Stress doesn‘t help in approaching what‘s happening. It doesn‘t work, because it doesn‘t work and is a dot on the line. What works is to take a deep breath and look around to see what happened, why it happened, how it happened, and where we are going from now on. Let us be clear that it was we who opened fire in support of Gaza. When we did, we didn‘t act like the neighborhood kids who decided to take revenge for insulting their relative. Rather, we did so with full awareness, and that the essence of what the resistance is doing and its central goal is to work to eliminate the occupation entity. It is true that it is a goal that seems imaginary in the minds of many, but it exists among a group of people in this region, of whom Hezbollah is at the forefront. This goal inevitably presupposes close cooperation with the people of the land, that is, with the Palestinians. Therefore, the relationship between the resistance in Lebanon and anyone fighting the enemy inside Palestine has developed and developed. Therefore, a fool or a minor would have thought that the resistance in Lebanon would stand idly by in the face of what is happening in Gaza.
What happened is that the strategy of the resistance in the support front was based on raising the pace of attrition of the occupation army, to prevent it from using all its efforts in the face of Gaza and its people, and in the attrition of its internal front, through an unprecedented operation in the history of the Arab-‘Israeli’ conflict that forced about a quarter of a million settlers to live without safety, half of whom were completely displaced from the settlements, and the other half suffered since the eighth of last October. During all this period, the confrontation assumed precise rules that did not allow the enemy to respond outside the framework that the resistance intended. It had to bear the heavy price, both in terms of its jihadist body, and at the level of commanders and fighters, and the resistance had to deal in a special way with about a hundred thousand displaced Lebanese from the villages of the front edge. For more than 11 months, the resistance plan was proceeding adequately, which increased the anger of the enemy. When he realized that there could be no ceasefire from the north until after an open ceasefire on the south, he decided to change the rules of the game.
Many weeks ago, Netanyahu, along with a large team of politicians and military personnel, realized that the Gaza war had reached a dead end. There is no operational opportunity for the return of prisoners, nor for the effective elimination of Hamas, so the “list of targets” had to be amended by putting the northern file on the table. Even those who opposed his policy in Gaza accused him of inaction vis–à–vis Hezbollah, which facilitated the double hunt: stopping the debate on Gaza and making the goal of returning residents a reason to continue the war.
Netanyahu was not escaping a deal in Gaza, but rather to divert attention from his integrated project there (we will return later to the details of the plans that the Zionist regime is preparing in cooperation with Arab countries and Western parties for a sustainable occupation of the Gaza Strip, especially the area extending from southern Netzarim to the far north). Today, however, he is acting as if he has sufficient internal legitimacy to fight the war against Lebanon, benefiting from American cover and near–public support from his Arab allies who have taken it upon the entity for failing to get rid of Hezbollah in the past.
But Netanyahu, when he decided to modify the facts of the confrontation in the north, did not bring anything new. Rather, he followed the same principle he adopted in Gaza, believing that military pressure would make the opponent retreat, with a (dangerous) addition related to our front, where the enemy, in cooperation with the United States and European and Arab countries, is trying to implicate Lebanese groups, and some Syrian opponents, in a campaign he wants in the form of an uprising demanding a ceasefire from the resistance. We will hear more talk about Lebanon not interested in “supporting Gaza“, knowing that among those who believe that Lebanon is not interested in everything that is happening in Palestine.
But the Zionist regime is not stupid all the time. It is aware that defeating Hezbollah requires more than statements and slogans, which prompted the enemy to launch a qualitative and gradual security–military programme, with a high intensity of fire, to achieve the following:
First, to deal severe blows to the party‘s military leadership and try to besiege Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah through what the regime considers the process of “cutting off his arms.” It is based on the enemy‘s theory that Nasrallah must be shaken and disequilibred in order to push the party back.
Second, he sought to notify Hezbollah, the resistance, and the public that the occupying regime is capable of getting what it wants, and that it is not satisfied with localized operations, but is capable of carrying out large–scale raids such as those it launched in the past hours, to cause what the enemy believes is an earthquake that will hit the entire Hezbollah building, and that great pressure will appear, pushing the party to retreat.
Third, the enemy adopted the principle of “shock and terror” through brutal bombardments such as the one it carried out yesterday, with a clear deliberate direct strike on homes and residential centers where civilians are present, killing civilian leaders of the party in villages, and terrorizing survivors… All this is to create confusion, accompanied by the displacement of about half a million people away from their homes and villages, before the mediators come to us with the conditions of surrender, and raise the slogan: What do you have to do with Gaza, stop the support front, and let your families return to their villages, and let us enter into the implementation of arrangements that make the it possible to return the settlers to their homes.
Let‘s go back to what happened during the past 24 hours, which witnessed things that must be scrutinized in nature before talking about their results. Anyone who sees himself involved in the event should remember or return to the archives, reread and review everything the enemy did between July 12 and 16, 2006, and will find a match not only in statements, but in the enemy‘s expectations regarding what his military strikes have achieved. If the current wave is different, in terms of new technologies, complex security operations or intensity of fire, enemy commanders appeared yesterday evening to talk about destroying the capabilities of the resistance, and that they are on the verge of victory. Here, they repeat the same mistake of previous experience, when they read in a very wrong and very wrong way the nature of the resistance‘s response yesterday, by firing bursts of rockets against settlements in the heart of occupied Palestine.
What needs to be well understood is that the enemy has no creativity outside of the logic of killing. He has not learned his lesson well, nor has he learned that the key is to build a verifiable strategy. But it remains the same, the monster we know so well, since the establishment of the entity, and we got to know it more in everything it has done since 1978. However, he is still trying his luck, under the illusion that the conditions of surrender he offers to the resistance are applicable.
We know that the enemy is preparing for additional brutal operations, preparing for actions in which he demonstrates his prowess in commando operations or precision assassinations, even surprise bombardments, and lightning offensive operations, and that he is able to operate his aircraft around the clock, and benefits from American support, not only to provide him with weapons, but also intelligence support and cooperation in operational plans. He suggests that in moments he paved the way for mediators (all carrying the same Zionist message) to force the resistance to accept the conditions that would separate the Lebanon front from Gaza and open the door to different arrangements to the south.
One of the problems of the resistance today is that there are those in Lebanon who live with it, but who still do not understand its premises and decision–making mechanism. As for the enemy‘s problem, it is no longer limited to acknowledging its nature, but rather that it does not calculate that what it must be doing is not counting scattered prayers that come out of some points of resistance, but actually preparing for something that he has not tried before, where he will face what he did not think of. At that time, he will have to look for explanations for his soldiers and settlers, before looking for a mediator who knocks on the door of the resistance day and night, begging for a ceasefire!
Ibrahim al-Amin, editor-in-chief of Al-Akhbar
source: Al Akhbar