BY; MUHAMMAD MA’RUF. Ph.D
Director-Global Thinkers Institute (GTI), Observer, Researcher on Geo-Philosophy, Geo-Politic, Geostrategy, Intelligence and Defense.
GTI-Today, entering the 18th day, of the 2023 Hamas versus Israel war. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Israeli attacks have so far killed more than 5000 Palestinians, including 2055 children and 1.119 women, while more than 15.000 people were injured. The question is where this Israeli atrocity exhibition campaign will lead. This article will try to answer it.
It is certain that the short-term strategy of Israel's brutal attacks on the innocent citizens of Gaza is to quickly cut off the world public's memory of the "success of the Al-Aqsa Storm Hamas operation". Meanwhile, the long-term goal is to expel and kill as many Palestinians as possible in Gaza and the West Bank. Millions of Gaza residents will be forcibly moved to Sinai, while millions of West Bank residents will be forced to move to Jordan.
As Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian put it "the ultimate goal of the Israeli regime's bombardment of Gaza is the forced transfer of the population of Gaza and the West Bank to the Sinai region of Egypt and parts of Jordan."
Abdollahian indicated that "Tel Aviv is trying to establish a Palestinian state, outside the historic lands of Palestine, but resistance has become the main obstacle to the realization of the Zionist nightmare."
Meanwhile, Israel, said Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Ashtiani, has committed "political suicide" through its brutal attacks on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Speaking in a phone call with Syrian Defense Minister Ali Mahmoud Abbas on Monday, Ashtiani condemned Israel's incessant airstrikes on Gaza as a "violation of all the rules of war and human rights." They hurt the conscience of all Muslim countries and awakened the world to the crimes of bloodthirsty regimes, he said.
Great tragedy meets great tragedy. The disgrace of great security superiority was countered by a great genocide. To be precise, the Israelis call themselves now the creation and completion of the Nakba volume 2. If the Nakba volume 1 is covered, it happened before and after 1948 in waves. So the second volume of the Nakba was carried out openly.
The Palestinians living within the borders of the Palestinian mandate, the land now divided into what is called Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)- consisting of the West Bank, east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip- actually experienced four periods The main forced displacements of the first volume: (1) British Mandate (1922-1947), (2) Nakba (1947-1949), (3) Israeli military rule imposed on Palestinians within the Green Line (1949-1966), and ( 4) The Six Day War of 1967.
Israel does not have other options to compensate for its intelligence losses. Israel's security is among the most expensive in the world. The display or exhibition of Israeli security system products as the newest and most advanced products from NATO and the European Union has collapsed. So that the handling of intelligence, military and government is actually in the direct hands of its parent, the USA.
How can Israel's security and military system, which has spent huge amounts of money, be broken down by Hamas-Palestinian youths who have been blockaded by land, sea and air for 17 years?
The United States provided more than $3.3 billion in foreign aid to Israel in 2022. About $8.8 million of it went to the country's economy, while 99.7% of the aid went to the Israeli military.
Israel received the second largest amount of US aid in 2022 after Ukraine, where the US provided $12.4 billion in aid. The two countries received respectively 4.8% and 18.1% of all foreign aid provided that year. Total US foreign aid to Israel adjusted for inflation since post-World War II, 1946–2022 is $317.9 B.
Amir-Abdollahian added “Currently, the American security apparatus is managing” Israel's war in Gaza. "The administrative and political systems in the occupied territories have been in complete disarray, but under the direct supervision of American military personnel, the Israeli regime's crumbling war machine is trying to be rescued from crisis."
The Mossad intelligence agency, the IDF ranks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from Liquid, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant were devastated, and only seemed to be trying to provide a solution in the hope of victory. Creating the maximum tragedy, and apparently not leading to negotiations, but the second phase of the expulsion (Nakba) of Gaza residents to China, and residents of the West Bank to Jordan.
This Hollywood drama campaign of bombarding Gaza, resulted in Gaza refugees crowding the Egyptian border, after which Israel prepared to attack Gaza city with US-supplied bunker-busting bombs.
Since a week since Hamas' deadly attack on Israeli territory, Israel's military actions have been uncompromising. Over the past week, Israeli aircraft have continuously bombed non-military targets in Gaza City. Apartment buildings, hospitals, and mosques were destroyed without warning and with warning. Ten hospitals are out of commission, and the rest will be bombed.
At the end of this week, Israeli planes also dropped leaflets telling residents in and around Gaza City in the north that those wishing to survive should head south (walking if necessary, about 40 kilometers) to the Rafah border crossing. Crossroads to Egypt.
As of this writing, it remains unclear whether Egypt will allow the entry of one million refugees, the vast majority of whom are committed to the Hamas cause. In the short term, Israel has sought to convince Qatar, at the behest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to join Egypt in funding the tent city. Israel is planning a campaign for the millions of refugees waiting across the border. An agreement has not been reached.
One possible location is a long-abandoned plot of land in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, near the Gaza border, which is the site of an Israeli settlement known as Yamit. The peninsula was captured by Israel after its victory in the Six Day War in 1967. The settlers were evacuated and destroyed by Israel before Sinai was returned to Egypt in 1982. Israel's hope is that Qatar and Egypt can overcome and bear the brunt of the crisis from these Palestinian refugees.
Of course, Israel's blatant disregard for the lives of Gazans amidst the forced migration of more than a million starving people has attracted world attention and led to increasing international condemnation, much of which has been directed at the Prime Minister. Benjamin Netanyahu.
The main problem for Israeli war planners is the “reluctance”, despite the mobilization of more than 300,000 reservists, to engage in street fighting with Hamas in Gaza City.
Half of Israel's army over the past decade or more has been involved in protecting the growing number of Israeli settlements scattered across the West Bank. They are very hated by the Palestinian population. Israeli war planners distrusted their infantry, not because they did not want to fight, but because their lack of combat experience could spell disaster for Israel.
The next target, when Gaza's starving civilians are forced to flee, the Israeli Air Force will destroy the remaining buildings in Gaza City and other places in the north. The vision of Israeli war planners is that all the buildings of Gaza City will be razed to the ground.
Then in the next step, Israel will begin dropping 5,000-ton American-made bombs known as “bunker buster,” or The Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), on flat areas where Hamas fighters are known to live and produce missiles and other weapons underground.
In April 2017, the United States dropped an upgraded version of the weapon, known as the GBU-43/B, described by media as “the mother of all bombs,” on a suspected ISIS command center in Afghanistan.
The weapon was sold to Israel in 2005, allegedly for use against Iran's nuclear facilities, an upgraded, laser-guided version, authorized for sale to Israel by the Obama administration a decade ago. Israel purchased 1000 of the much smaller, GPS-guided bunker buster in 2021.
Israeli war planners currently believe that an upgraded version of the JDAM with a larger warhead would penetrate deep enough underground before exploding (thirty to fifty meters), with the blast and sound-generating waves killing everyone within range half a meter.