Last Thursday the Israeli military concluded a two-week series of exercises — dubbed “Firm Hand” — which simulated fighting a multi-front war against Lebanese Hezbollah and other regional forces that have threatened to strike Israel over attacks against Holy Sites in the city of Jerusalem. Despite the posturing and threatening language, the readiness of the Israeli army has been shown to be weak, as its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to take-on the backlash of planned amendments to Tel Aviv’s legal system.
Since the ascent to power of the current Israeli government late last year, one of its primary focuses has been preparing for conflict against the Islamic Republic of Iran. As part of Israel’s anti-Iran strategy, preparations for encountering resistance forces from Syrian and Lebanese territory have become central. During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Israeli occupying police forces violently raided al-Aqsa mosque, injuring and arresting hundreds of worshippers, drawing retaliatory rocket fire from Southern Lebanon, Syria, and the Gaza Strip. The Secretary General of Hezbollah, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, also made it clear in a recent speech, around three weeks ago, that any future war with Israel would include “hundreds of thousands” of fighters that would attack from a number of bordering nations.
As Israel’s recent preparations for a regional conflict were taking place in the north of occupied Palestine, an embarrassing security failure occurred in the south. On Saturday, June 3, an attack took place along the Egyptian border area, known as al-Awja, resulting in the killing of three Israeli soldiers, with a fourth left seriously injured. Officially, the gunman was identified as Mohammad Salah, an Egyptian police officer who was in his early 20’s. After a number of contradictory narratives were spread in both Egypt’s and Israel’s media, it was concluded that the lone-gunman managed to cross the Israeli border fence holding an AK-47 rifle. Salah allegedly opened fire on two Israeli soldiers, killing both of them, before opening fire at a unit sent as backup hours later, killing another Israeli soldier and injuring a second in this exchange. The Egyptian gunman then attacked again and was killed in a third exchange.
Although the incident was strange, raising many questions about how a man in his early 20’s managed to travel across the Sinai, avoid Israel’s state-of-the-art censors and monitoring equipment, break through the border and take on a number of Israeli units, armed with only a single rifle, the incident represented an embarrassment. Despite there being no physical evidence to suggest that there were other armed combatants involved in the attack, circumstantial evidence would suggest that it was well planned in advance and that there was perhaps a cell that carried out the operation. This being the case, the narrative of a lone-wolf shooter has alone provided for a compelling argument to suggest that Tel Aviv is in a weak position in the event of a regional conflict breaking out.
When a barrage of rockets were fired from southern Lebanon during Ramadan this year, which injured a number of Israeli settlers and caused damage to buildings, the response was notably lackluster from an Israeli perspective. Israel’s Premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, gave a number of speeches at the time, indicating that Hezbollah targets had been struck in response to the rocket fire; this came after the Israeli military stated that it struck targets belonging to Hamas. In reality, a banana farm, along with open land near a Palestinian refugee camp, were the only areas targeted by Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon. This led to jokes in the Lebanese press, whereby the Israeli strikes were labelled “operation banana split”.
Last October, when Beirut and Tel Aviv signed a deal to demarcate maritime borders — a move that has opened the door for Lebanon to extract its natural resources — Benjamin Netanyahu labelled the deal a “historic surrender” to Hezbollah and Iran. At the time, Netanyahu was the leader of the Israeli opposition and spoke about the weakness of then Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who had signed the deal under the threat of Hezbollah launching a war in the event he didn’t. Nearly half a year into the far-right Netanyahu administration, the “historic surrender” deal has remained in place and his extremist camp has seemingly forgotten about it. The truth here is that no one has forgotten, but instead understand the position of weakness that Israel finds itself in before the powerful armed group based in southern Lebanon.
Even inside the occupied West Bank, where Israel has full control and is backed up by a collaborator force called the Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF), tens of armed groups have been able to form and carry out routine shooting attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers. On Tuesday for example, the Israeli army raided three Palestinian refugee camps in pursuit of armed fighters, killing an innocent bystander and shooting a child, failing to arrest the wanted combatants. As the refugee camp of Balata, located in Nablus, was under attack, an armed cell belonging to the Jenin Brigades had managed to carry out a retaliatory shooting against Israeli soldiers and a settler near Ja’bad. Four Israeli soldiers and a settler were injured in the shooting attack, which is believed to have been carried out by the same resistance fighters that killed an Israeli officer two weeks prior.
The West Bank is the most controlled territory that Israel occupies, yet even there they are at a loss of what to do. This all stems from a complete disconnect from reality, where two primary Israeli camps currently exist; those who believe in maintaining the status quo and those who seek to impose a radical change that includes expelling Palestinians entirely, in addition to taking over the Holy Churches and Mosque’s throughout the country. Both sides of Israel’s ongoing discourse have no solid solution for the existence of the Palestinian people, nor how to reconcile their feud with the region.
The United States government has attempted to lead efforts whereby Tel Aviv signs onto normalization deals with more corrupted Arab dictators, yet this again avoids confronting the elephant in the room and fails to quell the collective regional anger against Israel. For example, in 1979 the Egyptian regime normalized ties with Israel, yet it is still not safe for Israelis to visibly visit Cairo today in 2023, this is not because the Egyptian State will do anything to them, it is out of fear that regular Egyptians may act. In 2011, during the Egyptian revolution, the protesters immediately took to raiding and destroying the Israeli embassy, this is because no self-respecting Arab will ever accept the behavior of Israel in the region, despite Tel Aviv having given up its occupation of Egyptian territory.
Although the Arab street, as it is colloquially known, opposes Israel, it is not the average Arab that the Zionist regime has to worry about, it is the dozens of armed groups that are now positioned in Syria, Gaza, and Lebanon, all of which are waiting and building strength. All the while, the radical Israeli government, led by PM Netanyahu, now faces an internal revolt from Israelis themselves, ostensibly over a planned judicial system overhaul. Crucial votes in the Israeli Knesset are likely to take place later this year, assuming that Netanyahu is not seeking to delay the legal system amendments to a later date in order to avoid general strikes and large scale protests that will effect the Israeli economy.
At this point, the far-right administration of Benjamin Netanyahu is in crisis. The radical lawmakers who keep Netanyahu in power are threatening a religious war through proposing changes to the status quo at al-Aqsa Mosque, they also plan annexation of the West Bank and seek to perform another ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. On top of this, the same extremist administration seeks to change the nature of Israel’s apartheid state, making it fall under a more religious model and putting the power to change the entire system in the hands of a Knesset lawmaker majority. The fact that Israel is now more vulnerable militarily, due to the advancements in the quality and quantity of the regional armed groups like Hezbollah, only adds to a long list of threats.
Israel will now fight many battles on various fronts. There is the Israeli vs Israeli conflict, a fight over which apartheid model they want for the privileged ethnic class and the judiciary which grants it a liberal system. There is also the ensuing battle between Palestinian citizens of Israel and Jewish Israelis. In addition to this there is the issue of the West Bank and what the future of the territory will look like. Then there is Jerusalem and the status quo at al-Aqsa mosque, this could determine the future of Jordan-Israel relations. All of these questions are to be answered and the armed movements in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon are intrinsically linked to the results. For the time being, Tel Aviv is in a trap, a ticking time bomb, and the attempts to threaten Iran or maybe even launch some sort of action against it, will represent a distraction more so than any real attempt to inflict a significant blow.
