When the War is Over – Did Gaza Usher in the Age of the New Palestinian Armed Resistance?

January 14, 2024

The Palestinian Resistance is engaged in fierce clashes with the Israeli army in Gaza. (Image: Palestine Chronicle)

By Palestine Chronicle Editors

After 100 days of Palestinian steadfastness and resistance to the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, an important question imposes itself: Is this the age of the Palestinian armed resistance?

In a speech commemorating the 100th day of the ongoing Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, Abu Obeida, the military spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades, said that the majority of all weapons used by the Resistance in the Strip were manufactured by the Resistance itself. 

According to Abu Obeida, these weapons include everything from sniper guns to anti-personnel shells, to various types of armaments, including the advanced Al-Ghoul sniper gun.

Even much of Resistance munition was itself manufactured in Gaza, he said. 

These statements would have not had as much impact before October 7, as they are having now, following 100 days after a relentless Israeli war involving hundreds of thousands of Israeli soldiers and the world’s most advanced weaponry. 

Legend of the Merkava

For years, prior to the current war, many voices, including those of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah itself have argued that armed resistance is ‘useless’, and that it will have little impact on the nature of the conflict between a far superior military power like Israel and besieged and occupied people, like the Palestinians. 

Sometimes, that claim was made based on honest assessment, after all, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is considered one of the most advanced armies in the world, and even the ‘most powerful in the Middle East’.

The ‘power’ of the IDF does not necessarily come from the IDF itself, for most of the ‘security industry’ in Israel is dedicated to high-tech technology, majority of which is manufactured for export purposes. Without direct US financial and military support, including hundreds of millions dedicated to ‘research’, the Israeli army would have not commanded this kind of status. 

But, of course, there is the Merkava, the pride and joy of the Israeli military industry, often described as impenetrable, and even the best tank in the world. 

‘Fireworks’

On the other hand, Palestinian Resistance fought using the simplest of means, and often occasionally smuggled weapons.

Over the years, Palestinian rockets, fired at Israel from time to time, became known as homemade ‘fireworks’. Even though the term was not intended to belittle Palestinian Resistance capabilities, but to accentuate the massive difference between the Israeli army and the Palestinian Resistance, it, to some extent, misrepresented the truth. 

Qassam 1 and 2 may have, in fact, started as rudimentary rockets with extremely limited capabilities – both in terms of range and explosive heads – but Hamas rockets exponentially evolved over the years, to reach a range of nearly 250 kilometers, as in the case of the Ayyash 250.

More important than the damage created by these rockets, their value became more strategically than militarily destructive, as they succeeded in shutting down the Israeli economy, airports, and restricting movement throughout the country. 

The ‘Human’ Industry

But the most impressive achievement of the Resistance has been the actual fighting on the ground. 

The fact that the Resistance develops its own munitions makes it less vulnerable to long wars and strict sieges. Even the mighty Israeli army would have not sustained its war on Gaza for more than a single month if it were not for the massive arsenal made available to it by the Pentagon, and other Western powers. 

And there is something else. In his speech, Abu Obeida said that the most important industry of the Resistance in Gaza is the industry of the human being, the Palestinian himself, fearless, determined, and undefeatable.

Al-Qassam spokesman said that when fighters return from their missions in the north, center or south of Gaza, they tell stories of the heroism of their comrades but also of the cowardness of their enemies. 

Israeli soldiers are being ‘dragged’ to the war, Abu Obeida said, a war they don’t want to fight, in fact, they can’t fight. 

100 Days

On the 100th day of the war, the Israeli government said that it had dispatched nearly 300,000 reservists, boasting about goals and objectives that hav, supposedly, been achieved. 

This massive army, however, has been stunned by a few thousands Palestinian fighters, mostly holed underground, having no access to proper food or clean water, making their own weapons, while watching their people being collectively slaughtered by an unprecedented Israeli genocide. In fact, the only achievement that Israel can comfortably claim in its long war is the killing and wounding of nearly 100,000 Palestinian civilians.

Even claims about the destruction of Hamas’ rocket launchers and munition warehouses were scuffed at by Abu Obeida, who said that the time will come that the Resistance will prove that none of these claims have a iota of truth. In fact, they are laughable, he said, since the Resistance rockets are never left overground, in a state of readiness to fire, as the Israelis claim.

There is no doubt that armed resistance, especially this type of armed resistance, where local resisters manufacture their own weapons, will become a central pillar in Palestinian collective resistance to the Israeli occupation and apartheid in the coming years. 

When the War is Over

When the war in Gaza is over, the possibility of armed rebellion in the West Bank will grow even stronger. In fact, we predict that, in addition to armed rebellion starting in the northern West Bank, non-state political actors throughout the region will rise in terms of power and relevance, modeling themselves around Al-Qassam and Al-Quds Brigades in Gaza, while unifying around a single goal, that of fighting foreign occupation and political meddling. 

The fact that the Islamic Resistance of Iraq is now demanding a complete withdrawal of the US forces from the country is a case in point. 

Washington and its Western allies know, as well as Tel Aviv, that the post-Gaza-war Middle East will emerge as a whole different region than the one that existed prior to it. This is why Washington, unsurprisingly, interpreted the Israeli war on Gaza to be an American war as well. 

That, however, was a strategic mistake because the imminent Israeli defeat will also be interpreted as an American defeat. Neither US-UK attacks on the Ansarallah group in Yemen, nor all of American firepower can possibly change this equation now. 

The fact that these dynamics have all occurred because of local fighters, engaged in a seemingly desperate combat in a besieged area like the Gaza Strip, should force us to revisit all of the notions that we embraced for many years, that Israel is undefeatable, that armed resistance is not a solution, and that the cause of Palestine, as some would occasionally argue, is a ‘lost cause’.

As for the mighty Merkava, over 1,000 of which have been damaged or destroyed in the war so far, is likely to contribute to the Israeli scrap industry. Indeed, the legend of the Merkava has ended at the hands of the Yassin-105 in the war-torn streets of Gaza.

(The Palestine Chronicle)