‘After Palestine, Israel Faces Second Failure In Gaza’

It is becoming increasingly clear that Israel is the most dangerous state threatening peace and stability in the Middle East. It is the source of the region's long, intermittent wars, and the primary threat that must be confronted if there is a will to rebuild relations between the countries of the region, and between the region and the world, on the basis of coexistence and mutual respect, non-interference in internal affairs, and the peaceful resolution of disputes.

All that the peoples of the region (but not the regimes), who have lagged behind the world's progress and prosperity, despite their wealth and geostrategic location, aspire to live in peace and security within independent, sovereign, democratic states. Israel alone is the state that seeks to impose its hegemony by force on the region. Hegemony is the meaning of Israeli peace.

To achieve this, Israel, aided and supported by the colonial West, wants to monopolize nuclear power and ensure that no other country in the region has the ability, even the slightest, to threaten this monopoly.

The issue is not limited to Iran. Over the years, apartheid Israel has launched attacks on anyone who dared to venture into nuclear technology in the Arab world. These attacks paralyzed the nascent nuclear research infrastructure in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. Hostility to any attempt to develop Arab nuclear technology has reached the point of objecting to Saudi Arabia's possession of a program that includes domestic uranium enrichment!

By Zionist standards, no other country in the region should be allowed to hold its head high or become capable of competing. Gamal Abud Nasser, who stood for dignity in the post-colonial Arab world, was a good example of aspiring Arab leaders who were not allowed to hold their heads high. In 1967, he was punished severely.

It is Israel, not Iran, that is the enemy that threatens peace in the Middle East and the world. Some Arab puppets, however, believe otherwise. No wonder they have “normal” ties with apartheid Israel. These puppet governments must rethink their approach and call for a complete Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.

Iran has never possessed a nuclear weapon and is not seeking to acquire one. Still, Israel possesses at least 200 nuclear warheads and has the complete infrastructure for launching, controlling, and reaching targets.

The war on Iran, in fact, contributes to shifting the focus of domestic and international public attention from the ongoing, horrific genocide in Gaza. This surely diverts attention from Gaza, while the genocide continues: killing, starving, and ethnically cleansing Palestinians even in the West Bank amid a blatant media and internet blackout.

However, from the Israeli perspective, interest in the situation in Gaza does not fade, as there are Israeli prisoners whose families want to be returned, and Israeli soldiers are getting killed daily.

But, after it failed in Gaza, the Netanyahu government is experiencing a second failure in Iran, where it aims to completely destroy the nuclear and missile programs, and to create a political environment conducive to the overthrow of the regime in Tehran, as blatantly declared by Netanyahu himself. With Western weapons, Israel can raze some areas in Tehran to the ground, as it did in Gaza, but it will fail to achieve its war objectives. At the same time, it is incapable of providing safety for its own citizens, instead pushing them into ever-greater fear, spending long hours of their lives in shelters.

Benjamin Netanyahu has sent his American-made planes to Tehran to elevate war over diplomacy, to assert “legitimacy”, to remain in power, and to win the upcoming Israeli elections, but he is doomed to failure. Israel will not be able to win the war against Iran and destroy its nuclear and missile programs by force.

On the contrary, force will only be a tool for instability and the continuation of wars in the Middle East. Netanyahu will not be able to redraw the map of the Middle East as he claims, nor as his Western allies wish. The longer the war continues, Israel will become more and more weakened, and Israelis will discover the truth: Israel is not prepared for a long-term war and cannot survive if this war is prolonged.

If the United States and the colonial West will not allow Israel to be defeated, then it will have no choice but to seek external assistance, which will open the door to expanding the scope of the war. Israel, which has been unable to continue fighting in Gaza except with the help of American and Western weapons and diplomacy, will not be able to provide security for its citizens while it attacks others, and will remain, if it does, a mere American protectorate.

As for the future of the political regime in Iran, it is up to the Iranian people to decide, without interference from Donald Trump or Netanyahu. The future of the region remains in establishing peace based on justice, peaceful coexistence, mutual respect, and non-interference in internal affairs, and—most importantly-- in the Palestinian people's right to self-determination in a secular democratic state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

Haidar Eid is a Palestinian scholar. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.