After Israeli occupation police forces raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a total of three times, attacking worshippers and provoking popular outrage across the Muslim and Arab World, the response was overwhelming. For the first time since 1973, Israel is directly threatened with a multi-front war, this time in reaction to its assaults on a Holy Site.
On April 5, after videos began to emerge, showing women and elderly men being attacked inside al-Aqsa Mosque’s Qibli prayer hall, a popular wave of rage emerged. Palestinian citizens of Israel took to the streets to protest in a vast range of locations throughout the country, as did Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. In Arab countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Morocco, demonstrations were also staged against the attacks of Israeli forces on worshippers during the Muslim Holy month of Ramadan.
Later that day came the violent reaction, beginning in the West Bank where the newly formed armed groups in al-Khalil, Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem, Jericho, and Ramallah all opened fire on almost every Israeli military checkpoint in their areas. In Beit Ummar, located south of the city of al-Khalil, armed clashes erupted with the Israeli military, where an Israeli soldier was shot and injured. In East Jerusalem, Palestinians threw stones at Israeli settler buses and smashed the windows in. From the Gaza Strip, a small number of rockets were fired towards Israeli settlements along the besieged territory’s periphery. This led to Israel airstrikes against Gaza, which only targeted open training areas that belong to the Hamas party therein.
On April 6, after a number of exchanges of fire between Gaza and Israel, protests were still erupting against the violations committed against worshippers at al-Aqsa, however, the situation was viewed as somewhat more stable. Then, in the early afternoon, sirens blared in the north and reports began to pour in about rocket fire from southern Lebanon. Three Israelis were injured in the rocket attack and a number of buildings were damaged, in what Hebrew media originally reported was an attack of 100 rockets in ten minutes. It later turned out that the number of rockets that were fired was much less; the Israeli army stated that 36 rockets were fired, whereas sources from southern Lebanon claimed that no more than 18 rockets were fire.
This was the largest rocket attack from Lebanon, against Israel, since the war between both sides in 2006, meaning that Tel Aviv was pressured greatly from its own population to respond with great force. Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called for a security cabinet meeting, after which it was concluded that both Gaza and Lebanon would be attacked in response. Israeli airstrikes were launched that night into the Gaza Strip, in what Israeli media referred to as “Operation Strong Hand”, however, only open targets were struck; agricultural areas, military training sites, and watchtowers. There were no injuries or deaths reported. At around midnight, a few missiles were then fired into Tyre, Lebanon, hitting the site where rockets were launched and destroying a banana tree, a road, and causing damage to nearby buildings.
Israel’s extremely weak response was specifically designed to prevent an immediate reaction, knowing that the launch of any deadly strikes could have resulted in rocket fire on Tel Aviv and worse. Most of all, however, Israel was clearly careful to avoid a military escalation with Lebanese Hezbollah, which has vowed to respond to all attacks on Lebanese territory. Tel Aviv knows that Hezbollah possesses an arsenal of hundreds of thousands of missiles, including many precision missiles, in addition to its standing army force of over 100,000 fighters.
The next day, after Palestinians had carried out a number of shooting attacks that killed Israeli settlers in the West Bank, occupation forces again threatened to violently storm al-Aqsa mosque. Seemingly out of nowhere, three rockets were launched from Syria into the occupied Golan heights, the first batch not doing much damage. Hours later, three more were launched, one of which directly hit an Israeli settler’s home and reportedly inflicted a critical injury. Israel later carried out an attack on the Syrian Capital, Damascus.
On the same night, Saturday, Israel was experiencing internal turmoil as well, with 250,000 Israeli Zionist protesters marching against the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, with cyber attacks also carried out that night. This reflected the crisis of the Israeli regime now on eight different levels; an internal crisis, cyber warfare, military confrontation from Gaza, military confrontation from Lebanon, military confrontation from Syria, armed attacks from groups in the West Bank, potential for riots from Palestinian citizens of Israel, and tensions throughout occupied East Jerusalem. To throw even more uncertainty into the mix, Iran still hasn’t responded to the killing of two of its citizens in Syria and Ansarallah in Yemen has vowed to backup the Palestinians in a war, as have the Kataeb Hezbollah group in Iraq.
The multi-front war strategy to protect al-Aqsa has already proven to be a success. Israel was forced to respond with weak airstrikes, only purposed with making its own citizens happy and not achieving anything. Also, on Saturday night, Israeli forces refrained from attacking worshippers to purge them from al-Aqsa and even begged the Jordanian Waqf to use its guards to expel the worshippers for them. Jordan quickly rejected this request.
All of this proves that Israel has been effectively deterred from committing any immediate action against Gaza and Al-Aqsa, which proves that the strategy that Hezbollah leader, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, had called for in 2021, has not only been activated, but has borne fruit. This deterrence, to protect the al-Aqsa Mosque Holy Site, has been the only successful effort we have seen that has actively scared the Israeli government forcing them to step back for fear of what might happen if they did not. It has proven that the international community’s weak statements are futile and that the armed resistance is the only thing that Israel will listen to. Israel used to say that Arabs only understand to language of force, however, it has been proven that it is the Zionist regime that only answers to violence.
This does not mean that Israel has been defeated, which is a mistake that many seem to be making across social media. Tel Aviv does possess an extremely powerful military machine, backed by the United States, which it will be planning to use in due time. It is likely that Israel will attempt to assassinate high ranking Palestinian officials in Syria and Gaza soon, in order to sate its appetite for death and destruction. When Israel does chose to go on the offensive, the response will then determine where this situation goes next.
