‘Complete Surrender’ – How Gaza Defeated Israel and What It Means
By Ramzy Baroud
Jan 15, 2024
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir accused the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu of “a complete surrender to Hamas,” calling the Gaza ceasefire agreement a “surrender deal.”
For once, Ben-Gvir is right.
For over 15 months, the Israeli military has tried every possible strategy to achieve victory in Gaza, yet it has failed. Analysts will spend years trying to understand how a country with such advanced killing technologies could fail to subdue a group of fighters who make their own weapons, or more accurately, how a group of fighters, relying on improvised weapons, managed to defeat an entire arsenal provided to Israel by the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, and many other Western and non-Western countries.
Gaza has been under a hermetic Israeli siege for nearly two decades, during which Israel has launched major wars on the region—starting in 2008 and culminating in the latest onslaught. This recent war, however, was not just another round of violence. It was genocidal in scope, a campaign of destruction unprecedented in the region’s history.
Israel will attempt, with the help of its allies in the media, to frame the Palestinian victory in Gaza as a defeat. Netanyahu and his allies within his extremist cabinet – with a few exceptions – will likely downplay the failure or attempt to distort the narrative.
Continue reading at www.palestinechronicle.com
Israel destroyed life in Gaza but it is far from victorious
By Lubna Masarwa in Jerusalem and Huthifa Fayyad
16 January 2025
After 15 months of relentless bombardment that has caused unprecedented death and destruction in Gaza, analysts say Israel is far from victorious.
Despite its overwhelming firepower and international backing, Israel has failed to achieve several of its key objectives for the war, launched on 7 October 2023 after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
This failure, coupled with the immense human cost in Gaza, reveals a deeper crisis within Israel’s military and political strategies, say analysts Sami Orabi and Ameer Makhoul.
7 October was a massive strategic, military and intelligence failure for Israel, one that its armed forces were intent on making up for.
However, in many ways Israel’s military actions have only exacerbated those weaknesses, not strengthened them, argue Orabi and Makhoul
“Israel was forced to sign an agreement with the movement it said it came to destroy, eradicate and root out,” Orabi, a Ramallah-based political analyst, told Middle East Eye. “This means the image shattered on 7 October has not been restored up until this moment.”
But despite that failure, Israel’s sole success shouldn’t be ignored: destroying life in Gaza.
This will leave Palestinians in Gaza, including Hamas, with immense challenges in the future, they add.
Continue reading at www.middleeasteye.net
Also read
Hamas: Ceasefire Agreement is an Achievement for Our People and Resistance
Gaza celebrates
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