Hochstein and Blinken's visits... unnecessary

After the battle of October 7, 2023, visits by Hochstein, the US envoy to Lebanon, and Blinken, the US Secretary of State, intensified.

These visits come within the framework of the American endeavor to test the pulse under fire, the aim of which is to meet the Israeli conditions for a ceasefire on the Palestinian and Lebanese fronts, and to achieve what Israel failed to achieve through fire and aggression, through political pressures, and employing official Palestinian, Lebanese and Arab pressure forces, in addition to America and Western European countries to achieve these goals. Perhaps Hochstein’s last tour of Lebanon, which came in the shadow of an unprecedented Israeli military escalation with widespread targeting of civilian and health infrastructures and institutions and shelters, indicates that Hochstein wanted this tour to be negotiations under fire, in order to achieve security and political achievements for Israel, at the expense of Lebanese sovereignty, reaching the point of imposing guardianship over Lebanon. The source of Hochstein’s maliciousness, who is Jewish in origin and affiliation, in this is that Resolution 1701 is no longer sufficient, as the situation after this resolution is deteriorating, and therefore there is a need for there to be executive mechanisms, explanations, details and American-Lebanese and American-Israeli guarantees that enable the situation not to escalate, and this means blowing up For Resolution 1701, so that Israel can pass its demands and conditions as part of these guarantees, and what Hochstein wants, who came on his tour in the belief that the resistance had been defeated, broken and retreated after the assassination of its military and security leaders, all the way to its Secretary-General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and his deputy, Sayyed Hashem Safieddine. Therefore, he came to say that the amendments to the resolution should include giving broader and more comprehensive powers to the international emergency forces "UNIFIL", so that its mission becomes deterrent and inspection, and it has the right to inspect any site it suspects without permission from the Lebanese government or coordination with the Lebanese army, with the withdrawal of Hezbollah forces to the north of the Litani, and the reformulation of the Lebanese political and security system, and the formation of an authority and the election of a president, through the American-Israeli team in Lebanon, and giving Israel the freedom to violate Lebanese airspace, and disarming Hezbollah, as well as for the international emergency forces to be deployed on the Lebanese-Syrian border, and to monitor Lebanon's ports, under the pretext of preventing the smuggling of weapons to Hezbollah and the resistance, not to mention the withdrawal of the "Radwan" forces affiliated with the party to beyond the Litani.

The resistance said that the field has the final say, and that the side related to diplomatic and political issues is handled by the veteran leader Nabih Berri, who clearly told Hochstein that the priority is to cease fire, and then UN Resolution 1701 will be discussed. Lebanon, as a state, government, resistance and people, will not accept any amendments to Resolution 1701, despite the presence of discordant voices in agreement with the American-Israeli proposal, and that Hochstein must go to Netanyahu to come with a clear commitment to this resolution and its implementation, as Israel has violated this resolution in many of its aspects and has not adhered to it. In contrast, Blinken, during his visit to Israel and his meetings with its leaders, which were preceded by Israel escalating its war of genocide, cleansing, siege, starvation and preventing the entry of medicine and fuel into the northern Gaza Strip, wanted to explore the possibility of a temporary truce and exploiting the martyrdom of Sinwar in order to conclude a prisoner exchange deal, even if partial, while discussing the day after the war on the Gaza Strip who will run the Strip as an alternative to Hamas and the resistance.

It is clear that the assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders did not lead to their collapse, or to their loss of direction, or the disintegration of the command, control, communication and coordination system. Rather, we witnessed in both movements a speed in restoring their internal and organizational situations, and regaining the initiative, despite the heavy losses incurred by the ascension of these leaders, and the moral and emotional effects it had on the resistance’s audience and environment, such that what we are witnessing is the failure of the Israeli ground attack, and what the resistance is showing of ground superiority and unprecedented heroism, embodied in the fighter Ibrahim Haidar, who continued to resist with all calm and steadfastness and directed his weapon at the occupation soldiers and tanks, only to be martyred later when the house he was in was bombed by a warplane.

The resistance on the ground front is confronting any Israeli attempts to breach the border, and sometimes allowing Israeli forces to penetrate and then attack them with guided missiles and shells, or engage from point zero. The total Israeli losses on the five combat axes, according to what was issued on Wednesday by the joint resistance operations room during the 33 days of the ground war, amounted to the killing of 70 soldiers and officers and the wounding of 600 others, and the destruction of 28 tanks, 4 heavy bulldozers, an armored vehicle, and an armored personnel carrier. This does not include Israeli losses in bases, barracks, and settlements along the front.

Moreover, we found that the resistance was able to achieve a balance of fire, as it launches its various types of short, medium and long-range missiles, continuously and continuously, including Tel Aviv, Haifa, the occupied Golan Heights, the upper and lower Galilee, reaching Tiberias and Acre, as well as its swarms of suicide drones that penetrate all layers and systems of interception and air defense, and even reach Prime Minister Netanyahu’s bedroom, not to mention targeting the “Binyamina” base southeast of Haifa, in which 4 soldiers were killed and 67 others were wounded. Let us not forget the bombing of the “Satilla Maris” naval base with strategic Nasr 2 missiles in northwest Haifa, and the “8200” Galileo intelligence base in eastern Haifa, as well as the bombing of the Gush Dan area with long-range missiles.

Meanwhile, on the Gaza Strip front, specifically in the northern Gaza Strip front, to which the occupation army returned for the third time, each time claiming that it had eliminated the military and armament capabilities of the resistance, we find that the resistance quickly returns to those areas, and restores its military, armament and organisational situation, and records unprecedented heroism in confronting the occupation army and its forces, engaging with it from point zero, setting up ambushes and explosive devices for the houses in which the occupation army is fortified, not to mention targeting its soldiers and tanks with “Yassin 105”, “Tandem”, “Rajum” and “Shawaz” shells, and being able to kill the highest-ranking Israeli military officer, the commander of the 401st Brigade, and injure a number of his assistants.

It is clear that Israel's predicament is deepening in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, and the war is heading towards a long-term war of attrition that the occupation army cannot bear, as it is not accustomed to such wars, and did not build its strategy and military doctrine on that. Therefore, we find the owner of the idea of the generals' plan to control the northern Gaza Strip, former head of the National Security Council Giora Eiland, calling for a halt to the war and withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, because it will not achieve the goals even after six months or a year, but rather will drown the occupation army in a long war of attrition, while military analyst Amos Harel in the Israeli newspaper "Maariv" says that Hezbollah has succeeded in disrupting public life in the north, and imposing a routine of entering shelters in the center.

Therefore, the tours of Hochstein and Blinken will only reap miserable failure, as both of them start from the defeat of Hezbollah and Hamas, which are required to be crushed, eliminated, and conditions of surrender imposed on them, which will enable Israel to provide security in the strategic term, and guarantee its hegemony and control over the region, as an advanced base for American and Western interests in the region. The reality on the ground says that they have regained the initiative and deterrence equations, and will not enable Israel to achieve its goals, but rather deepen Israel’s weakness and strategic failure. In contrast, Netanyahu and his government are not enthusiastic about what the visitors bring, and are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the team and envoys of the new American administration. The Palestinians do not trust America and its envoys, and do not expect anything useful from it. Therefore, the tours of Hochstein and Blinken become unnecessary, and they come at wasted time.