Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,
World focus simply shifted from Ukraine to Palestine. This new area of confrontation will ignite additional competitors between the Atlanticist and Eurasian blocs. These fights are more and more zero-sum ones; as in Ukraine, just one pole can emerge strengthened and victorious.
Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was meticulously deliberate. The launch date was conditioned by two triggering elements.
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First was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flaunting his ‘New Center East’ map on the UN Normal Meeting in September, through which he utterly erased Palestine and made a mockery of each single UN decision on the topic.
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Second are the serial provocations at the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, together with the straw that broke the camel’s again: two days earlier than Al-Aqsa Flood, on 5 October, at the least 800 Israeli settlers launched an assault across the mosque, beating pilgrims, destroying Palestinian outlets, all underneath the commentary of Israeli safety forces.
Everybody with a functioning mind is aware of Al-Aqsa is a definitive purple line, not only for Palestinians, however for the whole Arab and Muslim worlds.
It will get worse. The Israelis have now invoked the rhetoric of a “Pearl Harbor.” That is as threatening because it will get. The unique Pearl Harbor was the American excuse to enter a world warfare and nuke Japan, and this “Pearl Harbor” could also be Tel Aviv’s justification to launch a Gaza genocide.
Sections of the west applauding the upcoming ethnic cleaning – together with Zionists posing as “analysts” saying out loud that the “inhabitants transfers” that started in 1948 “should be accomplished” – consider that with large weaponry and large media protection, they’ll flip issues round in brief shrift, annihilate the Palestinian resistance, and depart Hamas allies like Hezbollah and Iran weakened.
Their Ukraine Mission has sputtered, leaving not simply egg on highly effective faces, however whole European economies in destroy.
But as one door closes, one other one opens: Soar from ally Ukraine to ally Israel, and hone your sights on adversary Iran as a substitute of adversary Russia.
There are different good causes to go all weapons blazing.
A peaceable West Asia means Syria reconstruction – through which China is now formally concerned; energetic redevelopment for Iraq and Lebanon; Iran and Saudi Arabia as a part of BRICS 11; the Russia-China strategic partnership totally revered and interacting with all regional gamers, together with key US allies within the Persian Gulf.
Incompetence. Willful technique. Or each.
That brings us to the price of launching this new “warfare on terror.” The propaganda is in full swing. For Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Hamas is ISIS. For Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev, Hamas is Russia. Over one October weekend, the warfare in Ukraine was utterly forgotten by western mainstream media. Brandenburg Gate, the Eiffel tower, the Brazilian Senate are all Israeli now.
Egyptian intel claims it warned Tel Aviv about an imminent assault from Hamas. The Israelis selected to disregard it, as they did the Hamas training drills they noticed within the weeks prior, smug of their superior information that Palestinians would by no means have the audacity to launch a liberation operation.
No matter occurs subsequent, Al-Aqsa Flood has already, irretrievably, shattered the hefty pop mythology across the invincibility of Tsahal, Mossad, Shin Guess, Merkava tank, Iron Dome, and the Israel Protection Forces.
Even because it ditched digital communications, Hamas profited from the obtrusive collapse of Israel’s multi-billion-dollar digital techniques monitoring probably the most surveilled border on the planet.
Low-cost Palestinian drones hit a number of sensor towers, facilitated the advance of a paragliding infantry, and cleared the best way for T-shirted, AK-47-wielding assault groups to inflict breaks within the wall and cross a border that even stray cats dared not.
Israel, inevitably, turned to battering the Gaza Strip, an encircled cage of 365 sq. kilometers full of 2.3 million folks. The indiscriminate bombing of refugee camps, faculties, civilian house blocks, mosques, and slums has begun. Palestinians don’t have any navy, no air drive, no artillery models, no armored preventing autos, and no skilled military. They’ve little to no high-tech surveillance entry, whereas Israel can name up NATO information if they need it.
Israeli Protection Minister Yoav Gallant proclaimed “an entire siege on the Gaza Strip. There shall be no electrical energy, no meals, no gas, the whole lot is closed. We’re preventing human animals and we are going to act accordingly.”
The Israelis can merrily have interaction in collective punishment as a result of, with three assured UNSC vetoes of their again pocket, they know they’ll get away with it.
It doesn’t matter that Haaretz, Israel’s most revered newspaper, straight out concedes that “truly the Israeli authorities is solely answerable for what occurred (Al-Aqsa Flood) for denying the rights of Palestinians.”
The Israelis are nothing if not constant. Again in 2007, then-Israeli Protection Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin said, “Israel can be pleased if Hamas took over Gaza as a result of IDF might then take care of Gaza as a hostile state.”
Ukraine funnels weapons to Palestinians
Just one yr in the past, the sweaty sweatshirt comic in Kiev was speaking about turning Ukraine right into a “massive Israel,” and was duly applauded by a bunch of Atlantic Council bots.
Effectively, it turned out fairly in another way. As an old-school Deep State supply simply knowledgeable me:
“Ukraine-earmarked weapons are ending up within the fingers of the Palestinians. The query is which nation is paying for it. Iran simply made a take care of the US for six billion {dollars} and it’s unlikely Iran would jeopardize that. I’ve a supply who gave me the identify of the nation however I can not reveal it. The very fact is that Ukrainian weapons are going to the Gaza Strip and they’re being paid for however not by Iran.”
