Wars begin when you want to, but they don't end when you want to.
- Machiavelli
This round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict since October last year may be the biggest geopolitical black swan in addition to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Many friends are concerned: Will the Israeli-Iranian bombing that occurred in this round of conflict turn into a large-scale regional or even global war? and when will it be the end? How will this round of conflict affect investment in precious metals and commodities?
My preliminary judgment is that the current Palestinian-Israeli conflict is unlikely to turn into a large-scale regional or global war, but this round of conflict does have some events of nodal significance, such as Iran and Hamas have shown the strength to carry out large-scale attacks, while Israel seems to have more impatience signs of "finishing the battle".
This can be the most dangerous sign, but it may also not be a bad thing. These signs make the conflict a bit akin to the Fourth Middle East War that broke out in 1973, a pivotal war that turned the global geopolitical landscape around.
01
—
Netanyahu
Years later, Benjamin Netanyahu still remembers that when he was 7 years old, the boy in a military uniform rode in a jeep and proudly shared chocolate from Egypt with a group of children.
It was 1956, when Egyptian President Nasser announced the early resumption of the Suez Canal, and the Second Middle East War broke out. France, Britain and Israel joined forces to seize Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and seize the Canal Zone, and the chocolate was purchased from the small town of the Sinai Peninsula.
In 1967, the Third Middle East War broke out. Netanyahu, who just turned 18 and is in his third year of high school in the United States, returned home early to join the war. For the youngest son who couldn't wait to go to the battlefield, the parents' worried expressions did not show a trace of worry, but they were afraid that his enthusiasm for serving the country would be empty: "Are you sure that there will really be a war there?"
Netanyahu as a young man
Netanyahu's ancestors, like many early Israeli immigrants, came from the Slavic region (Poland) under Tsarist rule, and all had the surname "Ski".
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Tsarist Russia persecuted the Jews, giving rise to the Zionist movement (the Zionist movement) in which the Jews returned to their "homeland" Palestine. In 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration to carve up the Ottoman Empire, supporting the Zionist movement.
In 1920, Netanyahu's grandfather, riding on the trend, moved his family to Palestine and changed his surname Hebrew from the original Mirejkoski to Netanyahu, which means "God-given".
Netanyahu's father, Benzion, followed in his father's footsteps and became a revisionist Zionist scholar. The ideas of this faction are radical and hawkish. In 1947, when the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 adopted the Mandate of Palestine, most Jews rejoiced and burst into tears, except for the revisionists, who claimed that "the land allocated to the Jews was only 57 per cent of the total area of Palestine, which was too little."
Benzion and son Netanyahu
Zionism, since its inception, has had many competing factions, in addition to revisionists, socialists, liberals, and religious factions were also popular at that time.
In the early 20th century, due to the socialist movement in the Soviet Union in full swing and the fact that many Jews came from the Slavic region, the socialist Zionism was the most popular, and Ben Gurion, the "founding father" of Israel, belonged to this faction, which later evolved into Israel's longest-ruling party, the Israeli Labor Party. Benzion's revisionist faction evolved into the Likud party, a radical right-wing party that now governs Israel.
Since its founding in 1948, Israel has been divided into many political factions, but the main line of contention has been the rivalry between the relatively moderate Labor Party and the radical Likud party.
After the end of the Fourth Middle East War, for the first time, a "non-war" option appeared between the Arab countries and Israel, which greatly "activated" the radical faction of both camps.
In 1982, Likud won Israel's first election, breaking the 29-year Labor Party's rule, around the same time that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, a pro-peacemaker in 1981, was assassinated to death by radicals in the country.
In the 80s, as a descendant of hawks, Netanyahu naturally joined the Likud party.
As a young man, Netanyahu was the bravest fighter on the battlefield. In 1972, Fatah's "Black September" organization hijacked Vienna Sabena Flight 571. As a rescuer, he participated in the hijacking rescue and was shot in the shoulder.
In 1976, his brother Yonatan also participated in a hijacking rescue, the famous Operation Emped in Uganda, and became the only soldier killed in the rescue.
Yonatan
Operation Empeda
Netanyahu, who has endured war and death, firmly believes that the foundation of politics can only be "iron lumps".
In the 1988 general election, he entered parliament for the first time as a member of the Likud party, and his strong views and handsome appearance quickly made him stand out.
In 1992, when Palestinian-Israeli peace talks were in full swing, the Labor Party presided over by Rabin won the general election, the Likud party lost power, fell into a split and reshuffle, and Netanyahu took advantage of the situation to be elected as the leader of the bloc.
In 1995, Rabin was assassinated by Jewish radicals, the path to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks was blocked, the Likud party won votes again, and Netanyahu became the first Israeli-born prime minister to be the youngest prime minister in history.
Netanyahu
Since then, with the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004 and the victory of Hamas in 2006 in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, the road to Palestinian-Israeli peace talks has been completely blocked.
