Dr. Yahya Al-Aridi
In a unique privileged way, the media has proven again to be the once again that it is the champion of our world.No one could escape the impact of the vivid narratives of Israeli prisoners who spoke with passion of the humane language, just demands, and gentle treatment they received while in Hamas jails.
International media, usually, is not quite supportive of the Palestinian cause, which everyone knows is just. However, the influence of other media, which translates the fact that each party that supported Palestine had its own historical revenge, with Israel, America, and the West. It is quite clear, a public opinion is forming, to some extent, internally, in Israeli, publically and politically, pushing towards a solution which is already paid for by Israel.
If the war lasts, this trend will grow, as the human cost rises, it will strengthen, especially within Jewish civil society, and to some extent within the orientations of Israeli political parties. Hence, Israel has an interest in a comprehensive and urgent decision that replaces the ashes of Hamas with a hybrid model, as this trend desires.
Such a decision will be followed directly by reconstruction, and the influx of urgent economic packages, to win over the Palestinian street, prevent Hamas leaving a vacuum to be possibly filled with a similar model, and to show the Jewish street that Hamas is a condition rejected by its people especially after its collective and forced suicide to which it dragged its people,
In fact Israel, like Hamas, is stuck in a big trap.Its prestige has been catastrophically undermined, and it has reached a path with no middle; Just like Hamas; but in two opposite directions: Hamas is fighting, so as not to emerge without gain and be destroyed for free; Israel is bearing the cost, and is moving forward with it incrementally, and has no choice but to go al the way. It is a perfectly prepared trap that captured its makers and swallowed them.
Every missile launched today from southern Lebanon, or from the Houthis, or over an American base, is a slap in the face to those who essentially engineered such self-serving traps, and accepted cheap tactics at the expense of the strategic, which led to the perpetuation of peace and security with morals and humanity. It is true that this is not part of the language of politics as the “art of the possible”, which is cloaked in its dull realism. However, the price for everyone was unbearable.
We, as Syrians, are also stuck in the same equation, except that, for the first time, time works with us, without having any hand in it. We have nothing left to lose. Every page in the war today creates a pending breakthrough in this way, or that location and calculations. What remains of the Assad regime is an integral part of the mullahs’ functional service system, the papers of which were burned in this terrible fire.
The year 2023 brought the harvest of pre-Gaza policies of Machiavellianism, which allowed for a costly and disastrous breakthrough on the mainland, in all directions. As for the year 2024, it will bring the post-Gaza harvest, which may go in every direction except the continuation of blood, displacement and destruction. Its harvest will be peace, freedom and dignity, because such a harvest is less expensive, and not because it is more humane and moral.
The lack of complete victory, accompanied by a coup against this service system and the bases that protected it, is a major and more disastrous trap, next to which Gaza appears tomorrow to be merely a transient operational warm-up process that can be repeated with a truly existential threat.
This moment will accurately answer fundamental questions that have long occupied the minds of strategists: Who will rule the Middle East, and perhaps the world, Israel with its hawks, and those who believe in the Torah’s narrative? Or new masters in a deep state whose interests are above all else!!? Is Jewish blood more expensive or cheaper than a dollar, crossing ideologies and transcending any constant? These are the key questions towards a deep rift that is emerging for the first time between Jewish Israel and American Israel. The most dangerous thing is that there is no middle approach between the two ; and that is the peak of the paradoxes now and tomorrow. This is a more important contradiction than any other context of war with an enemy and external fronts. After Gaza, Jewish Israel will either grow to rule the Middle East, or shrink into a follower of a pole with identical interests and powers.