Day 468: How Gaza's resistance defeated Israel

There are many uncertainties and much apprehension about the ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas set to go into effect 8:00 am local time on Sunday.

But Ahmed Alnaouq is not in doubt about what it means.

“For the past 15 months, I thought that this moment will not come. I thought that Israel is determined – and I know it was determined – to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Gaza, to destroy Gaza,” Alnaouq told The Electronic Intifada Livestream this week.

But when Alnaouq heard that Israel had agreed to withdraw from Gaza and release prisoners, he realized that “Israel did not defeat the Palestinian people.”

“I thought, in my heart, Gaza has won,” Alnaouq said.

Analyzing the agreement and how incoming US President Donald Trump – surprising many – forced Israel to accept it, as well as what it means for the future were the themes of this week’s program.

You can watch the entire episode in the video above.

We also featured a conversation with Shir Hever, the military embargo coordinator for the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC).

In her news report, associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman highlighted the joy of people in Gaza at the prospect of an end to the genocide, even Israel escalated its merciless massacres across the territory in the days before the ceasefire is set to start.

Contributing editor Jon Elmer’s resistance report focused on how the fighters on the ground have never stopped defending every corner of Gaza, inflicting steady, painful attrition on a shattered and demoralized Israeli army.

Although Alnaouq has been in the UK throughout this genocide, he is not naive about the unprecedented scale of death and destruction perpetrated by Israel.

In the very first weeks of the genocide, Israel bombed his family home – one he helped build with his own hands – killing 21 close relatives: his father Nasri Alnaouq, 75; His sister Walaa and her children Raghd, 13, Eslam, 12, Sara, 9, and Abdullah, 6; Ahmed’s brother Muhammad, with his children Bakr, 11, Basema, 9; His sister Alaa, and her children Eslam, 13, Dima, 12, Tala, 8, 4-year-old Noor, and Nasmah, who was just 2; His sister Aya, and her children Malak Bashir, 12, Mohammed Bashir, 9, and Tamim Bashir, 6.

The Israeli attack also killed Ahmed’s brother Mahmoud Alnaouq, 25, and his cousin Ali Alqurinwi, 35.

“I’ve lost everyone I care about in Gaza,” Alnaouq, who has survived previous Israeli onslaughts on the territory, said.

Alnaouq is sober about what comes next. “I will not romanticize the future [of] Gaza,” he said. “I know that Gaza will not be a paradise just after the genocide ends,” and that rebuilding will be a difficult, years-long process. But he remains certain that Gaza’s victory is one for all Palestinians on the path to liberation.

“There will never be everlasting peace until there is a free Palestine, until the apartheid regime is dismantled, until the occupation is lifted,” Alnaouq said, urging people around the world to keep up their solidarity and activism.

Military embargo tightens on Israel

“There is now a deep crisis within Israeli society, and the only reason that Netanyahu is able to stay in power is through a continued crisis,” Shir Hever told the Livestream. “He needs the genocide to continue. He also needs the suffering to continue, not just on the Palestinian side, but on some level, on the Israeli side as well.”

But according to Hever, growing divisions within Israeli society are resulting in chronic political instability and are making his strategy unsustainable.

One key rift is between Ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious constituencies that have largely supported the genocidal war, but whose members do not join the army, on the one hand, and more secular Israelis who overwhelmingly bear the burden of death and injury, on the other.

“There is just no way in this apartheid system, which is built on so much hate between the different groups, that any kind of majority government can sustainably stay in power,” Hever said.

Hever also argues that a growing global military embargo is also constraining Israel’s ability to carry on the war, even if Israel does not admit it. Israel is more than ever dependent solely on the United States.

And while the outgoing Biden administration never meaningfully restricted weapons to Israel, a mercurial Donald Trump could do so. Hever says “there is an understanding within Israel that the independence of the Israeli military, its ability to continue to fight, is a whole different story now, and this is a direct result of the military embargo.”

Actions by countries all over the world to restrict the weapons flow to Israel are outlined in a new BNC article titled “The military embargo is here.”

It states that “Global South governments are taking important steps in implementing the military embargo.”

But it also explains how “Even western states who are among the strongest supporters of Israeli apartheid and colonialism are forced to publicly announce policies and to partially implement military embargo against Israel, lest they risk legal proceedings.”