During this period, in addition to occasional confrontations with fellow radical Sharon and others, Netanyahu, as the leader of the Likud party, basically firmly controlled the political situation in Israel, and was elected prime minister in 2009, 2013, 2015, and 2019, becoming the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history.
In 1987, Netanyahu and a group of Israeli parliamentarians visited the site of Auschwitz in Poland. With a solemn voice, he stared at the infamous slogan at the gates of the concentration camps, "Labor frees," and lamented, "How can a nation be powerless to go here?" In those days, thousands of Jews were transported by train every day to gas chambers and crematoriums.
Over the years, Benzion, who had personally experienced that ordeal, repeatedly instilled in his son the hawkish notion that "if there was a choice, the vast majority of Israeli Arabs would choose to destroy us." ”
As a young man, Netanyahu did not dare to slack off on the suffering of the Jews and the teachings of his father.
But Netanyahu, who has been in power for a long time and is getting older, seems to feel more and more that the pain of his father's generation is fading.
The so-called "enemy" is terrible, but blood and fire cannot be omnipotent after all. And it is impossible for human beings to be reduced to "friend or foe" with labels such as religion, ethnicity, or race, and the so-called "stare into the abyss for too long, and the abyss will reciprocate with a gaze".
Today's Israel, with a population of 9.36 million, of which nearly 20%, 2 million, are Arabs.
So Netanyahu, who insists on fighting Hamas, Syria, Iran's "evil regime" and Allah in Lebanon, sometimes has to accept the "two-state solution", even if he is angry and resentful.
Especially in recent years, as the United States has become the world's net oil exporter and gradually faded out of the Middle East, he has become more "flexible", becoming the first Israeli leader to visit the Gulf Arab countries at the end of 2018, and "adding friends" with four Arab countries in 2020.
Domestically, the majority of Israelis aspire to a stable and normal life, and the market for votes for the "far right" is minimal. He is no longer bound by the "ultra-right" label, and has gradually transformed his vow of "severe punishment" and "elimination" of terrorists into slogans and gestures to win votes.
He has become more and more adept at and willing to play the political game of partisanship. This is the real reason why he has stood in Israeli politics for many years.
Now, the 74-year-old political veteran, who has been the prime minister for 15 years, is not hawkish or not, but that he and his wife have been accused by the judiciary of embezzling public funds to repair the house, hiring a private cook, and abusing the housekeeper who "forgot to buy milk at 3 o'clock in the morning".
02
—
Chania
In 1987, Ismail Haniyeh enrolled in the Islamic University of Gaza and officially became a disciple of the idol Sheikh Yahin.
In the same year, the Gaza Strip, which had been forcibly occupied by Israel, broke out again in the Palestinian intifada. Small, wheelchair-bound Yayuki appeared in the midst of the chaotic crowd of protesters and unfurled a rudimentary banner that read: Hamas.
Since then, Yassin has been the sole spiritual leader of an Islamic fundamentalist group that targets Israeli soldiers and Palestinian "traitors."
Chania
Yasin
Hania is one of many young people who are attracted by Yayuki's uncompromising tenacity. The most profound teachings this teacher gave him were just two sentences:
"Palestinians who have lost their homes and land have no choice but jihad. ”
"Only the 'human' bomb is a language that Israel understands!"
Haniye was born in 1963 in a refugee camp in the village of Sekilen, Gaza. His childhood encapsulated all the suffering of a Palestinian: poverty, deportations, arrests and assassinations, no foundation and no job, no food and no meals, and only the International Organization for Refugees, Islamic Mutual Aid Organizations for survival and education.
Gaza
In a chaotic and ruin-like environment, Haniyeh did not even know the exact date of his birth, but he continued to grow tenaciously, often throwing stones at the Israeli occupation forces with his barefoot friends.
It was a living hell without the slightest warmth, but more and more Palestinian refugees with nowhere else to go still flocked to the small land of Gaza, where the densely populated, overcrowded buildings, narrow streets and alleys were littered with power lines, uneven roads, and a foul-smelling bare drainage system.
Haniyeh, who stayed on to teach after graduating from university, was involved in Hamas's terrorist activities and soon became Yassin's personal secretary, so he also became a "regular" in Israeli prisons not long after graduation.
At about 5 a.m. on March 22, 2004, Yassin was about to leave after morning prayers at a mosque near his house when an Israeli "Apache" helicopter suddenly flew up and fired three missiles at his car, instantly turning the blood-soaked wreckage of Yassin and his wheelchair into a pile of debris. Hania, who was nearby at the time, witnessed this bloody and thrilling moment, his heart was like a knife, his eyes were full of tears, but he was helpless.
Born in 1938, Yaxing is 25 years older than Haniyeh from the village of Jiura in southern Gaza. At the age of 12, he suffered a spinal injury that left his lower limbs permanently paralyzed.
