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"Since Israel is an important lever for the United States to intervene in Middle East affairs, the United States will continue to provide political protection for it. ”
As the new round of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict turns 200 days old, the Israeli Government is facing only increasing internal and external troubles.
Israel's top brass may now be "resigning"
On April 22, local time, the head of the IDF military intelligence, Aharon Haliwa, announced his resignation, ending his 38-year military career and becoming the first senior Israeli official to resign due to "10.7 intelligence mistakes".
According to the resignation letter released by the Israeli army, Haliwa said that the Israeli intelligence unit under his command "did not complete the tasks assigned to it."
On 7 October last year, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) announced an "Al-Aqsa flood" attack on Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then declared a "state of war" in Israel and began a military strike on the Gaza Strip.
Khaliwa said afterwards that the Israeli army's intelligence failed to warn and prevent the Hamas raid, and that he was responsible for the miscalculation of the intelligence.
On the same day that Khaliwa resigned, Yehuda Fox, commander of Central Command, one of the four major Israeli military commands, also announced that he would resign in August. While there have been reports that Fox's resignation is not linked to Haliwa's resignation, Fox himself has said that he is partly responsible for the failure of military intelligence on Oct. 7 last year and that "his term must end like everyone else."
Some analysts believe that if more senior Israeli officials follow in the footsteps of Haliwa and others, it will mean that Israel's "moment of reckoning" has arrived.
In the view of Zhang Chuchu, deputy director of the Center for Middle East Studies at Fudan University, if these two senior Israeli military officials resign voluntarily, their purpose may be to bring more pressure on Netanyahu and ultimately direct the blame for the "October 7 intelligence mistake" to the Israeli ruler. Of course, it is not excluded that they will have to leave the field after losing the political struggle.
Zhang Chuchu said that no matter what the reason, the resignation of the top military officials highlights the current division in Israel's domestic political scene, especially the differences within the right wing and the extreme right, which has reached a white-hot level, and also means that the internal pressure on Netanyahu has risen.
Raisi's visit to Palestine issued a "threat of national destruction" against Israel
It is worth noting that the resignation of Israeli military executives comes at a time when relations between Israel and Iran are at "the highest tension in history."
On April 23, local time, Iranian President Raisi, who is visiting Pakistan, said when talking about the recent tensions between Iran and Israel that if Iranian territory is attacked again, Israel's "Zionist regime" will be wiped out.
In retaliation, Israel launched drone and missile strikes on military targets in Israel on April 13 by carrying out airstrikes on Iranian diplomatic missions in Syria on April 1.
Israel then launched a counter-retaliatory operation, launching a "limited attack" on a military base in Iran's Isfahan province in the early morning of the 19th. It is worth mentioning that the Israeli official still "does not admit or refuse" this military action, while the Iranian side says that it has no immediate plan to retaliate against Israel.
So, will Iran, which suffered this attack, still launch a counterattack against Israel? Will the two sides end up with a "tacit understanding" in this way?
Zhang Chuchu believes that the state of direct confrontation between Iran and Israel is an important turning point in the current Middle East war situation. Previously, Israel's multi-front war was only a conflict with some non-state armed groups, and Iran's involvement means that the war in the Middle East has begun to turn to inter-state conflicts.
"Both Iran and Israel understand that it is impossible to defeat each other in a short period of time, so the strategy they adopt is to stretch the front to wear down their opponents. For example, Israel may take advantage of Iran's efforts to strengthen its self-defense and launch large-scale attacks on armed groups such as Allah in Lebanon and the Islamic Resistance Movement in Iraq, which it supports.
Piles of bones were found in Gaza hospitals, and the United Nations called for an investigation
In addition to internal divisions and a strong external enemy, the humanitarian crisis caused by Israel's military operations in Gaza and the pressure of public opinion caused by it are further increasing.
Since the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, a large number of bodies have been found in the local Nasser hospital, and on the 23rd local time, Palestinian search and rescue personnel found another 35 bodies in the place. At present, more than 310 bodies have been found in the area of Nasser Hospital, and some of the deceased have shown signs of execution.
Nasser Hospital is one of the largest hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip. Since the outbreak of the conflict, Israeli forces have bombed the area and attacked the hospital twice. Due to the fighting, the remains in the hospital could not be removed, so people had to dig some temporary graves in the hospital compound for burial.
However, the Gaza Strip Civil Defence Department recently said that the number of bodies they exhumed from the temporary graves after the Israeli army withdrew exceeded the burial records at the time, and that some of the dead did not die naturally, and when they were found, their hands and feet were tied, and there were signs of execution at the scene.
The Israeli military denied this claim on the same day, and said that they had received intelligence that there might be Israeli detainees buried there, so they launched a targeted search, exhumed the relevant bodies and examined them.
It is noteworthy that a similar situation has occurred at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip. The World Health Organization released a report earlier this month saying that the Shifa hospital had been reduced to ashes under Israeli siege last month, leaving only an "empty shell" containing many bodies.
In response to this finding, the United Nations called for an independent and transparent investigation into the large number of bodies found in two hospitals in the Gaza Strip, stressing that the deliberate killing of civilians and non-combatants is a war crime.
Despite the turmoil in public opinion, Zhang Chuchu believes that the international pressure over the discovery of the body at Nasser Hospital has had a limited impact on Israel, and that "the only important scrutiny and the only restrictions that can be imposed are from the United States." Since Israel is an important lever for the United States to intervene in Middle East affairs, the United States will continue to provide political protection for it.
The Al Jazeera article pointed out that because the United States has given the green light to such actions by Israel, its global standing and credibility are plummeting, and the United States will eventually not tolerate such a situation, so such a situation may not last long.
Take a look at the news reporter: Fang Feifei
Editor: Fang Feifei
Editor-in-charge: Zhao Xin