Fifty years and one day after the start of the Yom Kippur War (October 6, 1973), Hamas began what will most likely go down in history as the “War of the Feast of Tabernacles.” The date, the occasion for the ‘coup’, gives Hamas the opportunity to appropriate a success story based on the pan-Arab attack on Israel in 1973. Both days, the 6th of 1973 and the 7th of 2023, were religious holidays in Israel. Israel, which has contributed to a relaxation of the state of permanent readiness of Israeli military and civilian personnel. The symbolic is all there and Hamas (firstly) has now firmly occupied the lead of the disappearing global Islamist agenda, with the bonus of putting the Palestinian cause back at the center of debate and news broadcasts. 22 years after September 11, 12 years after the death of bin Laden and 12 years after the start of the Arab Spring, the agenda of ‘political Islam’, which advocates putting into practice the entire theory of the Qur’an, was already evaporates. the public eye, great agendas, great achievements. In other words, this void opened the opportunity for the “Al-Qaedas of this life” to take the initiative to fill it.
Secondly, the initiative is a total surprise to everyone. No one knew or wanted to believe that Hamas had the capacity to launch five thousand rockets from Gaza to Tel Aviv. Another example of the surprise is the Palestinian boots outside Gaza attacking Israeli positions hand in hand and taking soldiers and civilians hostage (there will be a hundred of them), valuable assets for Hamas to negotiate prisoner exchanges with the enemy. A proof of the degree of organization is the realization of the harmony and hand-to-hand between the military operational and the “social media operational”. It was Hamas that dominated the narrative throughout the first day, broadcasting images of Israeli soldiers and civilians being captured and killed as the population fled and panicked. This projection of a defenseless Israel is beginning to resonate in news construction and the dissemination of opinions and analyzes in the media in the Middle East, with jargon of “historical rupture,” “turning a new leaf,” and “a new narrative.”
Fourth, the goal has been achieved, namely that the public to be conquered is conquered with what Hamas stands for (God and Palestine). Here, in fact, is seen the beginning of a new binomial story, which could truly create ruptures and new pages that will not remain blank.
Fifth, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will now have as immediate priority saving the lives of 100 of his citizens, as he will not be able to “put all the meat on the grill” for a while. Everything else will depend on the success, or not, of these negotiations, including the possibility of the fall of the current Netanyahu-led government or even the formation of a national unity government, which in an optimal scenario will replace the current Prime Minister see (PM) The Israeli leader is emerging stronger than ever, having reached the highest levels of popular protest and unpopularity among those around him.
What is actually at stake?
On Israel’s side, the intensity of the reaction is strong, the excessive force of which could spell the end. The return to the mind of dormant cells ready to be activated, the ‘lone wolf pack’ initiative that will emerge, plus anthrax at home and massive online recruitment. This will be the worst déjà vuand Israel and its allies will not be able to provide it in the name of the greater good, peaceful sleep.
For Hamas, which has managed to fill the void in the Islamic leadership, it is doing its utmost by dragging the Palestinian cause into the cause of God. Precisely Palestine, which with the end of the Soviet Union began to disappear from the international agenda and at the beginning of the Arab Spring saw the first mobilization of the ‘Arab street’ without God or Palestine as a motive. The current Palestinian context is “on the brink of extinction,” based on the success of adhering to the Abraham Accords, which regularize relations between Israel and historically hostile countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Of Abraham’s signatories (Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Morocco and the Republic of Sudan), only the latter country, which is at war, is concerned about a possible repositioning towards Israel. Why?
Because Sudan has always been the ‘back base’ of the Muslim Brotherhood (IM), which was made illegal in Egypt by President Sissi, because the Sudanese National Army has been completely infiltrated by the IM and because it represents the last Islamic fighting force, with experience and hierarchy It is a rigid policy that, in an end-of-the-world scenario, could hold and raise the flag of Islam. The remaining signatories have too much to lose if they break their relationship with Israel again. They will feel the ‘Arab street’, but they will not change the course of their foreign policy. Morocco, for example, has already condemned the offensive and reiterated its position of support for dialogue and moderation. It has not changed its position in any way since October 2021, when it adhered to the agreements and normalized with Israel and legitimized it in the southern provinces. .
The Abraham Accords, a Trump initiative (2020), were the target of “left-wing hopes” when Biden took office. However, he sees the proposal as a “web of obligations” worth developing further. For this reason, he was critical of Trump’s relationship with the Saudi Crown Prince, as a presidential candidate, and now he is following in his (Trump’s) footsteps as PR out of necessity in times of energy transition, to force Saudi Arabia to join Abraham . and closing a cycle started by Trump. This is Hamas’s fight: not to allow the Palestinian cause to be further diluted by watching the holder of Islam’s holy places come to terms with its enemy from previous Intifadas. Moreover, Saudi Arabia is already holding the balance and wants to contribute to a negotiated exit before it falls into the bottomless pit we all see!
Political scientist/Arabist
www.maghreb-machrek.pt
Source: DN
