A Reluctant Resistance: Will They, Won't They Strike, Who Knows

It’s hard for anyone to admit that they have wasted their life believing in an idea that was unrealistic and naïve even at its inception. The idea that Palestine could be liberated is one such idea that just won’t die, it keeps recirculating and reinfecting us with hope. Every 20 or 30 years some regional power decides to use this idea of liberation to achieve some kind of political success over the populations of countries in its region that it wishes to dominate.

 

Palestine is the perfect idea and cause, pure and good and just, just like the tale of the crucified Jesus. A story of gross injustice and cruelty heaped on a man preaching a new age religion. Same with the plight of the Palestinian people, gross injustice and cruelty. Jesus actually preached and healed and drove out demons in the very environs over which fanatical Western Jews are fighting and burning out farmers and villagers of the West Bank who have more Semitic and Canaanite DNA than many European Jews that rule Israel today. 

 

The Great Palestine Revolt 1936: Only Palestinian hands can liberate Palestinian lands

 

The allure of the cause of Palestine is compelling, the fact that almost 40,000 (or thereabouts) civilians have been murdered by Israel in Gaza to date, elevates the cause of liberating a country, a political struggle, to a holy cause with tens of thousands of martyrs. The Israeli soldiery’s savagery has turbo charged the Palestinian cause.

 

Now we come to us, those of us who inherited this cause from our Palestinian fathers and mothers, we are a more cynical bunch. We have either lived through or been told stories of Arab armies failing to recover Palestine and in fact losing more territory to the Zionist entity either through sheer incompetence or through Arab governments’ complicity with the Israeli enemy to hand over territory freely to them. So forgive me if I’m dismissive of the superhuman capabilities ascribed to Hezbollah and the resistance front in general, supposed abilities promoted by Al Mayadeen TV in particular. Sure, the resistance has shown the ability to inflict serious pain on the Zionist entity, they have shown off their new-fangled, technically advanced modern weaponry. What they haven’t shown us yet is the will, the sheer brass balls it takes to use such weaponry in sufficient numbers to push Israel off balance and maybe even recover some Palestinian territory in the process. To reverse the defeat of 1967.

 

There has been so much speculation about Iran’s response/revenge for Isamil Haniyah’s assassination, which right there is itself an idiotic concept. Mature adult countries do not take “revenge”, they plan coolly and calmly how to respond appropriately to aggression. Even in the language coming out of the Islamic Republic there is an absence of nuance and strategy not to mention guile and cunning, it’s almost as if they think this is a game of ping pong: they hit you, you hit back, they hit you again, you hit back again… The question here how long can this ridiculous back and forth nonsense go on?! The answer is not long. Iran and Hezbollah had plenty of opportunity to strike when Israel’s guard was down, to utterly surprise and overwhelm the Zionist entity, but they didn’t, they stuck to their safe strategy of maintaining a so called “balance of deterrence”, thinking this is the best way to continue to deplete Israeli reserves. Of course, that assumption was flawed to begin with, because Israeli reserves are US reserves essentially, and it would take years if not decades to win a war of attrition against the United States.

 

So, what is Iran’s and Hezbollah’s game?! I don’t think they know. They probably really thought a war of attrition with Israel would succeed. Israel forced to fight on the Gaza, West Bank and Northern fronts all at the same time would be enough to destroy Israel I guess, or at least aid in its collapse. What no one bargained for was the level of brutality Israel was prepared to inflict on Gaza and the West Bank and the unwavering support for Israel from the US and Europe.

 

Again, I come back to that small window of opportunity Hezbollah had to strike. Not a few rockets here or there, or blowing up listening posts along the border, but a major, all out strike that would have placed Israel in a tactical bind and close to losing its territorial contiguity (i.e. the various parts of Israel would have been cut off from one another). But for whatever reason the Hezb froze, did nothing. Civilians were killed each days up to a hundred each day in Gaza and still the Hezb did not respond appropriately, did not change its regimen of strikes and attacks. Apart from emptying the North of Palestine of Israeli settlers, the Hezb has done very little esle. But once again, maybe the failure is unintentional and due to an inability to see the bigger picture, maybe they are concerned for what Israel’s response would be as it threatened to send Lebanon back to the stone age.

 

But I think Hezbollah never intended to liberate Palestine, any more than Abdul Nasser did, or Saddam (Scuds over Tel Aviv), or Assad for that matter. They all used the Palestinian people’s tragedy to win points with their own people and other people in the region.

 

“Ma bihuk jildak ella dhufrak” is an old Palestinian adage that essentially means, ‘only your own finger nails can satisfyingly scratch your back’. My hope remains with those homegrown Palestinian resistance movements and their meager capabilities will eventually get the job done. If there is any hope to liberate even a small part of our homeland, then our own people must do it, no one else.

 

Neither Hezbollah nor Iran have the strategic vision or desire to exploit the regional military dynamic and push Israel and the US into a war that Iran would eventually lose in its economically weakened state. Who could blame Iran for playing it safe, they’re not Palestinian are they.