Ten years before Yassin was born, in 1928, in Ismailia, Egypt, Hassan Banna, a primary school teacher, joined forces with six Muslim employees of the Suez Canal Company to launch a secret organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, which aims to forcefully promote the teachings of Islam into all secular life, anti-colonial, and anti-Westernization, in the name of charity and mutual aid at the bottom.
Banner
In 1929, the Great Depression broke out in the United States, which affected Egypt, which was deeply tied to the British economy at that time, resulting in a large number of people at the bottom who were not clothed and hungry. The Muslim Brotherhood provides medical, educational and even employment guidance to the underclass, and has taken advantage of the situation to attract a large number of members and grow rapidly.
At about the same time, the influx of Jewish immigrants in the areas of Palestine under the British colonial mandate led to an intensification of ethnic conflicts, especially among the traditional Arab peasants, whose economic conditions deteriorated and unemployment soared after the Jews bought land in large quantities.
In 1935, Az-Din Qassam, a religious scholar from Gaza, called on Arab peasants to resist British colonial rule in the name of "jihad", only to be ambushed and killed by the British. Many years later, in honor of this anti-aggression hero, Hamas named its combat group the "Qassam Brigades".
Banner was well aware of the suffering of the Palestinian Arabs, and soon after the end of World War II, he opened Brotherhood branches in Gaza and the West Bank. This is a historic event for Palestine. Since then, the suffering Palestinians have begun to receive funding and education from the Muslim Brotherhood, and a branch has been born - Hamas.
In 1958, thanks to funding from the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, Yassin went to Egypt to study at Al-Azhar University, where he received the most radical Islamic education, and joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1965.
Four years before he left for Egypt, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood fired six shots in an unsuccessful assassination attempt to assassinate Nasser, Egypt's "founding father." Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood was purged by the authorities, and 18,000 congregants were arrested. In 1966, members of the Gaza branch were purged and arrested by Nasser, including Yassin.
However, he was lucky, and the year after his arrest, Egypt suffered a crushing defeat in the Third Middle East War, and the Sinai Peninsula was occupied by Israel.
After his release from prison, Yassin followed the Muslim Brotherhood's model – in the name of charity, education and mutual aid – to set up an organization called the Islamic Centre, which recruited a large number of needy Palestinians and took over the Islamic University of Gaza, which had been established in 1978.
It was these initiatives that laid a solid foundation for his 1987 establishment of Hamas (recognized as a branch of the Brotherhood in 1988), with key members of Hamas, such as Rantisi and Zahar, trained by the Islamic Center, and Haniyeh taught at the Islamic University of Gaza.
After Yassin was "targeted out" in 2004, Haniyeh quickly rose to become the de facto controller of Hamas.
But perhaps even Yayuki did not expect that his death made Haniyeh angry and full of desire for revenge, but he also quietly changed his struggle strategy, and was no longer keen on challenging Israel's steel torrent with fearless "human bullets".
Even before Yassin's death, there were signs of such a change. In particular, Hania, who graduated from the Department of Arabic Literature, has a refined conversation and a gentle personality. He reveres and adores Yassin, but he also cares about "public opinion" and is more pragmatic in seeking cooperation with Palestinian national authorities, such as Fatah.
In 1996, when Fatah led the election of a Palestinian self-government, most Hamas members boycotted, but Haniyeh advocated a positive response and for the first time announced that he would renounce violence and participate in the activities of the self-government.
In 2006, two years after Yassin's death, Haniyeh led Hamas, officially participating in and winning the Palestinian Legislative Council elections. Yassin became the prime minister of Palestine and announced the establishment of a "pragmatic cabinet", and even advocated that the ministers who liaise with the outside world should not be Hamas members, so as not to increase the vigilance of the international community.
On the day of the polling, more than 6,000 Hamas militants laid down their guns and served their constituents in a gentle and friendly manner.
During this period, Haniyeh gave her first interview to the Washington Post and conveyed to the outside world for the first time Hamas's political demands: as long as Israel withdraws from the Arab territories occupied in 1967, it is willing to recognize Israel and gradually achieve peace.
He also said that Hamas has no hatred for Jews and does not want to drive them into the sea.
Of course, Haniyeh never said that he would give up the "human bomb", but he no longer stuck to extreme religious demands, but based all this on whether he can win the "hearts and minds of the Palestinian people". In the early days, he did well, and the impression of the Ba people was that he was serious and down-to-earth, had few enemies, and was easy to gain trust.
03
—
Heartless brothers
After the Fourth Middle East War in 1973, the "homeland" of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt under the leadership of Sadat, began to seek reconciliation with Israel and the West. This means that the tide of history has quietly changed direction.
