Assassinations are part of America's plan to change the "landscape" of war

By Walid Shaqir

Since US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan's recent visit to Israel in the middle of last month, it has become clear that Washington's insistence on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant to move to a new phase of the war on Gaza, one that reduces the killing of civilians, includes continuing what the president had previously done. The Israeli ministers announced that the Mossad had been assigned to assassinate Hamas leaders and hunt them down wherever they were.

Sullivan himself said during his press conference in Tel Aviv, where the talks dealt with reducing the intensity of combat operations, that “Israel will continue to pursue Sinwar and Deif.” That is, the assassinations are part of American coverage of the “different” approach that Washington wants to continue the war.

Targeting Al-Arouri means that Israel was able to achieve the easiest target in the southern suburb of Beirut, where the operation indicated a kind of disdain by Hamas and even the party for Israeli intentions.

America and the decision to assassinate

That Israel chose to assassinate the Deputy Head of the Hamas Political Bureau, Saleh Al-Arouri, is because it has been unable so far to reach Yahya Al-Sinwar, Muhammad Al-Deif, and Marwan Issa... who are still in Gaza. This is one of the failures in achieving the declared goals of the invasion of the Gaza Strip, including eliminating Hamas and recovering its Israeli hostages.

In this sense, targeting Al-Arouri means that Israel was able to achieve the easiest target in the southern suburb of Beirut, where the operation indicated a kind of underestimation by Hamas and even the party of Israeli intentions. It did not take precautions of concealment or maneuvering in its movement, to avoid security breaches as much as possible.

Some attribute the underestimation of Israeli intentions and American support for them, not only with regard to assassinations, but also with regard to other confrontation plans with the Palestinians, and in the relationship with the axis of resistance led by Iran, to a number of factors, including:

1- Changing the method of war to accommodate public opinion

- The assassinations are part of a plan to change the method of fighting with the aim of absorbing the escalation of resentment among public opinion in Western countries over the method of genocide and forced displacement practiced by the Netanyahu government with its religious extremist allies, by reducing systematic indiscriminate bombing. One of the politicians observing Washington's efforts to convince Netanyahu of this commented that the intention is for hundreds to be killed within a few weeks instead of thousands as long as the war lasts long and without a ceasefire, and prolonging it allows achieving the goal of killing the largest number of Palestinians.

- While the conclusion is correct that Israel suffered a major defeat as a result of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, which made the Israelis feel an existential threat to the entity, which is proven by the madness of the Israeli retaliatory reaction, relying on the euphoria of Hamas’ success on October 7 over the unprecedented threat is valid. The internal security of the Hebrew state does not obscure the fact that Hamas’ achievement, in return, awakened the feeling of the desire for brutal revenge among the Israeli leaders, to the point where they consider that they are fighting a war of “second independence.”

2- The West’s exits are to save Israel, not the Palestinians

- Concluding that the repercussions of failure to achieve the goals of the war will bring about a change within Israeli society and will show more weakness in it with the rise in counter-migration, does not mean ignoring what it has achieved in terms of the growth of extremism. The latest opinion poll a few days ago reported that two-thirds of Israelis support the continuation of the war, despite the significant decline in the Israeli public’s acceptance of Netanyahu and his performance.

In this situation, Netanyahu seeks to adapt internal public opinion to his goal of waging the long war, all the way to changing the name of the war from “Iron Swords” to “Genesis.” The goal is to give it a religious character to convince the public that it will only end with victory over the opponent, and that Israel needs his continued presence at the head of the government to obtain this victory. Moving the war to this sacred level contributes, according to the logic of Netanyahu and his biblical companions, to convincing the Israelis of the high prices they are paying, the most important of which is the unprecedented rise in the number of army deaths.

That Israel chose to assassinate the Deputy Head of the Hamas Political Bureau, Saleh Al-Arouri, is because it has been unable so far to reach Yahya Al-Sinwar, Muhammad Al-Deif, and Marwan Issa... who are still in Gaza.

3- The West does not really want a two-state solution

- The difficulties that Israel is going through economically, politically and regionally, in terms of its health, do not mean ignoring the depth of Western countries’ solidarity with the Hebrew state, ignoring the accumulation of Palestinian oppression since the founding of Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people, as a reason for the “Al-Aqsa Flood.” The changes in the language of some Western countries, especially America, regarding the two-state solution and the rights of the Palestinian people, and protesting genocide, are aimed at finding a way out for Israel from the impasse it has fallen into as a result of the “apartheid” approach adopted by its rulers over decades, and not Its goal is to find a solution to the Palestinian issue. What the Western countries and the United States oppose in terms of Israeli practices in the war are being reversed on the ground. It is expected that the situation will continue in this manner until God decrees something that was already in effect.

Canadian and Australian visas for Palestinian immigration

The way the United States is conducting the war on Gaza is no mystery about what it will lead to. The only constant until further notice is that it will continue in various forms to achieve its implicit goals that are more important than the declared ones:

- Displacing the largest possible number of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

- Establishing a security belt inside Gaza to protect the settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip. This requires a lot of time, months if not more.

Achieving the previous goal begins with pushing them militarily to flee, and forcing countries, the first of which is Egypt, to receive them. While countries such as Canada and Australia have begun granting them entry visas very quickly in recent weeks.

The administration of President Joe Biden has a few weeks and less than two months to accommodate the continuation of the war with his election campaign, which begins next month with a significant decline in his popularity compared to his supposed rival, Donald Trump. He needs the support of the Zionist lobby in his party first, and at the American level second. This is what Netanyahu realizes, from whom he extracted approval to continue his military campaign with a lower intensity. Biden, in return, needs to reduce Israel's atrocities, ensure that it does not expand the war during his election campaign, and continue negotiating with Iran so that it maintains its abstention from opening fronts.

Unity of Arenas and unity of  replies

The above leads to a review of many accounts in the understanding of Hamas’s allies in the resistance camp, led by Iran, in dealing with the United States and its relationship with Israel. Netanyahu:

1- Some members of the resistance forces considered that Israel was deterred from expanding the war because Washington was restraining it. While the assassination of Al-Arouri proves that this assumption is wrong. In fact, Israel is the only one that wants war.

2- One of the explanations that Israel is not deterred from expanding the war is that Iran is deterred from engaging in that war, and with it Hezbollah. This was confirmed after the assassination of Al-Arouri, according to American data that followed the assassination, whether from Syria, Tehran, or the party.

3- The opposition forces read Washington’s withdrawal of the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford from the Mediterranean Sea as putting pressure on Netanyahu not to expand the war.

Whether this is a message to Israel or not, the responses that Washington implemented this week against the targeting of its forces in Iraq and Syria, and the ultimatum that the international coalition it leads issued to the Houthis about violating freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, in addition to Israel’s assassination of Al-Arouri in Lebanon, suggest that it is meeting... The "unity of the arenas" that Tehran sponsors by moving the fronts under the roof of negotiation, by distributing deterrent actions in these arenas between itself and Israel. Despite the issuance of a statement claiming responsibility for the bombings in the Iranian city of Kerman the day before yesterday, observers do not rule out that they occurred as part of these responses.