Regardless of how the current war ends, October 7 marks the day the people of Gaza rose up and inflicted defeat upon the world’s largest superpower, through wounding their captors. Despite possessing a fraction of the military capabilities, the Palestinians pulled off the impossible, re-igniting their cause, dismantling the US Biden administration’s West Asia policy goals and quite possibly preventing a death blow to the Palestinian quest for liberation.
The offensive that was launched by the armed wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, in the early hours of October 7, represented the largest blow to Israeli intelligence, its military and political establishment. But what exactly made this offensive so important? In order to understand this properly, first we need to look at what was going on in the region prior to the attack of the Palestinian resistance. Namely, what were the US and “Israel” maneuvering in the direction of a normalization deal between the Israelis and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Although the military operation, Al-Aqsa Flood, carries the clearly stated goal of responding to and defending Al-Aqsa Mosque from the attacks and plans of the Zionist entity, the operation has also dealt a death blow to Saudi-Israeli normalization for the time being. Although this point has been brought up in the mainstream Western press, it has not been explained in its proper context.
Normalization between Saudi Arabia and the Zionists would have served as an existential threat to regional stability, as well as the continuation of the Palestinian struggle for statehood. In order to accept such a normalization proposal, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had allegedly asked for a number of concessions from the US government, one of which was a defense pact, under which Washington would be bound to war with any nation that attacked Riyadh. The defense pact would strengthen security ties between both sides and also mimic NATO’s article 5; an attack on one is an attack on all. In the event that such a defense pact is signed, the elephant in the room is that Saudi Arabia is already at war with Yemen, which means that in the event of any flare-up in that conflict, the US would technically be obliged to directly intervene.
If the Zionists were to sign a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, this would also mean that the recent Saudi-Iranian rapprochement would be placed under immense strains. Tehran would almost certainly react by breaking relations with Saudi Arabia, or this would at least eventually lead to such action. But due to China having brokered the restoration of Saudi-Iranian ties, a sudden break from the positive trajectory of earlier this year could create a competition between both sides, over Beijing’s support. Also, the Chinese government would be witnessing the collapse of a major diplomatic breakthrough.
The US had seemingly placed all of its eggs in one basket when it came to its West Asia approach. The approach of the US Biden administration has been to push for Saudi-Israeli normalization over everything else while attempting to form an anti-Iranian alliance regionally. This would have most certainly resulted in a catastrophe for Yemen, Iran, and their allies regionally if it was to go ahead. While inside of occupied Palestine, Saudi Arabia abandoning the Arab Peace Initiative would have taken away the final bargaining chip that the Palestinian Authority (PA) had left for achieving its stated goals.
We have reached a stage where, despite the strength of the Palestinian resistance being in its strongest ever position militarily, the political scene was divided and the desire to do anything about the Palestinian cause was being ignored. The US government had sidelined the credible threats posed by the resistance in Gaza and decided to go around openly announcing its intention to dismantle the idea of even entertaining, giving the Palestinian people a State. They believed that they could simply ignore the suffering of the Palestinians, and that the resistance would allow their constant assaults on the cause to go unchallenged. The resistance turned this on its head, they smashed through the segregation barrier, just as they smashed through Washington’s anti-resistance policy in West Asia. The US thought that ending the Palestinian cause would be simple, but this has been proven to be wrong.
Saudi Arabia has been forced to retire the idea of normalization, especially for now, as the Israeli military are proving to the Arab and Muslim World why they have been opposed for long. Without the resistance having acted from Gaza, normalization would have been able to occur with nothing offered to the occupied people of Palestine in return, that is no longer the case.
After the US government rejected the 2006 democratic legislative election in Palestine, which brought to power Hamas, plotted a coup to oust them, then imposed economic sanctions and supported the brutal siege of the Zionist regime and all of their massacres, the Palestinian resistance has finally inflicted a blow back towards the ones who enabled all of their suffering.
(Al Mayadeen English)
*The writer is a political analyst, journalist, and documentary filmmaker.
October 16, 2023
The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of Aequitas Review.
