Changing the equation of the conflict with occupied Palestine by looking inside

In examining the latest developments in occupied Palestine, three basic components should be taken into consideration; these components are 1- the continuation of the internal crisis, the entry of the Israeli regime to the threshold of civil war, 2- the balance of the West Bank and the Gaza strip in the confrontation with Zionism, 3- the balance of deterrence as the new achievement of Islamic resistance after researching terror deterrence. Therefore, the aforementioned components are described below under the title of the latest developments in occupied Palestine:

In examining the latest developments in occupied Palestine, three basic components should be taken into consideration; these components are 1- the continuation of the internal crisis, the entry of the Israeli regime to the threshold of civil war, 2- the balance of the West Bank and the Gaza strip in the confrontation with Zionism, 3- the balance of deterrence as the new achievement of Islamic resistance after researching terror deterrence. Therefore, the aforementioned components are described below under the title of the latest developments in occupied Palestine: 

1. Continuation of the internal political crisis:

The domestic political crisis of the Zionist regime started with the intensification of political competition between the left and right parties in 1997, and today it has entered a new stage with the formation of the most extreme right-wing coalition government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu.

This process, with the trend of reviewing and approving the bill to reduce the powers of the judicial system in the Netanyahu government, has been turned into protest Saturdays by the opposition and has gone through twenty-three stages of intense protests so far. The reason for the rooting of these protests, which will probably continue with the efforts of Netanyahu's cabinet in order to resume the process of reviewing and approving the said bill without attracting the opinion of the opposition movement of the Zionist regime, stems from the different ideological origins of the extreme right parties and the left movement in occupied Palestine. Therefore, based on the predictions of Dan Halutz, the Chief of the General Staff of the Zionist regime, it is possible that with Netanyahu's insistence, this process will lead to a civil war in occupied Palestine.

At the same time, Isaac Herzog, the head of the Zionist regime, at the Herzliya Conference 2023, referring to the widespread political crisis in the occupied territories, considered reaching an agreement on the reform plan of the judicial system as a condition for the survival of this regime until the end of this century. In this regard, last month, Netanyahu's cabinet was also faced with the crisis of approving the proposed budget bill in the Knesset. If the differences escalated, the possibility of disbanding the Knesset would be on the agenda, and once again, the crisis of holding the upcoming elections began. In any case, it seems that Netanyahu's coalition cabinet, in addition to the severe internal crisis with various political-security dimensions, is also suffering from severe isolation at the international level. 

2. The operational balance of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip:

The conditions these days in the occupied territories, especially in the West Bank, are very special, and the Palestinian fighters are responding to the countless crimes of the Zionists by any means, and this has created special conditions for the usurping Zionists.

The new stage of the expansion of the wave of resistance in the West Bank coincided with the martyrdom of Sheikh Asir Khizr Adnan after 87 days of hunger strikes in the prisons of the Zionist regime, who targeted the occupied territories with their missiles through the Islamic resistance operation from the Gaza strip. Meanwhile, Palestinian sources reported that 36 resistance operations against the Zionist regime were registered in different areas of the West Bank in just one day. According to this report, during the mentioned period, the resistant Palestinian youth carried out seven military operations against the regime soldiers near the Jabara checkpoint and the Zionist settlements of Afni Heifats in Tulkarem and Beit Ummar in Hebron and Jabal Gerizim in Nablus, as well as shooting operations towards the Zionist soldiers in Gilboa and Faqqu'a and the Ist al-Jumla base in Jenin, which in turn was very important. The same report refers to the confrontation of the Islamic resistance with the Zionist military in 17 places, including Al-Ram, Hazma in Quds, Al-Bireh and Bani Saleh village in Ramallah, Silat ad-Dhahr in Jenin, Al-Sararah and Dirba in Nablus, Kafr Balad in Tulkarem, Ain al-Sultan camp in Jericho, Husan in Bethlehem and Beit Ummar in Hebron and Dotan and Qalqilyeh regions. The use of firearms and Molotov cocktails in the aforementioned operations represents the entry of the West Bank into the armed intifada and the abandonment of the stone intifada.

In addition to the aforementioned report, the operation of Tuba's battalions affiliated with the Al-Quds Brigades by setting up an ambush in al-Sawafata and military operations in the path of the Zionist settlers in Gush Etzion in the Hebron region while disrupting the regime's security equations in the West Bank, has achieved to an operational balance with the Gaza Strip against the Israeli regime. The use of Palestinian homemade bombs in ambush operations and direct clashes with Zionist operatives in the West Bank today has become a serious security challenge for Tel Aviv, to the extent that Channel 7 of the Israeli regime TV reported 124 operations with firearms (shooting) during the last month, May in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem. The importance of achieving such a position by the Islamic resistance in the West Bank should be evaluated after the management of the recent Jenin operation. The operation that the Israeli regime army called a complex operation had them stuck in the face of the Islamic resistance for hours. For the first time in this operation, an Apache helicopter is damaged in the West Bank region, and the intense conflict after the ambush of the Zionist soldiers forces them to call their elite forces, Kafaati and Magellan, to the region to release the commandos trapped in Jenin. 

3. The balance of deterrence after the realization of the balance of terror:

Undoubtedly, considering the Israeli regime's possession of nuclear weapons, there is no way to speak of a balance of power; what the Lebanese Hezbollah achieved in the 33-day war in the summer of 2006 was to establish a balance of terror with the regime. In fact, the Lebanese resistance, in addition to managing the war in the time and space dimension, was able to bring terror to the Zionist military-security pillars for the first time to the extent that the regime was willing to accept the conditions of Lebanese resistance in order to exit the war and end it. After this victory, the Secretary General of the Islamic Resistance has repeatedly announced that in the event of any strategic error by the Israeli regime in its belligerent action, Hezbollah, with its special unit called Rezvan, which arose from the ideas of the guerrilla war of the martyr Imad Mughniyeh, will go deep into occupied Palestine, and will design and manage the invasion and war inside the occupied territories. The same procedure was implemented in the recent wars of the Israeli regime with the Gaza Strip, especially the direct confrontation with the Islamic Jihad resistance, by the combat-operational units of the Jihad, of course, with the difference that in the recent operations of the Palestinian resistance, in addition to the use of various rockets, especially guided missile, also entered the use of drones into its operations. The ability to shoot in short intervals with a wide wave of heavy and semi-heavy weapons and a high percentage of shots passing through the Iron Dome and attacking far away from the geography of the Gaza Strip indicates the importance of studying the deterrence balance strategy by Islamic Jihad.

One of the salient points of this strategy was the resistance coalition in the three fronts of southern Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Syrian Golan. The feature that, with the establishment of the joint operation room, for the first time, has formed a deterrence balance strategy based on the criteria of Jerusalem's red lines, and an attack on each of the resistance groups will be an attack on the resistance coalition.

The formation of the mentioned process with Hezbollah's show of strength maneuver against the invaders will be a serious warning message that the vast capabilities of the resistance war machine with the victorious exit from the summer 2006 war to the tactics of entering occupied northern Palestine and taking control of the Galilee region as the biggest nightmare of the Zionists.

Mojtaba Ferdosipour, Director of West Asia and North Africa Study Department

 (The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the IPIS)