A war that will shape the future of the conflict

Al-Qassam Brigades Source: From the official website of Al-Qassam Brigades

When hundreds of Hamas fighters invaded the military bases and settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip on October 7, they were marking, with their “flood,” a new phase of the conflict not only at the Palestinian level, but also at the Arab and global levels.

Today, after about six months have passed since this huge event, and the continuation of the brutal and immoral Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, positions are being formed at the Palestinian-Israeli level, and at the international level, although to a lesser extent at the Arab level.

The form of the conflict is no longer what it was before, and its repercussions and effects are no longer limited or latent, while its effects continue to form situations that were not imagined to occur before.

Existential struggle

One of the most prominent and important repercussions of the current war is that it has confirmed beyond doubt that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a conflict of existence. Although this intellectual conviction existed among a group of the Palestinian people who suffered from the scourges of the occupation, while this idea was identified with another group under the name of realism and coexistence, this principle has now been established at the level of the occupiers on Palestinian land, in an unprecedented manner in the history of the conflict.

In fact, the idea of ​​peace, or settlement and coexistence, had largely atrophied among the Palestinians even before October 7, after the “Oslo” agreement, more than 30 years after its signing, failed to extract any concessions from the Israeli side, and any hope was eliminated. With the Palestinian people obtaining an independent state as a minimum ambition and 22% of its occupied lands!

The Palestinian Authority has turned into an instrument of occupation instead of being the nucleus of an independent state, as dreamed of by the architects of Oslo, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas!

Indeed, one of the most important reasons for the “Al-Aqsa Flood” is the desire to stop the ongoing Zionist aggression against Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, the continuation of settlement, the confiscation of Palestinian lands, the denial of Palestinian rights, and the continued killing of Palestinians at the hands of the occupation forces.

At the international level, it revealed the extent of the hypocrisy of the American administrations towards the entity, even if it raised the level of disagreements over the management of war and peace between the entity and Washington.

If some Palestinians hope one day to take away some of their rights through a settlement process, they are convinced that it is no longer possible to rely on armed force to force the enemy to abandon its occupation of even part of the land of historic Palestine, and in light of Arab disappointment, the Zionist barbarism in Gaza, The occupation forces in the West Bank, and the continued violations of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque, did not leave any room for this hope for any Palestinian.

The scenes of massacres are enough to bring out a generation of Palestinians - orphans and displaced persons, and from among the rubble of demolished homes and mass graves all over Gaza - to fight the enemy with all possible ferocity, not only to regain their rights and their usurped land, but to exact evil revenge on murderers and butchers the likes of which history has not seen since the Holocausts. The alleged Nazi!

Polls confirm that most Palestinians side with the resistance, and according to the results of a poll conducted in both the West Bank and Gaza by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in cooperation with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation - a center that enjoys credibility and independence - 72% of the Palestinians confirmed that they support the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” while he saw More than 60% of those surveyed believe that resistance is the best way to end the occupation.

It is true that the massacres will be deeply engraved in the memory of the Palestinian people, but the occupation’s claim that they will bring about a transformation in future generations, in what is called the theory of deterrence, will fail. Because the scale of the Zionist crime will cause a backlash in light of the growing awareness of the Palestinians and their conviction that this enemy only understands the language of force, which was confirmed by the resistance on the ground.

Therefore, no matter how successful the enemy is in killing the resistors and destroying their weapons, he will not succeed in killing the resolve of the Palestinians, and for every fighter who is martyred, the resistance will find thousands of volunteers in his place, making the conflict extended and advanced, and raising the resolve and capabilities of the resistance politically and technically.

More extremism

On the other hand, the October 7 operation reinforced the existential fears of a people who have already been suffering from them since the establishment of their entity in 1948, and this feeling is haunting the Israelis with the continuation of resistance and its impact on their entity, not only in the West Bank and Gaza, but also in the 48 regions, which are raised by the operations. Random attacks that occur from time to time.

This is in addition to the strategic concerns previously expressed by the occupation leaders in the eighth decade, which ended Jewish entities throughout history.

The Israelis are still united in the need to take revenge for what happened on October 7, especially since the official media showed, with its political system based on lies, that the resistance fighters did not limit themselves to killing and capturing hundreds of occupiers, but also targeted children and women, a lie that was revealed in the international media that She refuted these allegations.

It does not seem that this was just a reaction to what happened, as the Zionist public in general is moving towards extremism and extremism, not recognizing the Palestinians, and the desire to displace them and deport them from their land.

This was expressed by the Israeli elections that took place in 2022, as a result of which a government was formed that is the most extreme in the entity’s history, and is dominated by hardened Zionist extremists who adopt the priestly ideology based on not recognizing the Palestinian entity, and any right of the Palestinian people to any part of the Palestinian land. This was clearly demonstrated by the statements of government members during this war calling for the displacement, and even the annihilation, of the Palestinians using the tactical nuclear bomb!

