Palestinian High Tide, Israeli Low Tide

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The latest war between the Palestinian resistance and Israel allows us to speak of a phase of Palestinian high tide set against a phase of Israeli low tide. This war has established new equations for the Arab-Israeli conflict, and has brought to the fore multiple standards and factors that are reshaping the pattern of this conflict, its entanglements, and the interlocking elements of power within it. It appears that we have entered a phase of arm-wrestling that has replaced the phase of pleading and soliciting mercy; we have entered a phase of Palestinian offense in place of a phase of static steadfastness; and the war is developing toward mobile military operations in place of the static ones that once characterized the Palestinian side. I discuss the following headings to demonstrate this.

Tide and ebb: according to the conclusions of political thought, peoples pass through phases of tide and ebb. The tide phase is marked by activity, vitality, and the capacity to mobilize various energies and achieve accomplishments across the different spheres of life. In this phase, people’s morals rise, the level of social cohesion increases, and trust becomes the watchword of social relations among people and of public relations generally. Relations built on trust generate collective work and mutual cooperation, so production and giving increase, and the level of national belonging and the desire to participate in public life grow. Here the individual gains self-confidence, feels his own dignity and honor, and shifts from accepting humiliation and disgrace to insisting on holding his head high.

The ebb phase is the opposite: people’s feelings are marked by abasement, meanness, and humiliation, and by chaos in the value system, moral decay, and opportunism. In the ebb phase, people feel debased and humiliated, and their morals continue to decline until relations among them come to rest on suspicion and mistrust; at that point the values of collective work and mutual cooperation retreat, and people turn into mere wolves, each one seeking his own private interest even at the expense of others and of the public good. Production declines in this phase, and souls degrade to such an extent that theft, banditry, and embezzlement become a kind of heroism and eloquence.

Manifestations of Palestinian Achievement

Since 2003, the Palestinian resistance has managed to achieve continuous and accelerating military and technical accomplishments, in order to accumulate the power that the resistance saw as the only path toward deterring Israel and restoring national rights. It is clear that the resistance has made very broad technical and military leaps since the 2012 war. Within these leaps there was much that astonished friend and foe alike and surprised everyone. These accomplishments can be enumerated as follows:

The greatest achievement lies in the development of a scientific mentality within the Palestinian resistance, and its reliance on scientific research, study, and precision. For years, Arabs — Palestinians among them — relied on a mentality of improvisation, spontaneity, muddling through, and one-man leadership, and failed in most of their efforts, whether in confronting external or internal challenges. In the current Gaza experience, there are centers of scientific research and continuous thought devoted to what the resistance can develop in order to be capable of military confrontation. In its research process on rocket development, the resistance benefited from the experience of Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, but it was determined to transfer and develop that experience in a way suited to Palestinian conditions in Gaza. Many countries have been unable to manufacture rockets, whereas the Palestinian resistance achieved a miracle, because the Gaza Strip is suffocatingly besieged, resources are extremely scarce, and raw materials are unavailable — yet the Palestinian will rose above the challenge and produced what was needed. Nor does the Palestinian people deny the help of others, such as Sudan and the Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.

The Palestinian resistance developed a new security mentality, fighting Israeli infiltration of Palestinian ranks and eliminating numerous spies and collaborators who had been supplying Israel with information. Israel used to enjoy precise sources of information and had infiltrated Palestinian institutions, factions, and parties, waging its wars with full awareness of its targets and precise knowledge of where and how to strike; but this time it was forced to fight a nearly blind war. The resistance managed to keep its secrets hidden and to fortify itself securely, confounding Israel, which found itself lost in the search for military targets and consequently focused its efforts on killing civilians and destroying their homes.

The Palestinian resistance also developed on the media front, and came to address the world in a measured language free of improvisation, spontaneity, and false statements. Palestinian media spokesmen appeared in the name of the resistance, their words carefully prepared, in proportion to their capabilities and abilities. These spokesmen did not let their mouths utter words bigger than themselves, nor did they carry staffs longer than their own height. They were precise in their statements and did not try to manufacture illusions, so the Palestinian public came to trust their words — indeed even the Israeli public came to trust the resistance’s statements more than it trusted the statements and speeches of its own prime minister. Just as happened in the war on South Lebanon, the Israeli became certain that his leadership was lying, and that it was the adversary who was telling the truth. And just as Nasrallah became a media authority, so did Abu Obeida.

In this war the Palestinian resistance achieved the loftiest meaning of cooperation and division of roles. There was no longer anyone monopolizing the field and trying to magnify his own role at the expense of others’ roles. In this war, all the factions worked as an integrated system, operating together according to roles agreed upon in advance, and were thereby able to address the world with a unified voice.

