The Yom Kippur War of 1973, which I covered, was the last war between the Arab states and Israel. Six years after the Six Day War, the consequences are still present, including the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. All subsequent conflicts have been fought between Palestinian guerilla groups, such as Hamas, or Lebanese, such as Hizbullah, and the Jewish State.
Therefore, they have been very unbalanced wars, wars of the Kalashnikov – called the weapon of the poor at the beginning of the seventies – against the IDF army, in which these armed groups were able to resist until the end.
A military defeat that, sometimes, with rhetorical skill, they transformed into a political victory, or even a divine victory. Thus, for example, the Israeli occupation of the Muslim area of Beirut in 1982 allowed Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO, to leave the port of the Lebanese capital with the honors of a head of state and go into exile in Tunisia Years later, Sheikh Nasrallah, after the defeat of Hizbullah, emphatically proclaimed the divine victory over the ruins of Lebanese Shiite neighborhoods and villages.
The war declared by Hamas takes place on a different level. It is not a matter of launching rockets at the Israeli population, but of a military invasion. Their previous frequent attacks, which almost always took place in the summer, were at no time a penetration into Israel. And they ended with a fragile cessation of hostilities, often facilitated by Egypt, which borders southern Gaza. And so until next summer...
Hamas was making its political goals prevail and everyone had realized that its military adventure was by no means over.
Now war has been bluntly declared from day one, which has unleashed monstrous speculation. The Middle East has always been very conducive to all kinds of outrageous international speculation. That's why I never get tired of repeating that "those who want to understand it, it's because they explained it badly".
The Gaza war has acquired great international importance because it pits the Jewish state against the divided and damaged Palestinian resistance, and involves regional forces such as Saudi Arabia or the Islamic Republic of Iran, in addition to the United States and Europe .
The gaze has quickly turned to Russia, to the bogged down war in Ukraine. According to some commentators, the Kremlin could take advantage of this situation by taking advantage of the confusion, the fatigue of public opinion due to the war between its army and the soldiers of Ukraine. It is more obvious that without Iranian help it is impossible to undertake this military contest.
A part of the Arab rulers, at least the Gulf princes or the king of Morocco, under the cover of the Abraham accords promoted by the Trump administration, began the difficult path of undertaking trade negotiations with Israel taking into account the temperament of their populations.
Many millions of inhabitants of the Middle East, tired and frustrated by the eternal war conflict with Israel, aspire to establish friendly relations with their Jewish neighbors. It is clear that this slow process causes hostile reactions on the part of Iran, Syria and the Palestinian and Lebanese radical organizations, which have never accepted Yasser Arafat's discredited Oslo Accords with the Jewish State.
Now Hamas is again using its civilian population as an instrument of its policy. The discredited President Mahmud Abbas, Yasser Arafat's successor in the government of Ramallah, is once again trapped in this vicious circle in Gaza. The many Israeli and foreign hostages held by Hamas are a valuable bargaining chip.
