Bitter victory | International | THE COUNTRY

A long and thorough preparation. An intense and effective training. Abundant and sophisticated means: cybernetics, drones, weapons, missile launchers, amphibious boats... even propaganda warfare capacity. Perfect coordination and complete counterintelligence, without interference in communication systems, counting on the neutralization of the most effective of the information systems—perhaps the only effective one, the dangerous huminthuman intelligence, which has not existed in the Strip for years, has become a black hole for Israeli espionage.

The result is unusual, unprecedented, horrible for Israel. Never since 1948 had there been a penetration like this into its own territory since the founding of the State. Never had the initial balance of casualties, at least from the first battle, been so balanced. Never before had such a large number of hostages been taken, a real capital for negotiation when compared to previous exchanges of prisoners and even the corpses of soldiers.

The expected response will be devastating. It's already devastating. And at the moment Bibi Netanyahu's threat is sinister: he wants to turn Gaza into a wasteland, in the style of what Putin is doing in Ukraine. He demands that the Gazans leave. Where can they go? He appeals to revenge, naturally; But he knows above all that the restoration of the deterrent capacity of his army depends on the intensity of the response, something that for Israel constitutes a vital necessity. The weakness demonstrated by his secret services, incapable of foreseeing an invasion of such magnitude, is unbearable. The growing division of the country was unsustainable, polarized around the most extremist Government in its history, with the division of powers and democracy in danger, and led by the supremacist settlers of the West Bank and by the ultra-Orthodox fundamentalists.

Netanyahu needed them, but now he will be able to do without them, because the entire Israeli opposition that had been demonstrating against his Government has now offered to form the executive of national unity that wars always demand. A symmetrical reaction will occur on the other side, where the motives exhibited by Hamas for unleashing the war find the full understanding of the Palestinian population. The most recent and most popular of the arguments, which arouses sympathy throughout the Muslim and Arab world, arises from the desecration on the occasion of the Sukkot festival of the mosque esplanade by Jewish fundamentalists this very week.

As befits a time of transformation of the international order, the underlying reason is not theological, nor even nationalist, but geopolitical. Hamas has violently shown its cards in the face of the separate peace with Israel that Saudi Arabia was forging thanks to the diplomatic efforts of the United States and its intention to provide the oil monarchy with a civil nuclear industry, with the military potential that always hangs on such. type of industry. At the same time, he has rubbed the Palestinian Authority the wrong way. Claiming the centrality of the Palestinian cause, he has shown who defends it just when a new order seemed to advance in the region, completely ignoring it.

Iran's ear also appears behind Hamas, which has a lot to do with the technological level of the military offensive and the training of Hamas soldiers. And Turkey also appears, spiritually federated with Hamas through the extensive and influential family of the Muslim Brotherhood. The political leadership of Islam comes into play in this war dynamic, disputed between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with Qatar and Turkey, so close to the Brothers, in the middle.

For now, it is a victory for Hamas, even if it takes advantage of Netanyahu, once again saved as prime minister by his fierce enemies. It is bitter because it is already very expensive in human lives, as all wars tend to be, with victory or defeat, and because it will be much more so if it continues an escalation that can ignite the entire region. The scandalous numbers of corpses, confused civilians and soldiers, do not usually embitter the victorious commanders, always insatiable for cannon fodder, whether their victories are real or imaginary, be it Vladimir Putin or the leaders of Hamas.

And it is also useless, because war does not usually solve what politics and diplomacy cannot or do not know how to solve. It is unleashed by extremists and their violence to fill the void left by the sterility of politics and diplomacy. The only and authentic victory is peace, the result of dialogue and pacts, exactly the path that Israel and Palestine have been abandoning in the last 30 years until reaching the current catastrophe without horizon.

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