One often overlooked aspect of the embargo, according to Hever, is how third countries, such as Spain, are banning the transfer of weapons to Israel through their ports, greatly complicating the supply chain of genocide.

We also spoke to Hever about the escalating socioeconomic stress, divestment, a growing debt crisis and a brain drain, as Israelis uncertain about the future seek to establish more secure lives abroad.

Donald Trump pressures Israel

In his speech to the US Congress in June, Netanyahu set forth Israel’s war aims.

“The war in Gaza could end tomorrow if Hamas surrenders, disarms and returns all the hostages,” the Israeli leader said. “But if they don’t, Israel will fight until we destroy Hamas’ military capabilities and its rule in Gaza and bring all our hostages home.”

“That’s what total victory means, and we will settle for nothing less,” Netanyahu added.

But as contributing editor Jon Elmer pointed out in our discussion of the ceasefire agreement, Israel has achieved none of those aims.

“The genocide was supposedly to put pressure on Qassam to surrender and turn over the prisoners,” Elmer said.

But Israel not only failed to destroy the Hamas military wing, according to US assessments it has recruited almost as many new fighters as it has lost.

“Gaza now has 70,000 tons of explosives dropped on them with a five percent dud rate,” Elmer assessed. “They have explosive munitions for two generations of war against the Israelis, and they have a population that is enraged and believes that they can win wars.”

Under the deal, Israeli forces will have to withdraw from all of Gaza, including the so-called Philadelphi Corridor along the border with Egypt.

Palestinians will be able to return to their homes in the north of Gaza without inspection by Israel, and Israel has agreed to release far more Palestinian prisoners – some 2,000 including 250 with life sentences – than it would have had to if it had agreed to extend the November 2023 ceasefire agreement.

Israel has also agreed to allow 600 truckloads of humanitarian aid into Gaza, more than the daily total before 7 October 2023.

The Hamas government, moreover, is still in place, better able to manage the interior of Gaza than anyone else. Hamas will still have its weapons, and its underground military infrastructure is still largely intact. That provides the ultimate check on any Israeli intent, with US complicity, to violate the agreement.

In the discussion, this writer highlighted an assessment from Israeli military-intelligence analyst Amos Harel, who writes in Haaretz that, “The Israeli public will be surprised when it finds out what the person who says he wishes to be remembered as Israel’s defender had to concede during the negotiations.”

A key question is why Trump, who was almost universally expected to be as pro-Israel as Biden – if not more so – would pressure Netanyahu to sign essentially the same ceasefire deal that had been on the table since early last year

In the discussion, segmented in the video below, this writer argued that Israel is not necessarily central to Trump’s “America First” worldview which has been largely hostile to even such close, traditional US allies as NATO, Germany and Canada.

Trump’s effective pressure confirms that for more than 15 months, the Biden administration could have chosen to end the genocide with one phone call, but engaged in a charade of fruitless negotiations, while giving the slaughter its full support.

The incoming president’s sharing on social media of a video earlier this month of Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs condemning Netanyahu for dragging the US into the Iraq war, and trying now to drag it into war with Iran, would have sent shock waves through Israel’s government.

In Haaretz, Harel observed that, “Some of the prime minister’s blind followers are going through a painful sobering up these days. Trump is not an admirer of Israel or Netanyahu.”

That could presage fundamental shifts in long-standing US postures, even if the dangers for the Palestinians remain very great from a new administration staffed with as many fanatically pro-Israel Zionists as any predecessor.

Resistance stays strong

Whatever pressure Trump put on Israel to sign a deal it had long rejected, this would not have happened without the military reality of continuous, fierce resistance on the ground in Gaza, as Elmer pointed out in this week’s resistance report.

Using videos published by the resistance, Elmer analysed how there has been no let up in the complex and effective operations by well-organized territorial units defending every part of Gaza.

You can watch the program on YouTube, Rumble or Twitter/X, or you can listen to it on your preferred podcast platform.

Tamara Nassar produced and directed the program. Michael F. Brown contributed pre-production assistance and Eli Gerzon contributed post-production assistance.

Past episodes of The Electronic Intifada Livestream can be viewed on our YouTube channel.