Under the genius manipulation of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, in 1978, the United States, Israel, and Egypt signed the "Camp David Accords" to recover the Sinai Peninsula, a territory lost by Egypt in 1967, through peaceful negotiations.
At the same time, however, a number of Arab countries regarded Sadat's move as a naked "betrayal." Syria even united four countries and the PLO to form a "Front of Rejection" to condemn Egypt in unison and declare the day of Sadat's arrival in Israel as a "day of mourning."
The reasons are self-explanatory. The Arab world is at odds with Israel, and in the past four wars, the Jews were driven out of Jerusalem and prevented the establishment of the State of Israel, but Sadat's move was premised on recognizing Israel.
What may be even more excessive is that the Fourth Middle East War, as the only war that has dealt a severe blow to Israel, is the result of the concerted efforts of Arab countries, including the oil war launched by a number of oil countries during this period, which detonated the economic crisis of the Western capitalist industrial countries, but the "Camp David Accords" signed by Egypt only cares about the interests of Egypt alone, and as for the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights, the Palestinian West Bank, the Gaza issue, and the Palestinian statehood issue, they have all been left aside.
This is too selfish. But it is clear that Egypt no longer wants to be the "leader" of the Arab world, nor does it expect to wipe Israel off the face of the earth by force, but only wants to live a good life.
This chilled the hearts of the little Arab brothers, and a number of radical Islamist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, felt insulted and betrayed. In 1981, Sadat himself was shot to death by members of an extremist group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
The scene of Sadat's shooting
Egypt's "change of heart" is not the first time that the Arab world has been mired in quarrels and divisions, but it is also the most far-reaching one. It means that the "pan-Arabism" that has arisen since the founding of Israel and that has been consolidated during the Nasser era has suffered a near-devastating blow.
Since then, the issue of Palestinian statehood, although it is still the "political correctness" of the Arab world, has gradually become tiresome and deeply burdensome. This is especially true after the PLO headed by Arafat frequently gets out of control and is mired in quarrels and bloody conflicts with neighboring fraternal countries.
In 1970, Egyptian President Nasser died of exhaustion, mainly because of the conflict between Arafat and King Hussein of Jordan.
Later, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria all kindly took in Palestinian refugees, triggering bloody civil wars.
In this way, no matter how good the brotherhood is, it is inevitable to "change hearts". Among them, Jordan has the most complete "change of heart", as early as 1994, it reconciled with Israel, recognized each other, and obtained very good economic benefits through cooperation with Israel.
In 1958, Yasser Arafat, a graduate of civil engineering at Cairo University in Egypt, participated in the formation of the Fatah Palestine Liberation Organization. The cultured man, who played in the "Storm" commando in the late 1950s and participated in the First and Second Middle East Wars, had a clear and concise initial ideal: "drive out the Jews and build a Palestinian state."
However, after the third Middle East war, the sensitive Arafat gradually felt that it was often not Israel and Western countries that hit him the hardest, but precisely a group of Arab brothers, as well as the internal factions of the PLO that gradually got out of control and did not obey the command.
In the middle of the night on August 29, 1974, a group of high-ranking Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Rabin, Defense Minister Shimon Peres, and the newly appointed Foreign Minister Yigal Aaron, quietly arrived at the airport, and in the darkness of the night, they respectfully greeted a distinguished guest, King Hussein of Jordan.
King Hussein of Jordan
It was the first intimate contact between two hostile worlds. The topic of discussion was the ownership of the West Bank.
During the talks, King Hussein of Jordan first thanked Israel for its military support in the conflict between Jordan and the PLO, and at the same time expressed the hope that the Israeli army could completely withdraw from the West Bank and hand over the territory to Jordan for administration.
This proposal surprised the high-ranking Israeli officials present, not because Hussein demanded the withdrawal of Israeli troops, which was reasonable, but because the king seemed to completely ignore the most important role in the land, the Palestinians.
It is precisely because of the betrayal of the above Arab brothers that Arafat, who has always been as tough as iron, can be regarded as slowly seeing clearly how the so-called friends can easily lose their morality in the face of interests.
The Fifth Middle East War, which broke out in 1982, was no longer like a war between the Arab world and Israel: it was triggered by the PLO, a civil war between 49% of Christians and 51% of Muslims in Lebanon, and Israel only took the opportunity to beat the PLO.
But, miraculously, it was precisely the increasingly loose emotional and moral ties in the Arab world that prompted Arafat to realize that it was almost impossible to unite the Arab brothers again and fight to the death against Israel for the sake of the Palestinians' statehood.
So in 1988, the tough guy who had vowed to "drive the Jews out" finally relented and said that he would renounce any form of terrorism and vigorously promote peace talks with Israel.
In 1993, Arafat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Bhaik Rabin signed the Oslo Accords, the Declaration of Palestinian Autonomy was adopted, and Israel pledged to withdraw its troops from Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. This series of rare successes proves once again that peaceful diplomatic negotiations are sometimes more effective than the sea of blood of weapons.
