TEHRAN - After two attacks on the Arabs in 1948 and 1967, which led to the occupation of the Palestinian homeland and some other countries’ territories, the Israeli army acquired its myth of invincibility.

Accordingly, Israel became Washington’s most important foreign policy and national security priority in the Middle East. Eventually, certain Arab leaders, fearing a repetition of the 1948 and 1967 wars, gave way to the pressure imposed by the United States and Israel.
If the 1948 and 1967 wars can be viewed as Israel’s military triumphs, its 33-day war with Hezbollah in 2006 and the impending defeat in the current war in Gaza are certainly pushing the Zionist regime to the verge of collapse.
After the 33-day war showed the Israelis that they cannot defeat the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance forces, an “axis of evil” comprising the United States, Israel, and certain so-called moderate Arab leaders (from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc.) was established, and they made a secret agreement to pursue the two goals of defeating the Palestinian resistance and toppling the legitimate Hamas government.
This time the axis of Arab leaders made a compromise with the lives of a nation of Arab Sunnis.
The Palestinian resistance, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, were the main impediments to the Arab peace initiative and thus an Arab-Israeli deal was made to eliminate this hurdle. However, contrary to the predictions of the axis of evil, which believed that Hamas would be destroyed in 10 days, the Zionist regime’s war machine started wearing down as the Palestinians became more united and their amazing resistance increased.
A glance at recent history makes it clear that the architects of the Zionist lobby created a new Palestinian structure made up of the Palestinian parliament and Palestinian Authority and included certain figures in the structure by deceiving Yasser Arafat, and then killed him in France. Then they selected Mahmoud Abbas to be the Palestinian Authority chief so that the so-called moderate figures could take the helm.
However, during the same period of time, despite the wishes of the “axis of evil”, the people of Palestine elected Hamas as their government, dealing a serious blow to the architects of this scenario.
Opposition to Hamas began during its first days in power in Palestine. Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah imposed bloody civil wars on the legal government, blocked arms, food, and medicine deliveries to the Gaza Strip, and finally imposed the current full-scale war on the territory.
More tragically, the treacherous government of Egypt closed the Rafah border crossing, despite having made an agreement with Hamas not to do so. And for quite a long time, Egypt has not allowed Ismail Haniya, the legitimate prime minister of Palestine, to leave Gaza.
This treachery has gone so far that the foreign minister of Israel and the U.S. secretary of state signed an agreement in Washington on Friday which gives control of Egypt’s border with Gaza to Israel and the United States.
Numerous meetings, such as the Annapolis and Sharm el-Sheikh conferences, were all planned in line with this plot, and at the recent (interfaith) conference in New York, the plotting became evident when the king of Saudi Arabia, along with Egypt, lent support to Israel.
In addition to its collusion with Israel and the U.S., Egypt has always tried to sow discord between nine different Palestinian resistance groups. However, the resistance forces, especially Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which are two important wings of the resistance, did not fall into this trap.
It should be noted that Israel’s military might is greater than it was in 1967. It has even become stronger since the 2006 war with Lebanon. After the 33-day war, the U.S. and certain Arab countries held military consultations with Israel. The humiliating military and intelligence defeat of the Israeli army in the 2006 war forced Tel Aviv to make efforts to boost the sagging morale of its soldiers, upgrade its military equipment, and improve its strategy.
In the last two years, there was a major reshuffle of the leadership of the Israeli military command and Israel held many maneuvers with the help of U.S. generals in preparation for the attacks on Gaza. A flood of new weapons also started flowing from the United States to Israel.
The Gaza war was a real battle between a fully prepared army armed to the teeth and a defenseless nation. In the first day about 100 jet fighters dropped 160 tons of bombs on the residents of 100 square kilometers of Gaza. So far, Israeli warplanes have conducted 30,000 sorties over the small enclave of Gaza and dropped white phosphorus bombs on its citizens. Israeli commanders and cabinet ministers also came to see the scenes to proclaim victory.
However, the situation soon changed.
First of all, the Israeli strategy was to drop bombs from the air and shell from warships in the west and tanks from the eastern Gaza Strip because they did not dare to fight directly. This is the reason why 95 percent of the people killed in Gaza have been civilians, and the number of resistance forces, including Hamas fighters, who have been martyred in the war has not exceeded 60, which is less than the number of Israeli troops killed.
