Alwaght- Hosting journalists on Saturday, Iranian Andishe Sazan-e Nour Institute for Strategic Studies held a Q&A meeting concerning the Palestinian and Israeli developments. At the conference, the institute’s chair Saadullah Zaree brought in spotlight the Palestinian developments and mentioned some points in this regard.
Commenting on the significance of the Palestinian cause at the beginning of the meeting, Mr Zaree noted that the Palestine cause and Axis of Resistance are essential points for Iran’s position. One of the benchmarks to test the Iranian power against the rivals is the Palestinian cause. If Palestine adopts a compromising approach, it shows that the pro-compromise camp is in a better position, and if Palestine chooses resistance against the Israeli occupation, it shows that the Axis of Resistance and its leading actor Iran is in a higher position.
Mr Zaree, an expert of West Asian affairs, shed light on the internal Palestinian developments from a set of aspects. He said that inside Palestine, the belief in resistance has increased and pursuit of resistance policy is now a top case for the Palestinians, and one reason for this is the success of the Resistance camp in the Palestinian case. Over the past seven decades, the Palestinians have witnessed that the pro-compromise approach yields no fruits. At the same time, they have seen the fruits of resistance that granted a high level of security and even deterrence to them. Although Tel Aviv continues its crimes, the distance between its actions in the past and present has grown so much. The fact that the Israelis do not dare to take actions against the Palestinians is because Axis of Resistance entrenched its power. This is one of the key achievements of resistance in the region.
Another reason, said Mr Zaree, is the defeat of the pro-compromise camp. This camp had everything to say the last word in Palestine. The Westerners, a majority of the Arabs, and even some Palestinian factions supported this approach, and it was slated to succeed and bring about achievements for the Palestinians, but this did not happen, causing disappointment.
The third factor is the Israeli actions that put the Palestinians in a readier position. The extremism shown by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in recent weeks have stirred up this issue.
Mr Zaree, further, described the Israeli regime as struggling in the most critical conditions of its history, adding that in no period of Israeli history, the occupied territories have been hit by such level of internal differences. The government is now facing an array of problems, he continued. The recent comments made by some Israeli officials regarding the expected collapse of this regime from within show the depth of Israelis’ differences. On the other hand, the government, the army, and the security apparatus are in conflict with each other, and the High Court has disqualified an ally of Netanyahu from serving as a minister. Reacting to the ruling, he threatened to leave the Netanyahu-led coalition if he is denied the position by the court. If this party withdraws, the coalition cabinet will lose the majority and next expected step is announcement of early elections.
Israeli Defeat, defeat of the West’s biggest project
In other part of his analysis, Mr Zaree considered defeat of the Israeli regime as the defeat of the West’s biggest project since the WWI, namely the time Balfour Declaration in 1917 introduced the idea of formation of a Jewish state according to which the Jews from Europe and elsewhere flooded Palestine. If Tel Aviv is defeated, next Western defeats in the region are expectable.
Another issue is the intensity of the conflict between Palestinians and the Israelis. Throughout the history of their conflicts, the volume of conflict between the two sides has never been this high. According to data provided by various sources, more than 30 operations are carried out by Palestinians in the occupied territories every day, and more than 10,000 operations have been carried out against the Israelis within a year, and the Israeli death rates in these attacks are larger than those in wars.
Another big problem for Tel Aviv at present is absence of mediatory figures. In the past, when Israelis had a dispute, retired officials and military personnel mediated for a solution, but now such figures do not intervene to settle the political clashes between Netanyahu and his political opponents. Netanyahu is now ostensibly head of the cabinet, but actually, he is head of a structure that works like a board of directors. This undermined PM is both clashing with hardliners inside his cabinet and outside it he is clashing with the judiciary, party leaders, and the Palestinians.
Asked whether the Israeli cabinet’s measures in the West Bank— including desecration to the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque and expansion of settlement projects— would trigger a new Palestinian intifada, Mr Zaree answered that the current West Bank developments outweigh an intifada, and if we see the figures, we can find out that the Israeli casualties now outnumber those of the first and second intifadas and even the wars with the Palestinians, something indicating that Tel Aviv is grappling with a problem even bigger than intifada. The regular armed operations by the Palestinians have put 50 percent of Israeli army on alert, raising Tel Aviv costs.
Commenting on the status of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mr Zaree held that the PA has given in to the popular tendency for resistance. If a vote is held right now, he said, Mahmoud Abbas and his circle would secure only 2 percent. Now Fatah is tied to Hamas and Islamic Jihad and even the arms smuggled to the resistance groups are provided by Fatah members.
Mr Zaree described the normalization process, officially called Abraham Accords, as a failed project, adding that a UAE-backed resolution at the UN General Assembly in November last year, as well as closure of Omani airspace to Israeli flights, are expressive of failure of the normalization project.
Mr Zaree also ruled out Saudi Arabia joining normalization, maintaining that Saudi Arabia has been talking about normalization for years but taken no concrete steps towards it and the project is waning.
