Alwaght- As the Israeli security is growing shaky and even moving to collapse as many experts warn amid signs that the Israeli regime will sink in home and foreign security crises in the near future, on Sunday Tel Aviv started its Blue Flag air force training, a multinational large-scale aerial drill.
The US, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, India, and Greece sent teams to the bi-annual wargame that will continue until October 29.
This is the first time Britain sends a squadron of its fighter jets to the occupied Palestinian territories along with India with its Mirages and France with Rafales.
During the two-week exercise, the participating air forces will practice air-to-air and air-to-ground combat, advanced surface-to-air missile firing, and various operational scenarios in a war against simulated enemy forces.
The main purpose of the exercise is to strengthen international strategic cooperation, conduct joint tactical flights against a variety of threats using advanced technology, and conduct multinational missions in a variety of complex operational scenarios to gain a better understanding of the use of fourth and fifth-generation aircraft.
“We are living in a very complicated region, and the threats to the State of Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran are only increasing," said Major General Amikam Norkin, the commander of the Israeli Air Force (IAF).
Message of the largest drills in the time of normalization
As Tel Aviv leaders seek to demonstrate their strength in carrying out the largest aerial exercise, the timing of the drill and the countries participating contain important points that could reveal the degree of Tel Aviv's security weakness.
Military exercises are held to prepare forces and test combat equipment for the real-life war conditions, and basically military exercises have the logic of deterrence and elimination of threats. It is important to note that the current drill comes at a time when Tel Aviv and some of the reactionary Arab regimes have begun to normalize relations and formally end the hostility, while providing security cooperation and forming a regional coalition in opposition the Iran-led Axis of Resistance based on interests have been the most important aim of the US-sponsored normalization project in the region.
Here is a question: Why is Tel Aviv and its Western allies holding the largest air force wargames while one of the effects of the normalization should be Israeli de-isolation and security improvement?
Let’s answer with sharing a fact: Governments inevitably seek security in alliance with trans-regional actors when they are unable to participate at the level of security cooperation mechanisms and cooperate with regional sides. Observing the countries participating in the Israeli military exercise, one can easily figure out that the thaw with some Arab states, contrary to the claims of the media and Western and Israeli officials, has actually done nothing to improve the Israeli security position in the region.
The issue of security in the Israeli society has always been the most important political concern due to the fully tense history of the regime with various regional states, as well as the sociological and psychological issues related to the Zionist reading of history of the Jewish people and the propaganda surrounding the anti-Semitism. A strong tendency for constant uplift of the armed forces’ capabilities stems from a belief of the significant place of the army institution in saving the citizens’ confidence in survival of a regime founded at the expense of Palestine and its people.
Now that the Israeli army's widespread large-scale defeats from the resistance groups in Lebanon and Gaza over the past two decades have significantly reduced public confidence in the army's claim of invincibility, the normalization of relations with some Arab states came to provide the Israeli public opinion with assurance and optimism about the future. However, the air force exercise proved once again that the Israeli leaders have not achieved the expected results of normalization, and continue to see the strengthening of military forces, especially the air force, as a social assurance booster.
Disproportionate response to threat of collapse from within
Another significance of the air force drills and their goals is the Israeli leaders’ efforts to highlight the foreign threats to the Israeli security by pointing to the Resistance bloc, an alliance of Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, as the main source of threats.
This effort seeks to effectively shift the attention from major and growing internal threats to external threats. This is done, firstly, to cover up internal security crises and link them to external sources, and secondly, to make it possible to counter foreign threats by gaining the support of Western countries.
This is while over the past decades a network of Western allies has spared no covert and overt economic, political, and military aids to Tel Aviv but failed to prevent humiliating defeats of the Israeli military in confrontation of the Hamas and Hezbollah movements in Gaza and Lebanon. And in the future rise of new generation of supporters to the resistance to the Israeli occupation and hostilities in the heart of the Israeli cities and West bank would drag the Israeli security fragility to new heights.
