Palestinians celebrate following the declaration of a ceasefire in Gaza in the refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese port of Sidon.
Image: Mahmoud Zayyat / AFP
By Ramzy Baroud
Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir accused the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu of “a complete surrender to Hamas”, calling the Gaza ceasefire agreement a “surrender deal”.
For once, Ben-Gvir is right.
For over 15 months, the Israeli military has tried every possible strategy to achieve victory in Gaza, yet it has failed. Analysts will spend years trying to understand how a country with such advanced killing technologies could fail to subdue a group of fighters who make their own weapons, or more accurately, how a group of fighters, relying on improvised weapons, managed to defeat an entire arsenal provided to Israel by the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, and many other Western and non-Western countries.
Gaza has been under a hermetic Israeli siege for nearly two decades, during which Israel has launched major wars in the region—starting in 2008 and culminating in the latest onslaught. This recent war, however, was not just another round of violence. It was genocidal in scope, a campaign of destruction unprecedented in the region’s history.
This defeat will have profound repercussions. It highlights the unbreakable and unified nature of the Palestinian Resistance, says the writer.
Image: Graphic News
Israel will attempt, with the help of its allies in the media, to frame the Palestinian victory in Gaza as a defeat. Netanyahu and his allies within his extremist cabinet – with a few exceptions – will likely downplay the failure or attempt to distort the narrative.
These so-called “achievements” by Israel do not even qualify as tactical victories. On the contrary, Israel’s actions have caused the destruction of Gaza and led to countless civilian casualties, including women and children.
Israel assumed that by destroying Gaza, it would eradicate the resistance. However, that calculation was deeply flawed. The resistance in Gaza is directly tied to the Palestinian people. It’s not about eliminating a specific number of fighters but about the enduring bond between the people and the resistance itself.
This bond remained unbroken; in fact, it became even stronger. Without committing outright mass genocide—as in killing every Palestinian in Gaza—Israel could not extinguish the resistance. Some politicians, such as Israel’s Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu, repeatedly made such a demand, calling for the dropping of a nuclear bomb on Gaza.
Ultimately, Israel failed, though it killed and wounded, in the estimation of the Lancet medical journal, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
This time, Israel’s failure cannot be dismissed as merely not achieving its objectives. The Israeli army suffered devastating losses—greater than in any military confrontation with Arab armies since Israel’s establishment in 1948.
These losses were inflicted by grassroots resistance groups that did not rely on alliances with major powers, such as the former Soviet Union, to sustain their fight. Instead, these groups rely on their own resources, their own people, and their own strategies.
The significance of this resistance lies in its introduction of a new model of anti-colonial struggle in the Arab world, unifying non-state actors—such as the Resistance in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansarallah in Yemen, and other groups across the region—that fought with a single strategy. This unified approach succeeded in weakening Israel’s economy, overwhelming its army, and ultimately defeating it on the battlefield.
Israel has, in fact, been defeated. After 15 months of fighting, Israel surrendered to the Resistance. This surrender reflects Israel’s admission that it could neither reoccupy Gaza, destroy the resistance, ethnically cleanse Palestinians, counter regional resistance groups, nor sustain the war any longer.
As a result, Israel agreed to return to the same ceasefire terms that Hamas had accepted as early as May and again in July of last year. This marks a historic moment.
This defeat will have profound repercussions. It highlights the unbreakable and unified nature of the Palestinian Resistance. It reaffirms the people’s resolve to continue their struggle, drawing inspiration from the words of the great African-American leader Malcolm X: “By any means necessary.”
* Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. This article was originally published in The Palestine Chronicle.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.