Only, who could have predicted that?
In 1995, Rabin, a key figure in Israel's peace party, was brutally killed by an Israeli extreme right-winger during a rally.
Hamas on the Palestinian side was not idle, and the following year it carried out a series of suicide attacks in Israel, especially one in March of that year, which killed 32 Israeli civilians and shocked the entire country of Israel during the election season.
It was also the year that the 46-year-old Netanyahu, representing the right-wing Likud party, successfully defeated the left-wing Labor Party represented by Peres and became Israel's prime minister.
If Israel's biggest enemy since its founding was "pan-Arabism", then as the alliance of Arab countries fell apart and fell into disintegration, it had the opportunity to win a place of peace in the jungle of many Arab countries, but the birth of Hamas and the death of Sadat and Rabin, the main peace faction, let this opportunity slip away again, and sent an even more difficult enemy - "pan-Islamism".
04
—
Loose alliances
In the 80s of the last century, the imposing Khomeini pointed at Arafat's nose and scolded him as a "stupid". Dutes, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, openly mocked the PLO's peaceful approach:
"Olive branch in hand is the beginning of your decline. ”
Since 1979, a number of Islamic fundamentalist organizations and political parties in the Middle East have achieved good development:
In that year, the Islamic Revolution in Iran, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was successful. When the news reached Gaza, Yassin was inexplicably excited. Although Iran is not an Arab country, and Khomeini, who overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty, is not a Sunni, but a Shiite leader, after all, this is the first theocratic government based on Sharia law to be established in the Middle East.
"Israel is a sharp knife that the United States has planted in the Islamic world, and we should unite to pull it out!" After coming to power, Khomeini has never been afraid to show his fangs.
In 1982, civil war broke out in Lebanon, and the Islamic fundamentalist Allah party took over Lebanon in a terror-on-terror approach against Israel and Israeli-backed Christian Falangists.
Since the 1990s, Allah has put away its violent and assassination image, supplemented by social welfare, participated in Lebanese political elections as a legitimate party, and gradually won popular support, and because it has many Shiites in its interior, it has long been heavily funded by the Iranian theocratic government.
In 2007, when civil war broke out in Palestine, Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas unilaterally announced the dissolution of the coalition government and the removal of Haniyeh as prime minister. Hamas, led by Haniah, rose up and defeated Fatah in just six days and expelled his forces from Gaza. Since then, the Middle East, since Iran, has established the second quasi-theocratic government based on Sharia law.
In 2011, the "Arab Spring" spread to Egypt, and the Mubarak government, which had ruled Egypt for nearly 30 years, was ousted. This is yet another regime established by a fundamentalist organization.
Mursi
So far, starting with the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, a trend of "pan-Islamism" with Iran as the core, pursuing Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Israel has gradually formed in the Middle East.
This trend, unlike the "pan-Arabism" led by Egypt in the past, transcends the boundaries of the nation-state, and its methods are terrifying, flexible, and more radical. If you count the Shiite groups in Iraq, the Islamic rebels in Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen, Israel today is no more peaceful than it was when it was founded.
The reason why the United States and Israel frequently target Iran is that Iran is the starting point and core of Israel's "new adversary" today.
In this Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Hamas took the lead in smashing Israel with 5,000 rockets, and used a large number of military drones, destroying countless tanks and combat vehicles. A set of operations took Israel by surprise and suffered heavy losses.
Advanced weaponry coupled with a well-trained way of fighting is clearly not possible with a few arsenals in Gaza and Hamas's own armed forces.
In 2012, when Tehran, Iran, commemorated the 33rd anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Haniyeh publicly praised "the Iranian people as 'partners in victory.'"
In 2020, Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, was "targeted and killed" by the United States, and Chania also appeared at the funeral.
Chaniyeh participates in the 33rd anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran
Until 2006, Hamas denied receiving financial aid from Iran, but back in the 1980s, 10 percent of Hamas's funding came from Iran. Western intelligence agencies estimate that Iran transfers between $3 million and $18 million a year to Hamas, and also provides it with a large amount of equipment, military training and logistical support.
Iran and Hamas have too many common demands: they are anti-Israel, advocate armed struggle, and neither like Fatah, but of course, the most important thing is that Hamas can carry the ideals of the Islamic revolution exported by Iran's Shiites.
However, just like the "pan-Arabism" with Egypt at its core, there are also many irreconcilable differences with Iran at the core of "pan-Islamism" today.
First, Iran, like Egypt in the past, has a tendency to overestimate its own power.
Long-standing support for Hamas has sparked discontent among Iranians, with anti-government groups demanding that Iranian leaders "leave Palestine alone, think about us."
In recent years, Iran itself has not had a good time, with a large number of Western sanctions causing its economy to wither and weaken its national strength, while the pro-Western anti-government forces within Iran have not stopped fighting for a moment.
