The Constraints of Regional War and Its Existential Implications for Israel | Politics

The Lebanese Hezbollah party has repeatedly announced through its Secretary-General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, that the party and Lebanon are a front of solidarity and support for the Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian people. He stressed that the party does not seek a large-scale war, but is prepared for one if it is imposed on it.

Tehran intersected with the party in its position, stressing the need to stop the aggression and genocide in the Gaza Strip, and its diplomacy made an effort to achieve this in consultation with China, Russia, regional countries, and mediators in Egypt and Qatar. It warned against dragging the region into a broad regional war that the occupation seeks with its reckless policies.

At the beginning of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” battle, the US administration hoped that the occupation army would eliminate Hamas and displace the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. However, after the strategic failure, Washington preferred the political approach of a ceasefire, and later considering how to remove Hamas, or eliminate it in cooperation with Israel, under what is called “the day after Gaza.”

The US administration's efforts failed because it was unable to convince Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and did not exert effective pressure on him to change his position of refusing to stop the war, so as not to anger the Zionist pressure groups and the American segments that support Israel, before the presidential elections.

Why did the occupation assassinate Haniyeh and thank him?

The assassination policy is not new to the occupation, as it has been adopted throughout the history of the Palestinian resistance, up to the Hamas movement, which has presented major figures such as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, Salah Shehadeh, Ibrahim al-Maqadmeh, Yahya Ayyash, Ahmed al-Jaabari, and others. However, the assassination of the martyr Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the movement, and the martyr Fouad Shukr, the military official in Hezbollah, in Tehran and Beirut within less than 24 hours, had a special impact and important objectives in the context of the ongoing battle since October 7, including:

• Firstly: Trying to draw a picture of victory and restore the broken prestige

Ten months later, the occupation is still reeling from the bitterness of strategic failure in the Gaza Strip; it has not achieved any of its goals of eliminating Hamas or recovering the captured soldiers by force. The scene has turned into a war of attrition that many generals and experts have warned would be disastrous. The assassinations came in an attempt to restore Israel’s eroded pride, prestige and deterrence.

• secondly: Regaining the confidence of the Israeli public

Benjamin Netanyahu is suffering from a decline in support and confidence of the Zionist public after his failure to achieve the goals of the war on Gaza, which causes him to feel helpless and inadequate, inconsistent with his narcissism as a historical leader of Israel. The percentage of those who supported the assassination of Haniyeh reached about 65%, which indicates Netanyahu's understanding of the nature of the Zionist society and its extremism, and the things that cause him euphoria, even if temporarily, by simulating the days of glory of the Israeli security services.

• Third: Prolonging the war until the US elections

Over the past months, Netanyahu has sought to sustain the fighting in the Gaza Strip by placing more conditions and obstacles before the ceasefire agreement, because he sees a ceasefire before achieving the goals as a recipe for his absence and fall from power, and the collapse of the current coalition government.

Therefore, he needs the war to continue to protect his political future and his government from falling, by searching for an image of a tactical victory, such as assassinating the leaders of the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance, as long as the battle is unlikely to be resolved.

This will allow him to prolong the battle until the US elections, hoping that it will provide him with a new title for managing the scene of the relationship with the Palestinians, especially if the candidate Donald Trump is the newcomer to the White House, who in his previous term identified with Benjamin Netanyahu’s goals of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and prepared the deal of the century to resolve the conflict on the basis of Israel becoming a leading state in the Arab region, while granting the Palestinians self-rule under Israeli sovereignty.

Regional war and its existential implications

If Netanyahu's goal is to eliminate the Palestinian cause in cooperation with the next US administration, what is the connection between the assassination of martyr Fouad Shukr in Beirut and martyr Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran? And why did the occupation not keep the escalation at its current level until the US elections?

Benjamin Netanyahu has an old strategic vision that consists of two parts:

• the first: Ending the Palestinian issue through economic peace, or Palestinian self-rule under Israeli sovereignty, in parallel with Israel’s integration into the Arab region through normalization.
• the second: Preventing Iran or any Arab or Islamic country from possessing nuclear weapons, because this would mean a balance of deterrence with Israel. This is absolutely unacceptable to Israel, which seeks to monopolize strategic deterrence in the Middle East.

This explains the dual goal he wanted to achieve by assassinating the head of Hamas in Tehran. In addition to targeting Hamas and its leaders, he wanted to push Iran to be a direct party in his war against the Palestinians, in preparation for an expanded war in which the United States would be forced to intervene to defend Israel against Iran and the axis of resistance.

Netanyahu previously tried and failed to prevent President Barack Obama from signing the nuclear agreement with Iran, but he succeeded in pushing President Donald Trump to withdraw from the agreement unilaterally, pushing Washington into a clash with Tehran.

In contrast, Iran has succeeded in turning the corners with Washington and the European Union, but the assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran, months after Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in April /April the past، Putting Tehran in a tight corner with no choice but to respond forcefully, while being careful not to go to a regional war, unless imposed by the occupation.

Although Washington avoids a regional war, it may find itself a direct party to it in defense of Israel, which will raise the cost of the war and complicate the scene in the Middle East, which will have repercussions on the future of Israel and the countries of the region.

Benjamin Netanyahu is taking Israel into a gamble that he described after October 7 as an existential war. If it is, it will be a losing war for him and Israel, and it may be the beginning of the end. Because if the regional war starts, Israel will face multiple fronts stronger and fiercer than the Gaza Strip, which will lead to enormous economic, security and social repercussions for the Israeli entity, and may lead to waves of reverse migration to escape the hell of war.

If the region goes to the scenario of a regional war and its duration is prolonged, then the decisive moment in the future of the Israeli entity is related to answering the question: If the interests of the United States globally (confronting the rise of China and Russia) conflict with the interest of protecting Israel in a turbulent Middle East, which is more important to the United States, its leadership of the world or its protection of Israel?