If Hamid Karzai or Ashraf Ghani type puppets did not last in Afghanistan, they will certainly not last in Palestine. Any puppet openly cooperating with Israel after the current carnage in Gaza will be despised and viewed as illegitimate.
If the zionist regime decides to occupy Gaza, it will have to place a large number of troops there. The situation will be much worse than what it faced in South Lebanon. Besides, the zionists were driven out of Gaza in 2005 following unrelenting resistance. The Palestinians will conduct sustained guerrilla operations exhausting Israel on multiple fronts and most importantly constantly cause political shockwaves within the ruling cabal of zionists.
Israel’s third strategy of bringing in the Arab regimes is highly problematic for the despots themselves. Both the US and Israel know that pro-zionist regimes in Arab countries lack legitimate popular backing and must constantly work to keep their populations subdued. Openly aiding Israel is a political time bomb for any Arab regime agreeing to the above option.
Barring Bahrain, the US was not able to convince any of its regional subordinates to join the naval aggression against Yemen. This clearly indicates that Arab despots will not participate meaningfully in anything Israel aims to achieve right now.
The combination of some elements from the above three strategies will bring even bigger unknowns into the ongoing situation for Israel and its western genocide enablers.
It will require a high degree of coordination in planning and execution between Israel, the US, Arab regimes, and Palestinian collaborators at the political, economic, military and information levels. In a multipolar global order where regional players are trying to balance their geopolitical, security and economic interests between various poles of power, this degree of cooperation is a pipedream.
To consider a practical example, the US was not able to pressure even the Saudis to recognize Israel for the past few years. This was far less complicated than getting regional despots to join a coordinated plan of action with Israel and the US in managing the occupation of Palestine on a day-to-day basis.
The fate of the so-called “Arab NATO” must also be kept in mind. It did not move beyond fancy statements in the media. Its prospects are seen as completely unrealistic even by western policy centers.
This leads us to a real response to the day after dilemma of apartheid Israel and its western enablers. Many zionists understand that defeating Hamas is an illusion.
Additionally, the security and military balance on the Lebanese front has been turned upside down and it is not in Israel’s favor. This, combined with regional pressure exerted on Israel and its western enablers means that Tel Aviv will remain in a state of permanent instability which will affect its internal and external policies.
Most importantly, Israel does not and cannot command the momentum on the ground. It is clear even to western observers that the zionist military is in deep trouble and is nowhere near the level hitherto projected by the western entertainment industry. The most important factor in these developments is the regional and Palestinian resistance.
Even cursory study of Israeli behavior in Palestine and Lebanon reveals that the only reality which counts in deterring Israeli aggression is the ground reality shaped by the resistance. Palestinians and the wider regional resistance forces have made a strategic choice to resist apartheid Israel and they determine the pace of the ongoing situation.
The escalation ladder is under the control of the Resistance Axis, in political and military terms.
Anyone who thinks that certain Israeli actions will lead to specific developments does not understand that the current situation is very different to anything the region experienced before. It is the Resistance Axis which frames developments, not Israel or its western enablers.
On the internal front the zionist entity is slowly but surely heading toward intense friction which in the right external and economic circumstances, can easily turn into civil war. Zionists in Occupied Palestine are bitterly divided, and their divisions will only increase.
On the economic front, Israel will not see any significant foreign direct investment for a long time. It will also see significant flight of domestic capital and human resources. Although the departure of Israelis from Palestine has gained momentum over the past several weeks, this phenomenon is not recent. With a prolonged crisis, this will simply increase.
The dual citizenship factor which the Israeli regime often used for lobbying purposes abroad, is likely to turn into one of its strategic political and social headaches in the long run. Being heavily dependent on external subsidies politically, militarily, and economically means that the zionist regime will feel the geopolitical pinch from Russia’s turn-around of its war in Ukraine and China’s more assertive moves on the global economic arena.
As western economies are in a much weaker position, they will not be able to provide prolonged and sustained economic and political support that Israel needs in the unique circumstances it faces today. It is not 2003, but 2023. The wider geopolitical realities and requirements for apartheid Israel to continue surviving as a colonial regime are very different, especially after the events of October 7.
The Great Satan again showed its real face by officially moving its embassy to Jerusalem calling it Israel’s “capital.” This caused th...
On Saturday March 30, peace and anti-war activists held rallies in different capitals to demand that NATO be dismantled as well as to suppor...
Calls to try Israeli leaders for war crimes for their conduct in the war against the civilian population in Ghazzah are getting louder. The ...
As the Israeli military machine battered Gaza earlier this year, during weeks of the most ferocious assaults on Palestinians seen in decades...
