Gaza war only brought more shame to Israel

TEHRAN – Israel pounded the Gaza Strip relentlessly for 470 days and leveled the enclave that houses 2.3 million population, yet it failed to make the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip surrender.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had set the goal to eliminate Hamas and free all the remaining captives by force following the October 7 attack on southern Israel in 2023. 

Speaking at a special meeting to mark the first anniversary of the October 7 attack Netanyahu said, “We will end the war when we complete all the goals we set: overthrowing the evil rule of Hamas, returning all our abductees home – both the dead and the living, thwarting any future threat from Gaza to Israel…”

However, none of Netanyahu’s goals were realized. His insistence on continuing the war on Gaza, known as the largest open-air prison in the world, and rebuffing any ceasefire proposal just resulted in more tragedies and destructions. Despite intransigence and unstoppable arms shipments from the United States and elsewhere, Netanyahu and other co-criminals were finally forced to give in to the Gazans’ heroic resistance to save the Zionist regime from the Gaza quagmire.

The extremists in Israel and its Western backers realized that even genocide cannot force a nation to forego its inborn rights to its motherland. Gazans suffered the most heinous crimes but did not bow. Netanyahu and his inner circle did not want to acknowledge that the Gazans had nothing more to lose.

They resisted no matter the costs, forcing Israel to finally get its captives and dead only by releasing Palestinian prisoners and withdrawing from Gaza.

Additionally, Israel and its backers tried to present the war in Gaza as the war on Hamas. It is true that started the attack on southern Israel on October 7 but all armed groups, among them secularists and communists, fought after the Israeli army invaded the enclave. In other words, all Palestinians, regardless of their political or religious tendencies, were resisting.

It is also an illusion if Israel tries to convey this idea that it has broken the back of resistance fighters.

Writing on The Conversation website on January 16, Ian Parmeter, a research scholar from the Australian National University, says, “Hamas is degraded, but not destroyed. It is now more like a guerilla band than an organized military force.”

Parmeter added, “But despite the fact that total elimination of Hamas was one of Netanyahu’s war aims, it’s still standing.”

Menachem Klein, senior lecturer at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, says, “There is a huge gap between the war goals that Israel put forward and stuck to all along the war, and the agreement reached with Hamas.”

Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, also believes that Prime Minister Netanyahu ran out of options to stop a ceasefire from being implemented.

Extremists and land grabbers in Israel must have realized they have no alternative other than capitulating to the legitimate rights of the Palestinians otherwise this cycle of violence will not end. If they still suffer from the illusion that they can bring Palestinians to their knees they are gravely mistaken. The 470 days of genocide against the Palestinians have potentially produced more freedom fighters. They will rise to avenge those who buried their mothers, sisters, brothers, and fathers on the rubble.

Summarily speaking, Israel achieved two things: killing people and leveling cities in Gaza to the ground.

It has killed more than two percent of the Gazan population with an estimation of 47,000 deaths – though a report by the New York Times says a study shows that the estimated Gaza toll may have missed 25,000 deaths – and injuring over 100,000.

Criminals in Israel also brought more shame to the regime, though the name of Israel was already synonymous with murder, occupation, butchering children, etc. However, this time the name of the regime is associated with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Its prime minister and former war minister Yoav Gallant are wanted as war criminals by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Hopefully, despite threats by the United States, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will try Netanyahu and Gallant for genocide in Gaza.