There are also more intense separatist forces that are tormenting Iran almost every day, such as the European-based People's Mujahideen (MEK), the Sunni group in Sistan-Balochistan in the southeast, and the Kurdish armed groups based in Iraqi Kurdistan......
Separatist forces on the Iranian border are active
Now, the top echelons of the military can also be "targeted and eliminated", and even the bombing of the embassy can only swallow their anger, which has further discredited their prestige.
If you are too busy to take care of yourself, how can you talk about exporting revolutions?
Second, Iran is not an Arab country after all, and its core concern is primarily religious demands that transcend national borders, rather than the territorial integrity of Palestine or Syria.
So in early March 2012, when the war broke out between Israel and Iran, there was a split within Hamas, and I don't know whether to support it, and some leaders declared: "Hamas only fights for the Palestinian people." ”
For another example, there are also differences between the two sides on how to face Fatah. In recent years, Haniah's Hamas, which wants to soften its image, needs to assume a posture of cooperating with Fathah, while Iran is sometimes forced by domestic or international public opinion pressure to choose to cooperate with Fatah and deliberately alienate Hamas.
The two sides also have differences on the Syrian issue. In the 2011 civil war in Syria, Iran supported the Assad regime, which is also Shia, but Hamas supported anti-government groups in Syria.
Diagram of the Syrian civil war
In recent years, Hamas has also called for improving relations with neighboring Arab countries, while a number of Sunni Arab countries have many grievances with Hamas's excessive closeness to Iran.
In fact, since the United States and Israel implemented "targeted killings," many leaders and family members of Hamas have chosen to take refuge in Qatar, a brotherly Arab country, rather than going to Iran.
In 2011, when the Brotherhood took power in Egypt, it had the opportunity to become a new and greater support for Hamas, but less than two years later, the regime was ousted by the army led by Sisi, and the Brotherhood was once again declared an illegal and terrorist organization. This is the worst defeat of "pan-Islamism" in the Middle East.
The focus of Iran's support in the Middle East is not Hamas, but Allah in Lebanon and the Assad government in Syria. But after so many years, what have these two countries gained in exchange for endless war and suffering?
In October 2023, Hamas-affiliated Qassam launched a military operation against Israel, codenamed "Al-Aqsa flood", which is the largest Arab-Israeli conflict in nearly 20 years.
Haniyeh, who lives in a luxurious residence in Qatar, gave a televised speech calling on Muslims around the world to sacrifice for the Palestinian cause and participate in jihad, resulting in the death of a large number of Gaza civilians, the loss of their homes, and the reduction of a large number of women and children into "human shields".
As early as 2010, Chania was rumored to be a billionaire and spent $4 million on a luxury mansion in the name of his daughter. Until a few months before the outbreak of the war, the people of Gaza were asking the top Hamas leadership, where did the tens of millions of dollars a month from Qatar go?
05
—
The fist hits the cotton
After his brother Yonatan died in 1976 for his involvement in the Emped operation, Netanyahu and his family collected his letters and published a book.
The book quickly sold well in Israel. Later, this operation was made into a movie, and it was named after Jonathan. Jonatan soon became a symbol of national heroism and a synonym for sacrifice for his country.
Netanyahu adored his brother as a child, and after his death, he was so grieved that he wrote in a commemorative article:
Although Jonatan died in the war on terror, he never thought of the battle, which was merely a military conflict, but saw it as a contest between civilization and barbarism. And I'm committed to this fight right now. ”
Unlike earlier Israel, which was under Ben-Gurion, Mrs. Meir, and Rabin, Netanyahu, who became prime minister in 1996, has faced not a "nationalist enemy" in the traditional sense of the word, but an extremist religious organization that never speaks of martial virtues, and a series of terrorist acts they have taken to it.
Operation Emped has become almost a cornerstone of the Israeli philosophy, which convinces people that the Israeli government will do whatever it takes to rescue the hostages and fight terrorism.
But after so many years of wrangling with Hamas, Netanyahu seems to be getting more and more tired: the rescue of hostages is naturally full of heroism, but the national cost of doing so is getting higher and higher.
Since Hamas took charge of Palestine in 2006, every few years or so, Hamas has fired rockets into Israeli towns and kidnapped hostages, and then Netanyahu has immediately ordered deadly bombing counterattacks, but soon public pressure from the international and domestic community followed, and then negotiations and hostage exchanges reached some kind of temporary balance and calm.
However, when did the cycle of kidnapping and rescue come to an end?
The people of Israel expect the government to defeat Hamas once and for all and all terrorism that threatens Israel's stability, but this means sending enough troops and engaging in military operations for a long enough time, which naturally means the sacrifice and death of hundreds, if not thousands, of people, and this is something that the Israeli people do not want to see.