After its gorgeous raid final weekend, a savvy Hamas has already secured extra negotiating leverage than Palestinians have wielded in many years. Considerably, whereas peace talks are supported by China, Russia, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt – Tel Aviv refuses. Netanyahu is obsessive about razing Gaza to the bottom, however if that occurs, a wider regional warfare is sort of inevitable.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah – a staunch Resistance Axis ally of the Palestinian resistance – would relatively not be dragged right into a warfare that may be devastating on its aspect of the border, however that might change if Israel perpetrates a de facto Gaza genocide.
Hezbollah holds at the least 100,000 ballistic missiles and rockets, from Katyusha (vary: 40 km) to Fajr-5 (75 km), Khaibar-1 (100 km), Zelzal 2 (210 km), Fateh-110 (300 km), and Scud B-C (500 km). Tel Aviv is aware of what which means, and shudders on the frequent warnings by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah that its subsequent warfare with Israel shall be performed inside that nation.
Which brings us to Iran.
Geopolitical believable deniability
The important thing fast consequence of Al-Aqsa Flood is that the Washington neocon moist dream of “normalization” between Israel and the Arab world will simply vanish if this turns right into a Lengthy Battle.
Giant swathes of the Arab world in truth are already normalizing their ties with Tehran – and never solely contained in the newly expanded BRICS 11.
Within the drive in the direction of a multipolar world, represented by BRICS 11, the Shanghai Cooperation Group (SCO), Eurasian Financial Union (EAEU), and China’s Belt and Street Initiative (BRI), amongst different groundbreaking Eurasian and World South establishments, there’s merely no place for an ethnocentric Apartheid state keen on collective punishment.
Simply this yr, Israel discovered itself disinvited from the African Union summit. An Israeli delegation confirmed up anyway, and was unceremoniously ejected from the massive corridor, a visible that went viral. On the UN plenary periods final month, a lone Israeli diplomat sought to disrupt Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi’s speech. No western ally stood by his aspect, and he too, was ejected from the premises.
As Chinese language President Xi Jinping diplomatically put it in December 2022, Beijing “firmly helps the institution of an unbiased state of Palestine that enjoys full sovereignty primarily based on 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital. China helps Palestine in changing into a full member of the United Nations.”
Tehran’s technique is far more formidable – providing strategic recommendation to West Asian resistance actions from the Levant to the Persian Gulf: Hezbollah, Ansarallah, Hashd al-Shaabi, Kataib Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and numerous others. It’s as if they’re all a part of a brand new Grand Chessboard de facto supervised by Grandmaster Iran.
The items within the chessboard have been rigorously positioned by none apart from the late Quds Pressure Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Normal Qassem Soleimani, a once-in-a-lifetime navy genius. He was instrumental in creating the foundations for the cumulative successes of Iranian allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Palestine, in addition to creating the situations for a fancy operation reminiscent of Al-Aqsa Flood.
Elsewhere within the area, the Atlanticist drive of opening strategic corridors throughout the 5 Seas – the Caspian, the Black Sea, the Crimson Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Jap Mediterranean – is floundering badly.
Russia and Iran are already smashing US designs within the Caspian – through the Worldwide North-South Transportation Hall (INSTC) – and the Black Sea, which is on the best way to changing into a Russian lake. Tehran is paying very shut consideration to Moscow’s technique in Ukraine, even because it refines its personal technique on debilitate the Hegemon with out direct involvement: name it geopolitical believable deniability.
Bye bye EU-Israel-Saudi-India hall
The Russia-China-Iran alliance has been demonized as the brand new “axis of evil” by western neocons. That childish rage betrays cosmic impotence. These are Actual Sovereigns that may’t be messed with, and if they’re, the value to pay is unthinkable.
A key instance: if Iran underneath assault by a US-Israeli axis determined to dam the Strait of Hormuz, the worldwide vitality disaster would skyrocket, and the collapse of the western economic system underneath the burden of quadrillions of derivatives can be inevitable.
What this implies, within the fast future, is that he American Dream of interfering throughout the 5 Seas doesn’t even qualify as a mirage. Al-Aqsa Flood has additionally simply buried the recently-announced and much-ballyhooed EU-Israel-Saudi Arabia-India transportation hall.
China is keenly conscious of all this incandescence happening solely every week earlier than its third Belt and Street Discussion board in Beijing. At stake are the BRI connectivity corridors that matter – throughout the Heartland, throughout Russia, plus the Maritime Silk Street and the Arctic Silk Street.
Then there’s the INSTC linking Russia, Iran and India – and by ancillary extension, the Gulf monarchies.
The geopolitical repercussions of Al-Aqsa Flood will pace up Russia, China and Iran’s interconnected geoeconomic and logistical connections, bypassing the Hegemon and its Empire of Bases. Elevated commerce and continuous cargo motion are all about (good) enterprise. On equal phrases, with mutual respect – not precisely the Battle Celebration’s situation for a destabilized West Asia.
Oh, the issues {that a} slow-moving paragliding infantry overflying a wall can speed up.
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The views expressed on this article don’t essentially replicate these of The Cradle or ZeroHedge.
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