Afrasianet - Hassan Nafaa - The road for Netanyahu to achieve "absolute victory" is still long, and it is likely that his government will disintegrate and he will go to prison before he can achieve this goal!
In a speech last Saturday (19/4/2025), Netanyahu attacked anyone who demanded a deal to take back prisoners held by Hamas at once, even at the price of stopping the war and a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
He based his attack on his conviction that responding to these demands is in favor of Hamas, and helps it achieve all the goals it sought after launching Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, and thus enables it not only to reassert its control over the Gaza Strip, but also to rebuild it in a way that allows it to repeat what happened on 7/10/2023 and put Israel under constant threat.
Netanyahu not only intended to scare the Israeli public of the consequences of opposing his approach to managing the war he has been waging on the Gaza Strip for more than a year and a half, but he also wanted to convince him that the entity's "army" is still capable of achieving "absolute victory," a vague concept likely intended to achieve the goals of his current government's political program by force of arms, which explains why he called up additional numbers of reserve forces, in a new indication that he is ready to go to the limit. It is made available by the Israeli war machine, even if it is forced to order the entire Gaza Strip to be invaded and reoccupied again.
To discuss the credibility of the arguments contained in Netanyahu's speech, it may be useful here to remind the reader of the importance of distinguishing between three things: the declared goals of the current war, which Netanyahu claims would not have happened without the "Al-Aqsa flood", and the real goals of this war, for which he believes that the "Al-Aqsa flood" provided all the pretexts and justifications that legitimize it, and the achievements he was able to achieve on the ground, compared to the war's goals, both declared and hidden.
A tight link between these three things requires reminding the reader first and foremost of a basic fact that Netanyahu's current government, the most extreme in Israel's history, came to power in December 2022, a full year before Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, and that its political program included intensifying settlements, annexing the West Bank, and allowing Jews to practice their religious rites in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque, in a move that clearly paves the way for its destruction and the construction of the Third Temple on its ruins.
If Netanyahu's goal in the war he insists on continuing was to recover the hostages, he would have been able to achieve this goal through indirect negotiations with Hamas, where he had two opportunities on this front, the first at the end of November 2023, when a four-day renewable truce was reached, and the second on January 15, when a three-stage agreement was reached, leading at the beginning of its second phase to the cessation of the war and its third phase to the beginning. but he rebuffed them and insisted on resuming the war each time after retrieving a group of hostages.
If Netanyahu's goal was to deprive Hamas of the rule of the Gaza Strip after the fighting stopped, he would have been able to achieve it by accepting the Egyptian reconstruction plan (which turned into an Arab-Islamic plan after its adoption by the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation), which included a proposal to entrust the administration of the Strip to a committee of technocrats operating under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority, but Netanyahu also rejected this plan and raised the slogan "No to Hamas and no to Fathistan." If Netanyahu's goal was to prevent the expansion of The war and its expansion to fronts other than the Palestinian front in the south, to be able to achieve it once it accepted a permanent ceasefire, which he persistently rejected.
Therefore, it can be said with complete certainty that the Netanyahu government has exploited the "Al-Aqsa flood" as a pretext to achieve its political program, which aims to liquidate the Palestinian cause permanently and displace Palestinians not only from the Gaza Strip but also from the West Bank. Because this goal can only be achieved by defeating the axis of resistance as a whole, and not Hamas alone, Netanyahu seemed happy to expand the scope of the war, which explains his insistence on fighting it on all fronts that decided to support Hamas, and his desperate attempts to harass Iran as well, in the hope of He dragged the United States to participate with him in a direct war against it.
A closer examination of what happened in the region after the "Al-Aqsa flood" shows that Netanyahu was able to achieve significant military achievements on various fronts. On the Palestinian front, he was able to completely destroy the Gaza Strip and turn it into an unviable area, after he killed, wounded and disappeared nearly a quarter of a million citizens, and assassinated the most important Palestinian political and military figures, led by Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Deif, not to mention bulldozing dozens of camps in the West Bank and destroying thousands of homes. Hundreds of thousands of them were displaced and arrested.
On the Lebanese front, Netanyahu was able to deal painful blows to Hezbollah and assassinate hundreds of its most important political and military leaders, including its secretary-general himself, forcing the party to accept the ceasefire and its exit from the arena of military support for Gaza, and even the Israeli army was able to maintain fortified points on the border and continue assassinations and violations of the ceasefire agreement without deterrence.
On the Syrian front, he was able to launch strong blows that precipitated the fall of the Bashar regime, which supports the axis of resistance, cut off Hezbollah's military supplies, and even destroyed all the capabilities of the Syrian army and occupied large new areas. On the other fronts, Netanyahu was able to direct military strikes against Ansar Allah in Yemen, and even Iran itself, which Netanyahu considers the "head of the snake" and the leader of the axis of resistance and its backbone.
Therefore, Netanyahu believes that he is close to achieving an "absolute victory" that would allow him to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, displace its people, voluntarily or involuntarily, annex the West Bank or large parts of it, displace its people, voluntarily or involuntarily, dominate southern Lebanon, after disarming Hezbollah, and occupy large areas of Syria, which he believes are easy to dismantle into sectarian states.
However, a closer examination of what happened and his future prospects shows at the same time that Netanyahu's calculations in this regard are not accurate, and that his ambitions are just pipe dreams because he is unable to turn his huge military achievements into political and strategic gains.
The Palestinian front remains legendary, almost miraculously steadfast, and its factions are still capable not only of fighting and inflicting heavy losses on the occupying forces, but also of keeping many prisoners who cannot be recovered alive by force of arms. It is true that Netanyahu is betting that more military pressure, starvation and disruption of livelihoods will bring the Palestinian people to their knees, surrender and disarm the resistance factions, but this has become impossible.
The Palestinian people have nothing to fear to lose after all that has happened to them, and they will therefore continue to hold out to the last child to breathe in the Strip. As military pressure continues, the failure of the Israeli war machine to eliminate Hamas or bring prisoners back alive is exposed, and scenes of Palestinian children starving to death continue in one of the largest scenes of genocide and crimes against humanity in modern history, the dual pressure on Netanyahu's government, both internally and externally, will increase, and will likely end up with its downfall.
I suspect that it will also not be long before Netanyahu discovers that his achievements on other fronts are more fragile than he thinks, and therefore will never enable him to achieve his goal of reshaping the Middle East at will. Netanyahu's bet on the ability of his allies inside Lebanon to press for Hezbollah's disarmament is a deceptive mirage, and therefore he will soon discover that Lebanon will emerge from the current crisis stronger than it was, and not even In the foreseeable future, it is unlikely to turn into a real confrontational state capable of defending its territory and the dignity of its people.
Netanyahu's bet on Syria remaining weak, and therefore on the possibility of its disintegration and submission to the Israeli will, is unattainable, especially since the ability of any political system to withstand depends on its ability to regain the Syrian territory that was occupied before and after the fall of the Bashar regime. Netanyahu's bet on the fall of the Iranian regime, whether by dismantling its nuclear program and forcing it to stop its missile program and retreat on itself or by launching a decisive military strike, are just daydreams that cannot be achieved, especially after Trump decided to enter. in indirect negotiations with Iran to reach a new agreement on its nuclear program.
In other words, Netanyahu's road to "absolute victory" is still long, and his government is likely to disintegrate and he will go to jail before he can achieve that goal, at which point Israeli society will begin to engage in a growing conflict that could lead to civil war.
Netanyahu's "achievements" in this round of armed conflict are not due to the strength of the racist entity he leads, but to the inaction of the Arab official system and the lack of will to confront him, but this will not last long. The continuation of this inaction is against the logic of history!!