There is no doubt that there are moderate voices calling for coexistence, but they are few and ineffective. The evidence for this is that left-wing parties (such as Meretz) that accept formal Palestinian states have come close to disappearing from the Zionist political arena, while the position of the centrist Labor Party in the Knesset has declined, despite the fact that Its leaders - like Rabin and Peres - are heroes of massacres in Palestine and Lebanon!

Indeed, the emergency government that was formed after the war, and which includes the bloc party that includes Gantz and Eisenkot, agreed during the occupation government’s vote to reject the demilitarized Palestinian state called for by US President Joe Biden, unless this solution stems from direct negotiations with the Palestinians, which is the result that It will not be in light of the strict Israeli position, in exchange for the fact that the negotiating Palestinian Authority does not possess any elements of strength with which it can reach a solution with the Israeli side that achieves the aspirations of the Palestinians, even if at a minimum.

Through the behavior of the occupation government, it tends towards continuing to control Gaza, and making it a model similar to the situation in the West Bank, so that the occupation army can enter and leave whenever it wants through its presence on the buffer strip along Gaza.

This government will also seek to empty Gaza of its residents by making the lives of Palestinians there impossible after the widespread destruction of housing, institutions and infrastructure caused by the Zionist war machine, and complicating and disrupting the reconstruction process there. The occupation paved the way for this by displacing Palestinians from north to south, and launching the attack on Rafah, with the opening of the American floating port, will lead to new displacement that will encourage voluntary and forced migration of Palestinians.

No coexistence

This war has driven more and more distance between the two peoples, and demonstrated the impossibility of coexistence between a project based on replacing one people with another, a conflict that is increasingly becoming zero-sum, as talk of peace and settlement becomes merely a speck of dust in the eyes.

President Biden's call to declare an independent Palestinian state even before ending the war comes to throw dust in the eyes, as it is a state that has no realistic balance, as long as the Israeli side continues to reject it. Biden thus wants to start a new path that has proven absurd to negotiate the state. So that he can drag the Arab region towards normalization under the cover of this slogan that is empty of its true content. However, these endeavors will not be successful. Because this war confirmed that it is not possible to coexist with a party that only thinks about displacing the Palestinians from their land, and refuses to recognize any political entity they have on it.

What happened on October 7 and afterwards confirms that the intensity of the conflict is escalating, not declining, and that the Palestinians’ incentives to resist have increased, in the face of an entity that is moving towards extremism and extremism and denying any rights to the Palestinians, while the saying of the honest mediator has fallen away and is irreversible, as it has been confirmed that Washington is a full partner of the enemy, and can only play the role of a biased supporter of it.

Transformations

However, what will characterize the conflict in its next phase is the clear shift in the global popular mood, including the general mood of the younger generation in America, towards supporting the right of the Palestinian people to resist and rebel against the restrictions of anti-Semitism that the Jewish lobby has enshrined in laws in the West.

We saw this in the interrogations that the presidents of prestigious universities were subjected to before Congress. Because they did not control the anti-entity manifestations in their universities, which were classified as anti-Semitism!!

It was also noted that the largest and largest demonstrations against the aggression on Gaza were in the countries that most supported it, namely America, Britain, and France!

In this context, we recall the Gallup poll, which showed a decline in American support for the Israeli war in Gaza from 50% last November to 36% in March 2024.

All of this would not have happened without the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” which inspired the world’s youth with sacrifice, redemption, courage, and determination to seize rights by force. Groups of social media activists succeeded in exposing the occupation media's manipulation of facts and spreading lies about killing children and raping women, which backfired on the occupation so that its narrative - which had previously been the dominant one in the West - became false.

As the occupation crimes continued, calls escalated from Western parliaments and parties to stop arms exports to the entity, which is an important development even for Western parties participating in government or those in the opposition.

On the Arab level, the level of support for the resistance has increased significantly, which we saw through the demonstrations that swept the Arab world, despite the repressive and restrictive measures taken against it in many Arab countries.

Regardless of the outcome of the current war, it will undoubtedly have repercussions, perhaps in the foreseeable future, in the Arab region, in light of the growing feeling of helplessness and oppression among the masses due to their inability to support their brothers in Gaza in light of the cleansing and starvation campaign they are being subjected to, and the retreat of their regimes from Providing any support, even in the field of relief; Due to restrictions on the entry of aid through the Rafah crossing.

As for the international level, it revealed the extent of the hypocrisy of the American administrations towards the entity, even if it raised the level of disagreements over the management of war and peace between the entity and Washington, but it brought about important transformations at the level of the youth group that will have a future role in governance, which enhances the occurrence of societal and perhaps political transformations. In the West, no one expected it before October 7.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.