Hamas started it, stopping Israel now means playing the game of its aggressors
Biden effect in the Middle East: Tehran's proxy wars against Israel and Saudi Arabia. US administration mistakes endanger Israel twice: by encouraging its enemies to strike and effectively preventing it from annihilating threats to its security
Eventually it arrived. A unilateral ceasefire declared by both sides simultaneously, on Egyptian initiative. Last night the Israeli Security Cabinet approved the truce, after days of heavy pressure, especially from Washington, of course. According to some analyzes, Netanyahu, who until yesterday had rejected the appeals of US President Biden, was convinced by the position of centrist leader Yair Lapid, to whom President Rivlin entrusted the mandate to form the new government, after the first failed attempt by Netanyahu himself. So also for reasons of internal politics the outgoing premier, for many observers at the end of the line, would have been induced to stop. But there is nothing to rejoice about.
The narrative and political-diplomatic script of the conflict is always the same. Unprovoked aggression against Israel ( as we have seen , the dispute over Sheikh Jarrah is only a pretext), hundreds of missiles depart from Gaza on Israeli population centers: substantial indifference. Israeli reaction, targeted raids on launch positions, depots and terrorist leaders, its enemies are on the ropes and exhibit a growing number of civilian casualties, caused by themselves (and in any case not ascertainable): calls for de-escalation arrive , to stop the violence, strictly "on both sides" , and the "pressure" for a ceasefire.
Several times, for almost a week, the United States had to block draft UN Security Council declarations that did not even mention the more than 4,000 rockets fired by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad towards Israeli cities.
But in the end, the Biden administration has fallen into the usual trap: Israel's right to self-defense is reiterated as a premise in every statement, but in fact denied when Jerusalem is asked to stop just as it is starting to strike. heavier to its attackers, two terrorist organizations.
When a building in Gaza that also housed the offices of some media outlets, including the Associated Press and Al Jazeera , came down last weekend under the Israeli raids, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken intervened, firmly asking for "clarification" in Jerusalem, as if he did not know that one of the most abominable (and well-known) tactics of Hamas is precisely that of using civilians, preferably children or journalists, as human shields, hiding positions and command centers within residential areas; and as if he did not know that over the years Israel has perfected the techniques to warn civilians well in advance of the targets that are about to be hit, in order to give them all the time to escape to safety, accepting that even the enemy fighters manage to escape carrying material with you. Systems so refined and reliable that, as you may have noticed from the images of recent days, the Palestinians themselves are stationed a few hundred meters away to film the moment when the Israeli bombs hit the target. They trust Israel's statements more than the international media…
This script – whereby it is when Israel reacts and its enemies are in trouble that pressures for a ceasefire increase – always ends up obscuring a truth that should instead be held in the highest regard, both politically and in the media: Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad initiated this conflict, like others in the past, by launching missiles mostly Iranian-made, or manufactured with Iranian components and know-how . And the biggest weapon Hamas has against Israel is international outrage at civilian casualties, which it cynically uses with the help of the international media.
Hamas has certainly paid a very high price, but as before it has not been uprooted, on the contrary it has achieved the political victory it sought, proving to be the only Palestinian faction to have the will, and the ability, to strike Israel and fight for Jerusalem, for the al-Aqsa Mosque and for the Arab-Israelis.
Israeli military sources claim that over two dozen missile factories in the Gaza Strip were destroyed in the raids, but they estimate that the terrorists still have thousands of missiles and, above all, the technical capabilities, thanks to the help of the Iranians, to start refill their arsenals as soon as hostilities cease.
Israel has a duty to defend its citizens and tries to do so by avoiding a land raid, which would dramatically increase the number of victims on both sides. But for its defense to be effective, air strikes must be able to last as long as necessary. And the judgment rests with the Israeli political and military leadership.
The mistakes of the Biden administration endanger Israel twice: by encouraging its enemies to strike and effectively preventing it from annihilating threats directed at its security.
We have talked about Hamas' political motive, but it is unimaginable that such a far-reaching attack did not receive the green light from Tehran. Iran – let us remember – directly controls the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an emanation of the Pasdaran, and is the main sponsor of Hamas. "The rockets we use to hammer Tel Aviv, our weapons, our money and our food, all are supplied by Iran," claimed Ramez Al-Halabi, an officer of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
One of the goals of the Iranian regime through this conflict is to destroy the Abrahamic Agreements, the peace process launched last year between Israel and several Arab states. Because in them a potential united Arab-Israeli front was emerging against its hegemonic ambitions in the region and because they represent a factual denial of the assumption that the Palestinian question is the main obstacle to regional peace and cooperation, a commonplace of convenience. , both in the Middle East and in the West, on which Tehran has leveraged for decades in order to increase its influence.
In the span of a few weeks, the Biden administration sent messages that encouraged Israel's enemies: it opened without preconditions – indeed, despite the attacks by pro-Iranian Iraqi militias on US forces – to return to the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program (JCPOA); unconditionally restored funds for Palestinian organizations, suspended by Trump, delaying the first phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu; it canceled, again unconditionally, the designation of the Houthis as a terrorist group, introduced by the Trump administration, ignoring the concerns of the Gulf Cooperation Council over the attacks on Saudi Arabia.
A few days later, the Houthis gave thanks by attacking Saudi Abha International Airport. How do you think Hamas and Islamic Jihad have interpreted the fact that the Houthis were able to launch missiles at Riyadh with impunity? After the missiles fired from Yemen on Saudi territory, the missiles from Gaza arrived on Israel. Incidentally, the two main allies of the United States in the region have been hit, but from which the Biden administration has shown that it wants to distance itself. In the past few hours, a missile launched by the Houthis against the Saudi city of Jizan has been intercepted. It is the proxies of Tehran attacking Israel and Saudi Arabia simultaneously, while Biden prepares the appeasement with the Iranians.
From Jcpoa to the Houthis, to funds for the Palestinians, Biden has shown that he wants to overturn all the policies of his predecessor, which prompted Hamas to open a campaign on Jerusalem, in the belief that Washington is ready to revoke Trump's decision as well. to recognize it as the capital of Israel.
In short, in the first steps of the Biden presidency, Iran and Hamas saw an opportunity to get out of the corner in which Trump had closed them and bring the dynamics of regional politics back to the Obama years: Arab states, the US and the EU under the control of the the Palestinian question, which Tehran rekindles at will; US-Israel relations to a minimum; hands free to finance and arm its regional proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi). And unfortunately it seems that they got it right …
The post Hamas started it, stopping Israel now means playing the game of its aggressors appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/hamas-lha-iniziata-fermare-israele-ora-significa-fare-il-gioco-dei-suoi-aggressori/ on Fri, 21 May 2021 04:01:00 +0000.