Operation Revenge of the Free People deepens the wounds of the Israeli deterrence force and undermines one of the conditions for preserving survival

The Israeli occupation army launched a wide and complex military campaign dubbed "Shield and Arrow" on the Gaza Strip at dawn last Tuesday, corresponding to the ninth of May, by launching a surprise strike by a large squadron of warplanes targeting three residential houses in which three of the military leaders of the wing were present. The military movement of the Islamic Jihad Movement (Al-Quds Brigades), which resulted in the promotion of the three leaders and a large number of their family members, especially children and women.

After strenuous and arduous negotiations conducted by the Egyptian mediator, graciously, to reach a cease-fire agreement between Israel on the one hand, and the Islamic Jihad movement, which took the lead in the scene from A to Z, it was announced on Saturday, corresponding to May 13, that the two parties had agreed to a written formula for a cease-fire that would enter into force starting from the hour The tenth of Saturday night, and the formula that was leaked to the media showed Israel's acquiescence to the Palestinian condition by refraining from carrying out assassinations against Palestinian individuals, which shows Israel's retreat and breaking its arrogance, as the Palestinian negotiator considered it a red line, and no formula for a ceasefire can be reached without Israel's approval and commitment to it. , while the latter considered it a red line that cannot be negotiated.

Israel had announced through its spokesmen, government and army, and had informed some mediators that the Islamic Jihad movement was the only target of the operation for its responsibility for firing rockets into Israel following the death of the prisoner Khader Adnan on Wednesday, 3/5/2023 in his cell in a prison. Al-Ramla after 87 days of his hunger strike to protest his arbitrary detention.

In the media debate that accompanied the operation, many Israeli politicians, soldiers, media professionals, and experts in Israeli national security explained, within their propaganda campaign that is usually part of the military operation, that the aim of the operation is to restore the deterrence force that has been eroding not long ago, and to stop the situation The continuous destruction in Israeli society, as stated specifically by (Amos Yadlin), the former head of the Military Intelligence Division (Aman) and the former head of the Israel Institute for National Security Studies, on Friday, corresponding to May 12, and the separation of the fronts or arenas and the prevention of their unification, as specifically stated by the head of Former Military Intelligence Directorate, and current Managing Director of the Israel Institute for National Security Studies (Tamir Hayman) on Tuesday, May 9.

In its willingness to prevent the Islamic Jihad from inflicting losses on the army and settlers in its expected sure response to this assassination, Israel emptied the settlements in what is known as the Gaza envelope of residents, stopped traffic on the roads in the region, suspended studies and opened public shelters in many Israeli cities. Then the trains were stopped and the boarding and landing of civil aviation from Ben Gurion Airport was diverted to other airports in the north and south of the country.

For its part, the joint room of the resistance factions in Gaza began its missile response to Israeli cities and settlements 36 hours after the massacre was carried out within an operation it called “Revenge of the Free”, which did not stop the Israeli army only on a man and a half, as the Secretary-General of Hezbollah once said. Rather, the entire Israeli society stopped by a man and a text, as this delay in the response, which is considered a precedent in the history of the Palestinian responses to the repeated Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since 2008, increased the Israeli confusion because of the deception, surprise and change in military tactics it entailed.

Despite the Israeli success in assassinating more senior military leaders in the Al-Quds Brigades, which must be carefully examined by the Brigades and all the resistance factions in Gaza in order to address its causes, the Palestinian resistance, led by the Joint Room, over the course of the five days of confrontation rained down large areas of Israel with hundreds of Rockets that carry huge explosive heads, which resulted in deaths and injuries among the Israelis, in addition to causing great damage to many buildings and facilities, especially in the cities of the depth, and they also rained down hundreds of mortar shells on military sites in the areas adjacent to the Gaza Strip. Video clips showed that it attacked army patrols and vehicles with Kornet anti-tank missiles.

Now that the cease-fire has been announced, has Israel achieved its stated goals? Has corroded deterrence restored? Did it stop the growing destruction in Israeli society? Did it stop the unity of the arenas, and did it create a rift between Islamic Jihad and Hamas? Is the jihad movement isolated from Palestinian society?

In its attempt to restore deterrence, deterrence as a comfoam means bringing the other side to a state where it loses its ability not to respond to the first strike it receives, or even to think about a response, and in this regard, the retired general of the Israeli army and principal researcher at the Israel Institute for National Security Studies (Asaf Orion) said On the evening of Tuesday, May 9, during a podcast meeting with another group of principal researchers at the institute, Israel has three options to restore deterrence. It is excluded because Israel is not ready for it now, and the second option is to strike Hamas because it is the party that has sovereignty over Gaza, and this is an unlikely option and threatens to expand the confrontation, which does not serve the interest of Israel, and the third option is to strike the Islamic Jihad because it is the weakest party among these three parties, in addition to being the responsible party Directly about the firing of missiles at Israel a week before the start of the military operation.

At this point, I argue that the mere resorting of Israel to this trade-off to restore eroding deterrence means that the deterrence force, which is considered the main pillar on which national security is based, has reached an inability to be addressed by conventional means, first because of the lack of asymmetry in power between Israel, the nuclear superpower, and a faction. A small Palestinian, and secondly, because this faction, despite its small size compared to the State of Israel, had the upper hand in the last confrontation and that its leadership was not deterred and took the initiative to respond after absorbing the first strike, and thirdly, in addition to the great destructive power of the missiles that were used, it put Iron Dome out of service and reduced its success to 20%.

In its attempt to invest the process in stopping the continuous destruction of Israeli society, I argue in this article that the result is the opposite, as protest demonstrations will return to the streets starting next week, and the government coalition will witness new tensions over Israel's submission to Palestinian conditions, and we will witness a lot of attack and censure against the government and Netanyahu personally. on the pages of local newspapers and through social media, especially since instead of the process increasing the level of security among citizens in Israel, it increased the level of anxiety and fear and confirmed that the upcoming confrontation (which we pray to God not to happen, and that the Zionist leadership and its partners from the West acknowledge failure their colonial project in Palestine), in which the rate of destruction and killing will be much higher than in the current round.

As for its attempt to disperse the arenas, prevent its unity, and isolate the Islamic Jihad movement from its incubating environment, it should be noted here that since the announcement of its establishment in 1948, the first founders of the state understood that it was the building of Israel’s geographical area, the extension of its borders, its lack of geographical depth, and the small number of its population compared to the number of its Palestinian and Arab enemies. Due to its limited natural resources compared to its security needs, the most important condition for preserving existence is to prevent the Arabs from uniting in a single military force, and also preventing them from waging a war on multiple fronts simultaneously, but also preventing them from initiating a coordinated war of attrition on more than one front.

It is true that Israel succeeded in dispersing the Arabs, especially in neighboring countries (Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon) from uniting in a single military force since its establishment until the beginning of the new millennium through many means, most notably diplomatic means. However, since the emergence of the concept of unity of arenas, Israel has been trying to prevent this concept from becoming Indeed, declaring that it is targeting Jihad in its recent aggression against Gaza and not targeting Hamas is an attempt to re-activate the condition of preserving presence, which failed by managing the operation (Revenge of the Free) through the common room that included everyone, even if it seemed that Islamic Jihad had topped the scene. alone.