Secondly, while Israeli officials thought the rockets fired by Hamas would not go beyond 15 kilometers, they are now landing 50 kilometers inside Israel, and, moreover, sensitive regions such as the Dimona nuclear plant are not safe.
Thirdly, Israel is afraid to engage in street-to-street combat and thus a face-saving plan has been drawn up to abort the third phase of the attack, which has caused a rift in the Israeli cabinet.
The attack on Gaza produced no military or political achievements for Israel. Instead it cost the Zionist regime dearly and put its legitimacy into question throughout the world. This is actually the beginning of the realization of the statement by David Ben-Gurion, who once said that Israel would begin collapsing after the first defeat.
The achievements of the Gaza conflict
1. The legitimacy and effectiveness of the resistance have been proven. It has also been proven that the Muslim world was right to oppose the degrading compromise proposals, such as those made at the Annapolis conference in 2007.
Syrian President Bashar al-Asad’s comments last week on the futility of the Arab peace plans signify the demise of compromises with Israel.
2. The resistance front has expanded beyond the Muslim world. Hezbollah and Palestinian resistance groups were once regarded as the only fronts against Israel, but now the resistance is an international ideal.
The Islamic Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Istanbul, the Arab League emergency meeting on Gaza in Doha, and the anti-Israeli remarks of many Muslim officials such as Bashar Al-Asad, Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan show that the resistance front has expanded.
3. The fruitfulness of resistance has encouraged the leaders of Arab and Muslim countries to adopt a decidedly firm stance.
Arab leaders can no longer speak of being proud to be Arab and being supporters of Palestine while cutting covert deals with the Zionist regime.
The Qatari emir’s harsh criticism of Egyptian and Saudi officials and his insistence that Hamas is the true representative of the Palestinian nation has isolated those who advocate compromising with Israel.
The Palestinian resistance front’s perseverance has unified the Muslim world against the existence of the Zionist regime and it has created a movement that the Arab leaders will not dare to ignore for decades.
4. The criminal acts committed by the Zionist regime against the defenseless people of the Gaza Strip were so horrific that they not only revealed the anti-Islamic nature of Israel but also showed its anti-human nature.
The unprecedented international outrage was the result of the revelation of Israel’s nature.
Today, after perpetrating numerous crimes against the Gazan people, Israel is recognized as an anti-human regime throughout the world.
The level of the world’s hatred was not as great after Israel’s 33-day war against Lebanon. Israeli officials consciously made the decision to dive into the quagmire of Gaza to divert attention from the humiliation of the war against Lebanon.
Now Israel’s humiliation has gone so far that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said that Israel has perpetrated crimes in Gaza and Hamas has won.
5. The resistance in Gaza has made defending the oppressed a universal value in contrast to Israel’s false claims about the Jews’ oppression during the Holocaust. And with the revelation of the Zionist regime’s genocide in Gaza, now their crimes have been documented by hundreds of the world’s media outlets.
Israel and its supporters have been humiliated in the eyes of the world and independent media outlets’ coverage of the Gaza conflict has revealed the censorship of the realities by the U.S. and Israel media.
The rare demonstrations staged in the United States against media outlets affiliated to the Zionists and the protests against censorship of war coverage in Israel have shown the world what kind of freedom of speech the U.S. advocates.
6. The Palestinian resistance has promoted the value of cutting off relations with the Zionist regime beyond the Muslim world, as Venezuela and Bolivia were the fist countries to break diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv. Soon afterwards, Qatar and Mauritania also break off diplomatic relations with Israel and other Muslim countries will certainly follow suit.
7. The blockade of Gaza must be lifted to end the genocide. This siege must be ended at any cost, so Egypt is at a historic crossroad and should either choose Palestine or Israel. The officials in Riyadh and Cairo cannot eat their cake and have it too.
The arms ban on Hamas must be lifted because when Israeli war criminals are free to do anything they want, the legitimate government of Palestine is entitled to the right to defend itself.
8. Finally, the Gaza war proved to Muslim nations that the Islamic Republic of Iran is more loyal to the unity of the Islamic world than many Arabs claim.