In a forum in World published the day after October 7, 2023, I wrote that this cataclysm was “It will probably alter regional balances.” Easy forecast. What I couldn’t imagine was that, twelve months later, we would still be here. Worse. Israel now faces seven fronts. Seven ! We face Hamas in the south, Hezbollah in the north, in the east, in the West Bank, an intifada that has not yet spoken its name, in Syria and Iraq a myriad of terrorist groups and, further afield, the Houthis from Yemen. and finally to Iran, patron of all the others. It took strategic genius to find yourself trapped in this form.
Let’s move quickly to the question of everyone’s responsibilities. I said a word about it in the aforementioned forum about Benjamin Netanyahu. As for Hamas leader Yahya Sinouar and the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, their jihadist ideology made them blind to the realities of the adversary. The first spoke perfect Hebrew, the second prided himself on being an expert on Israel, but both understood nothing of the sources of this country’s power and drew false conclusions from its momentary weaknesses. In a famous speech, did Nasrallah not declare that Israel, despite its nuclear power and air force, was “Weaker than a spider web” ? A quarter of a century later, the web finally suffocated him.
That said, the only valid question is this: can we still get out of the quagmire into which the barbaric attack of October 7, 2023 plunged the region? Yes, as long as you keep three facts in mind. The first: returning to the status quo ante is impossible. Overshadowed by Netanyahu’s toxic personality, his destructive policies, and the makeup of his government, the root cause of the situation we face is the presence on Israel’s borders of over-armed proto-states whose goal is its elimination. We can make fun of “total victory” that Netanyahu promises his fellow citizens, that is, the annihilation once and for all of Hamas and Hezbollah. But there is no doubt that they must be deprived of their power to cause harm, that is, of their power itself.
flip the table
The second fact refers to the modalities of this paradigm shift. Strength is one, without a doubt. After October 7, 2023, the systematic dismantling of Hamas’s military and political structures was essential, as was the sudden change in the situation facing Hezbollah. Once again, we must ask ourselves why, for two decades, which coincided with Netanyahu’s presence in power, Israel allowed these two jihadist entities to gain power and acquire veritable armies. Still, the massacre of October 7, 2023, the daily shelling of towns in the Galilee, and the approximately 100,000 displaced Israelis scattered across their own country forced the Israeli government to change the situation.
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