|
Trending Topics
|
Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-838993
Israel Declares Victory in Region-Shaping Conflict
(Jerusalem Post) Amotz Asa-El - On its first day, Hamas's motorcycles, pickup trucks, and hang gliders successfully crossed the border, and their 6,000 riders did a lot of killing and pillaging, but it took hardly 48 hours to kill, wound, capture, and chase away the entire invading force, to the last man. The Gazan fighter, once in combat, proved militarily undertrained and logistically naked. To accomplish the deeper invasion Hamas had in mind, it had to supply its troops with food, gas, and ammunition. Hamas's assumption that Hizbullah would invade the Galilee was dashed, and Hamas failed to predict that Hizbullah would be floored: its leadership annihilated, its troops decimated, its hardware incinerated, and its outposts razed. Moreover, Hamas's overarching assumptions, that the IDF would not dare enter Gaza's dense urbanity, and that Israelis had lost the will to fight, proved unfounded. Gaza was invaded big time; Israel's soldiers fought tooth and nail; Hamas's troops were killed by the thousands; and Gaza's houses, roads, plazas, and pavements became piles of rubble, cement, and dust. Yes, Hamas's offensive will be counted among military history's most successful surprise attacks. However, its planners will be counted alongside Hitler's when he stormed Stalingrad and Japan's when it bombarded Pearl Harbor. They had no idea what they were provoking. In addition, Hamas's attack triggered Iran's attacks on Israel, which resulted in Israel's counterattacks, which exposed Iran's military weakness. Lastly, Hizbullah's defeat made the Syrian rebels decide that the time for their assault on Damascus had arrived, leading to the downfall of the Syrian regime and its army's demolition by the IDF. The chain reaction now leaves Hamas all alone. The war since October '23 has ended in Israeli victory, because Hamas lost its Iranian roof, its Lebanese backyard, its Syrian flank, and its geopolitical umbrella, after Russia's loss of its Syrian fort. The writer is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.