"I want the horse to run but I don't want to give the horse grazing", this is the biggest domestic political dilemma Netanyahu has faced in his years in power.
Over the years, he has contributed a lot to Israel's security, and he has long planned to retire, but every time Hamas rockets hit, the Israelis push him to the front to preside over the overall situation.
But now, instead of being honored as a national hero like his brother, he has become synonymous with arrogance, murder, obstruction of the two-state solution, executioner.
He attacked Hamas so hard that people said he used too much force and hurt innocent people, but if he didn't use enough force, critics laughed at him for being a soft guy and putting on a show just for his political future.
During the war, Netanyahu led a five-member war committee that included Israel's defense minister, former IDF leaders, current IDF chief of staff, and an American-born political adviser.
According to the New Yorker, it is such an extremely important small group, except for the other four Netanyahu, there are actually three people who do not like him and wish he was replaced.
What is even more troublesome is that Hamas, which has been fighting with Israel for many years, seems to have gradually grasped the Achilles' heel of Israel's response model, abducting civilians, pushing women and children to the front of the battle as "human shields", and luring Israeli shells to shoot at refugee camps that are difficult to distinguish between real and fake, in order to create a humanitarian crisis in Israel.
In the current round of the Arab-Israeli conflict since October last year, Israel's counterattack has caused a large number of civilian casualties, and a struggle against terrorism and extremist forces has almost turned into a massacre of civilians, women and children. So far, at least 20,000 people have died, including 8,000 children and 6,200 women, according to the Gaza government.
How much of this was caused by the brutality of the Israeli army, and how much was deliberately used by Hamas, has actually become an unexplained bad score. Both sides call each other executioners.
As a result, Israel has encountered almost unprecedented pressure from international and domestic public opinion, and of course, Biden has not been able to step down, dare not easily fund it, and even openly demanded that Netanyahu stop attacks and attacks.
On February 25 of this year, in front of the Israeli Embassy on International Avenue in Washington, an American soldier named Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire and shouted "Free Palestine." This move has destroyed almost all the significance of this Israeli military operation, and has plunged Israel and the Jewish community into unprecedented isolation.
Until now, Netanyahu has continued to show his usual tough posture. But it is clear that no matter how hard he throws an iron fist now, it will discourage him like a blow to cotton, and it will also plunge Israel into a deeper global credibility crisis.
Recently at the United States General Assembly at the United Nations, Israel has actually been in the middle of some kind of bad communication crisis. The country, once the most devastated by the Holocaust, is now accused of carrying a butcher's knife. This is nothing short of an irony of history.
Based on all kinds of internal and external pressures, when Netanyahu still insisted that the "precondition for peace" was that "Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized", people were no longer moved by his tough posture, but laughed at him not as to find a way for Israel, but more like deliberately putting forward unrealistic ideals to continue his political career.
Some of the more acerbic commentators have pointed out directly: "Netanyahu's greatest interest is to never end this war".
conclusion
—
Fujitsubo dorsal stab
No one knows what Netanyahu will hold in the future, with some saying he will continue to prosper or others saying he will step down this summer at the latest, taking responsibility for Israel's military and reputational losses.
On April 1 of this year, Israel attacked the consular building of the Iranian embassy in Syria with missiles, killing 13 people, including seven Iranians and six Syrians.
This move is seen as another dangerous signal of escalation in the Kazakh-Israeli conflict over the past six months.
However, there was a dramatic scene in the aftermath of this incident:
Nearly half a month after Iran cursed and threatened to retaliate, it ended its retaliation with a pre-publicized counterattack aimed at demonstrating "counterattack strength", and Israel also quietly retaliated, causing almost zero casualties and losses.
Why is there such a strange episode? The military confrontation between the two sides does not look like a real war, but rather like a dramatic performance.
Some believe that this is Netanyahu's political game to perpetuate the "state of war", while others believe that this is a military action to "drag the United States into the water" after the United States expresses its negative attitude, so that Israel can get out of this conflict that has lasted for more than half a year with dignity.
In fact, it is not easy to understand this war show, but we must first understand the basic question of "why there has not been a sixth Middle East war since the end of the Fifth Middle East War."
Many people who observe the Palestinian-Israeli war in the Middle East should find that in the 40 years since the end of the Fifth Middle East War in 1982, although wars in the Middle East are still frequent, no historian has mentioned the "sixth Middle East war" again.
Why is this happening?
In fact, the war between the Arab countries and Israel was basically over after the end of the Fourth Middle East War.
The reason is that the military and interest alliances of the Arab countries, led by Egypt, have long since collapsed because of differences in religion, nation, ideology, and system.
In the past 40 years, there have been countless conflicts between Palestine and Israel, and in the memory of our generation, the Middle East has always been the world's most tragic powder keg. The deep disasters and wars have pierced the nerves of the world again and again.
