Andrew Exum, who previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy, confirmed that the Israeli army will fail to achieve its goals in Gaza, just as it failed to achieve them in the July 2006 war against Hezbollah, in an article in “The Atlantic” magazine. American.
Exum said that he is not convinced that the strategy followed by the Israeli army in Gaza is “sound,” expressing his concern that “Israel has identified extremist targets, as it did previously in 2006,” noting that it must “learn from its experience in Lebanon.”
According to him, Israel has “a tendency to set extreme goals, often for domestic consumption, and then fail to achieve them,” which gives the resistance victory.
He noted, “Early in my life, I had gone to graduate school in Lebanon, and then returned there to try to better understand how Hezbollah evolved into Israel’s most capable enemy.”
He talked about his attempt to understand how Hezbollah developed to become the enemy most capable of confronting “Israel,” noting that his research “revealed Israeli mistakes and weaknesses, as much as it revealed Hezbollah’s strengths.”
In this context, the writer referred to the three goals set by the occupation Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, in 2006, which are: destroying Hezbollah, returning the bodies of two Israeli prisoners, and ending missile attacks on “Israel.”
However, the occupation did not achieve any of these goals. Despite the devastation that Lebanon was subjected to, most observers had no doubt who won the war, namely Hezbollah, as the latter “received everything that Israel could throw at it for a month, and remained steadfast,” as Exum asserted.
Today, the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon and Hamas want nothing less than the destruction of “Israel,” but they are in no hurry, according to the former American official.
According to him, Hezbollah and Hamas believe that “time is on their side,” and that internal Israeli divisions are “likely to accomplish most of the job on their behalf.”
Exum touched on the recent speech of the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, which is his first speech since the beginning of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” saga.
In this context, the writer pointed out that “Nasrallah was confident that Israel would not be able to destroy Hamas,” considering that Hamas “became the winner as soon as Israel claimed that it wanted to destroy it.”
He believed that “few have an interest in a regional war,” adding that if he were in “Israel’s” position, he would feel “a strong temptation to focus efforts much further to the east.”
Exum estimated that waging a large-scale war with Iran was “out of the question,” considering that “Israel” needs to find a way to change Iranian strategic calculations, otherwise Hamas and Hezbollah will grow stronger.
2023-11-08 06:53:08
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