The occupation withdrew again from most areas of the Gaza Strip during the first phase. Credit — after God Almighty — goes to the steadfastness of the resistance, who held firm “until the 90th minute, then extra time, and finally the penalty kicks,” as some describe it. Credit also belongs to the Palestinian people’s resolute clinging to their land and refusal to relinquish it, which foiled schemes of displacement and expulsion. It also reflects the failure and exhaustion of the occupier’s army and its inability to achieve objectives after being impotent on the ground.
Global popular mobilisation likewise played a role, turning the occupier into a despised terrorist regime and framing the struggle as a contest between two camps: on one side, Gaza and the majority of the world’s peoples; on the other, the occupier and its regional and Western backers — regimes that increasingly find themselves besieged by their own publics.
By divine decree, besieged Gaza — despite starvation, siege and massacres — has become the one encircling the occupier and pressuring the regimes that support it across Europe and the Americas.
This raises a necessary question: who guarantees that the occupier will not return to war after it receives its prisoners?
The answer can be seen from multiple angles:
First: Netanyahu did not place the prisoners among his priorities at any stage; therefore, their release was not the primary reason for his failure.
Second: A renewed offensive would deepen his international losses and could even topple regimes that support him. We have already seen the panic that struck Italy’s Prime Minister Meloni merely at claims that her name might be presented to the International Criminal Court on charges of participation in genocide. The same pressure is not far from Starmer in Britain, nor from the German chancellor.
Third: The resistance will re-order its ranks and will inflict losses on the enemy it cannot bear, adding to the occupier’s exhaustion, failure and defeat.
Fourth: The enemy, throughout two full years, could not achieve a decisive victory despite claiming the campaign would take only a few weeks; accordingly, it will not be able to decide the matter even if it persists for ten years.
Fifth: I am certain the resistance possesses new pressure cards it has not yet revealed and is reserving for a time it knows it will need them — cards perhaps no less consequential than the prisoners’ issue. The resistance does not trust the occupier nor feel secure with it.
