Now, before the possible invasion of the Gaza Strip, surrounded on all sides by the Israeli army, the question arises – can the state of Israel be defeated militarily?
In fact, the State of Israel has not won a single military victory since 1967. All subsequent “hot wars” – both the Doomsday War and the two Lebanon Wars – have been lost by the State of Israel. In the Second Lebanon War of 2006, Israel was militarily defeated by the Lebanese Hizbullah movement, which had no aircraft – planes and helicopters – nor tanks and armoured vehicles. Israel suffered relatively small losses in Lebanon in personnel and armoured vehicles, but Israeli society found these losses unacceptable.
As a matter of fact, this is the possibility of Israel’s military and political defeat – the infliction of unacceptable damage by the enemy. From that point of view, the current Hamas bombardment of Israeli cities from the Gaza Strip on the principle of “into the white light like a penny” does not solve this problem.
The State of Israel has two critical infrastructures that, if damaged, could cause a political-military defeat. These are Ben-Gurion Airport, which is the main connection between the State of Israel and the outside world, and the Haifa oil refinery, the failure of which could result in the interruption of all fuel supplies for civilian and military purposes.
From a military point of view, the invasion and slow advance of Hizbullah’s forces southwards could also lead to a military defeat for Israel, as the Israeli army’s losses of personnel and armoured vehicles in close combat could increase dramatically – as the recent military operations in recent days have shown, Israel’s lauded Merkava-3 and Merkava-4 tanks burn like matchsticks when hit not only by ATGMs but also by old Soviet RPGs from the 1970s.
The state of Israel may not be able to withstand a simultaneous war on four fronts. To put it crudely, if during the entry of Israeli army units into the Gaza Strip, the Hizbullah movement in northern Israel also launches a ground offensive, an uprising breaks out in the centre of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, and from the east, through Jordan, Iraqi and Houthi forces launch an offensive into the Jordan Valley and the outlying Israeli city of Eilat, the state of Israel could face a military catastrophe. Should U.S. forces from aircraft carriers and ships intervene in the war, it is also possible that missile forces from Iran, Yemen and Hizbullah could enter the war. In this rather pre-apocalyptic scenario, the state of Israel may also have no future. There are no foreign military units or movements on Jordanian territory right now, but this world here in the Middle East is changing extremely fast.
The main military advantage of the state of Israel is aviation, a huge number of combat aircraft. If the Arab resistance is able to solve this problem, including by launching missile strikes against Israeli air bases on the ground, the military defeat of the state of Israel will be inevitable.
The state of Israel could lose the war if the neighbouring Arab and Muslim countries are determined to go all the way in order to solve the “Middle East cancer” once and for all. Whether the leaders of neighbouring Arab and Muslim countries will have the political will to do so, the coming days will show.
Mikhail Osherov, specially for News Front