It is wrong to claim that the Israeli occupation has achieved victory in Gaza, that the resistance has lost all of its negotiating leverage, that nothing remains for it except to disarm and surrender, or that the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood has come to an end.
The fundamental point that must be recognised is that the Zionist army did not stop at the current Yellow Line out of mercy for the Palestinians or in pursuit of peace. It stopped because it could no longer continue in the same way. It used every means of killing available to it and imposed every method of starvation and siege it could employ. Even now, it continues to launch daily strikes and kill Palestinians by the dozens, both beyond the Yellow Line and in the West Bank.
The same approach is being pursued in Lebanon, where it continues to occupy the south, kill and displace its people through various means, and pressure the Lebanese government to accept complete surrender. The same methodology is being applied towards Iran: no truce and no genuine end to the war.
If the Zionist entity had been able to continue direct warfare and destroy all of Iran’s facilities, it would have done so without delay. If it had been capable of occupying the country in its entirety, it would have done that as well.
There is no Zionist doctrine founded on coexistence. Zionist ideology is based on negating others, eliminating them and subjugating them across the widest possible territory, from a historically racist perspective that leaves little room for compromise. In this, it converges with the most extreme currents of the far right in the United States and elsewhere, which openly express a supremacist view of the East and support its subjugation by force, without meaningful limits on the use of that force.
If they were able, they would drag their countries into endless wars in pursuit of the project of a “Greater Israel” and wider global domination.
Resistance as a response to an uncompromising project
This is the starting point required to understand what the resistance in Gaza is doing today, and what the Iranians are doing in defence of their country.
If the issue were simply one of coexistence and mutual acceptance, including acceptance of the occupation of part of Palestine in exchange for peace, hostilities would have ended and peace would have spread across the region.
The bitter reality, however, is that one side seeks to achieve all of its objectives while refusing to allow the other side to achieve any of its own, even if this requires inflicting total destruction on the region or striking it with nuclear weapons.
This pattern has been visible throughout the decades since the occupation of Palestine. Which side has repeatedly relinquished rights and accepted compromises in search of ending hostility and halting wars? It has unquestionably been the Palestinian, Arab and Islamic side.
The Zionist side, by contrast, has continued to seek greater control, domination, subjugation and supremacy.
Has genuine normalisation of relations taken place with the states that abandoned their previous positions and recognised Israel’s existence? Has the machinery of occupation stopped annexing land, seeking control over all of Palestine and preparing for further expansion towards the goal of a Greater Israel?
It has not. Instead, states that have normalised relations continue to face demands from the Israeli entity for further guarantees, further concessions and further submission.
Victory measured by the survival of resistance
In this context, what the Palestinian resistance is doing in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran and Yemen must be understood differently.
It continues to endure and struggle through every available means, preventing the occupation from achieving what it repeatedly describes as complete surrender. As long as that remains the case, the resistance has not been defeated.
The issue is not whether ammunition, equipment or fighting forces have been depleted, weakened or reduced in their ability to launch attacks. The decisive issue is whether the will to resist remains alive, using whatever capabilities are still available. That, in this view, is the true measure of victory.
The resistance leader Yahya Sinwar was martyred, but before meeting his Lord he hurled what remained within his reach from the battlefield towards the drones attacking him, declaring through his final act that from the remains of the martyrs and the ashes of battle, the will to prevail can rise again and continue the struggle.
That is what is happening today in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.
The enemy knows that it has killed, destroyed, devastated and reduced land to ashes. But it also knows that it has not defeated the will of those defending what they regard as their rightful land, honour, women and children, fighting until their last breath, whether on the battlefield or while bound in chains and subjected to torture in enemy prisons.
The Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood is not over yet.