For the first time in the history of the Arab-Zionist conflict, there was talk of a truce while gunfire was still continuing. Just five minutes before the truce was due to begin, the resistance’s rockets were still coming down on the Zionists, and throughout the truce fingers remained on the trigger. And when negotiations stalled, the resistance asked the Palestinian negotiating delegation in Cairo to stop the moment the truce expired and return to Palestine. The resistance spoke with strength during the truce and refused to soften or ease its demands — a scene the world has never before witnessed from Arabs.

The resistance adopted a military tactic similar to Hezbollah’s tactic in 2006, by neutralizing lethal weapons by means of tunnels. The resistance dug tunnels to absorb air strikes and cripple their military effect. Israel’s air power is well known and no one denies it, but the air force was unable to inflict damage on the fighters or on the weapons depots. Gaza was well fortified both against collaborators and against air strikes. The resistance worked hard to improve its stockpile of anti-tank and anti-armor weapons, and it struck fear into the ranks of the Israeli naval forces, which were unable to push into Gaza and were forced to withdraw from Gaza’s edges.

The Palestinian fought with unmatched courage, displaying the high level of training the resistance had prepared for him. Israel came to know that there was a new Arab soldier, armed with professional training, possessed of a deep awareness, an unshakeable will, and an unwavering, powerful faith; it realized it was fighting people who love death for the sake of life, so that the people of Palestine might live.

The resistance mastered the art of wartime diplomacy. It showed no incapacity or weakness, and it did not run to the Security Council or international institutions to stop the Israeli aggression; it held to a firm position of defiance, despite the attempts of a number of Arab regimes to rattle the resistance’s nerves. The resistance knew no language of pleading or begging for mercy, despite the great losses among civilians and in the built environment.

Israel’s Retreat

Israel did not appear in this war as it had appeared before, as shown by the following points:

Israel has still, to this day, been unable to determine the war’s objectives. It began with a goal Netanyahu articulated — achieving security for Israelis — and ended, once the calm took hold, with an illusory goal: disarming the resistance. Israel fumbled in talking about its objectives, just as it fumbled in 2006 and in 2008. This is an indicator of the weakness of its political leadership and the vagueness of its vision.

This time Israel waged a blind war because of the weakness and paucity of its information. Israel did not know the extent of the tunnels, their maze-like structure, their depth, or their capacity to withstand bombardment; it did not know the quantities of weapons available in the depots; it did not know the locations where weapons were stored. Its information bank on the resistance’s military sites and its armaments was very poor, and this is why it fumbled through the war and was unable to strike the targets that might have affected the resistance’s strength and its ability to respond. It demolished many homes and killed roughly two thousand civilians, but the results of wars are not measured by losses inflicted, but by the achievement of objectives.

Israeli politicians, Netanyahu in particular, appeared on the screens looking grim and with very low morale. Netanyahu was not able to utter words of defiance, and, contrary to his usual manner, tended toward slackness and toward searching for a way to stop the fighting. Israel’s prime minister was neither composed nor optimistic that he would achieve anything, and he quickly agreed to the Egyptian initiative to stop the fighting.

The world was used to seeing the Arabs seek a ceasefire, while Israel continued fighting until it achieved military accomplishments that would give it the upper hand at the negotiating table, should one be convened. But this time the situation was different: Israel rushed to accept a ceasefire fully aware that it had not achieved anything that would give it the upper hand — it accepted while the Palestinian hand held the advantage. In saying this, we do not mean to exaggerate Palestinian military capabilities; we mean that the Palestinians have become capable of dragging Israel into war, entangling it, and inflicting heavy losses on the ranks of its army. This time Israel did not control how or when it would exit the war; that remained in the hands of the Palestinian resistance.

Neither Israel nor the United States, in the past, would accept a ceasefire without first making certain that the Arabs had been defeated, and the United States would not rush to the Security Council seeking a halt to the fighting except after making certain that Israel had achieved military accomplishments on the ground leading to Arab submission. This time it was Israel that requested a halt to the fighting, and America pushed Arab regimes to mediate with the resistance to stop the fighting. It is something new for America to mediate in order to end a war.

The Israeli media failed this time on two counts: its inability to deceive world public opinion, and its loss of trust in the Israeli political leadership. The media tried to escape its predicament by simply repeating what the politicians said, but the images that reached the world of the massacres in Gaza were stronger than all the lies and deception.

What Comes Next Is Greater

Given all this, what will the war of 2017 look like? Will the Palestinian rocket carry half a ton of explosives? Will the resistance obtain anti-aircraft weapons? Will the Palestinian tunnels reach deep into the land occupied in ‘48, with the fighters seizing control of settlements in southern Palestine? Which of the well-off will still be left in Israel by that date — will they not have emigrated? And what about naval manufacturing and Palestinian submarines? And what about the range of anti-armor rockets? Will Israeli tanks dare approach the borders of Gaza? And will the West Bank learn anything from these lessons? The resistance will impose itself, as victors impose themselves and their ideas. There is no escaping it: the West Bank will undergo many political, cultural, intellectual, and security transformations.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “المدّ الفلسطيني والجزْر الإسرائيلي” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.