However, in the face of the issue of Palestinian statehood, most Arab countries are now increasingly watching from the sidelines and unwilling to get involved.
Take this conflict as an example:
Egypt, the former leader of the Arab world, seems to have forgotten that it is still a part of the Arab world, and its attitude is ambiguous, and it is difficult to even condemn Israel, and the only thing to do is to prevent Gaza refugees from entering Egypt;
The cartel, who is said to be the gold lord of Hamas, prefers to be a mediator between Palestine and Israel, but has absolutely no desire to end up, and has always regarded himself as a loyal friend of the United States.
As for the wealthy Saudi Arabia, it is even more on the side of the United States and the West, condemning Hamas and the Houthis, and even intercepting their missiles......
In fact, to date, there are at least six or more Arab countries that have recognized Israel's legitimacy and developed normal state relations with it, namely:
Egypt (1979), Jordan (1994), UAE (September 2020), Bahrain (October 2020), Sudan (2020, postponed to 2022 due to opposition parties), Morocco (December 2020).
In particular, during Trump's tenure, Israel took the lead in signing a free trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates, known as the "Abraham Accords", which attracted five Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, to join within a year. Now, Saudi Arabia and Israel are actively promoting the normalization of relations between the two countries.
The Fifth Middle East War, the Lebanese War, broke out on June 6, 1982, triggered by the assassination of the Israeli ambassador to Britain by the PLO forces.
After the defeat of the PLO, Hamas rose to prominence in 1987. The new Hamas, which has never had any hopes of uniting Arab states, has pinned its hopes more on the theocratic government established by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, hoping to unite Islamic allies against Israel and the West through an ideology called "pan-Islamism" that roams the Arab world.
But as mentioned earlier, the problem of "pan-Islamism" itself is huge, and the core of it is Iran, which is far less than Egypt, the core of the Arab League.
In addition, the international pattern of the United States and the Soviet Union vying for hegemony was still there, and oil was still a powerful weapon that could be used to attack the West. And today, what secret weapon does "pan-Islamism" have other than the violence and fear condensed by fundamentalism?
Of course, the paradox of history may lie in:
Sharks with large bodies may not be afraid of fierce fish, but they may suffer from barnacles that cannot be shaken off.
– This is the biggest problem facing Israel today:
Iran is trapped in its own strength and does not dare to start a large-scale frontal war with the West, but the endogenous Arab extremist groups it has nurtured - Hamas, Lebanese Allah and the Houthis - are like barnacles, attached to the huge body of Israel and the entire United States and the West, making it painful and difficult to escape.
What can Israel and the United States do in the face of such an enemy?
Missiles used to disappear without a trace, "targeted killing" of violent leaders such as Soleimani, Yassin, and Rantisi at close or long distances, and even killing their families (Hania's three sons and four grandchildren were killed) is probably the best way they can think of to deal with it.
However, leaders like Hamas will hide and hide, and even if they kill one, there will be countless latecomers on top. Can you finish the kill?
In this way, irritation, rage, and eagerness to find a suitable excuse to start a large-scale war that is painful and once and for all, becomes an option for Israel.
But how much real value can an outrageous act such as the bombing of the Iranian embassy in Syria be exchanged for nothing but depriving oneself of the commanding heights of international morality and exposing its terrifying fangs?
In fact, as long as the Iranian authorities do not "pick up" and prevent a large-scale war and conflict with Israel and the West, it will be able to continue to cultivate wave after wave of barnacle thorns.
This is the root of Israel's rather showy sexual intercourse.
So, how can a shark as powerful as Israel get rid of barnacles?
Before 2013, the United States was the world's largest oil importer, but in 2019, it became a net oil exporter for the first time in 70 years, as its domestic oil production soared.
As a result, the United States no longer has its core interests in the Middle East, oil, nor the anxieties of Soviet infiltration, but is more willing to spend more energy on what it sees as more important competitors. And without the support of the United States, it is almost impossible for Israel to start a large-scale war.
At the beginning of the conflict, a New Yorker reporter traveled to Israel to cover the situation and saw that the entire country was in a tense wartime state, with thousands of reservists leaving their jobs and homes for the battlefield, countless businesses and schools closed, and roads deserted.
He grabbed a pedestrian and asked, "Are you alright?" The other fell into a long silence and sigh, and then recounted the nightmares and anxieties he had just experienced: "I dreamed that Hamas was right on my doorstep. ”
Benzion, who had been a hawk scholar all his life, lived to be 102 years old and died in 2012. In his eulogy to his old father, Netanyahu wrote:
"You always tell me that timely identification of danger is a quality that an exile must possess. You've always taught me to face a real problem, to understand it, and then to solve it. ”
And a piece of wisdom from the ancient countries of the Far East is: "The solution without solution is called the great solution." "So what's the solution? Or like a stream that meets a rock, it goes around and continues to flow, instead of a hard rock?