Last night at midnight a ceasefire was reached between Israel and the Islamic Jihad and for the time being it is being kept, the continuation of the ceasefire is a test of the credibility of the organization’s commitment to maintain the ceasefire and the credibility of Hamas to ensure that the Islamic Jihad keeps its word not to fire rockets.
The Islamic Jihad was looking for achievements in the military confrontation with Israel that would allow it to come down in a dignified manner from the tall tree it climbed when it started launching hundreds of rockets at Israel in response to the assassinations of its military wing’s senior officers.
In the end, he had to settle for a short message published by Egypt, promising that they would make an effort to release the administrative prisoner Khalil Al-Awawda for medical treatment and that they will work for the release of the senior Islamic Jihad leader Bassam al-Sadahi as soon as possible.
The Islamic Jihad knows that this message has no real value, but they found in it a ladder to get down from the tree they climbed on, and the leader of the Islamic Jihad, Ziyad Al-Nakhala, said that his organization will wait a week for the promises to be fulfilled.
Last night the Islamic Jihad increased the firing of rockets at Israel. It was looking for an image of victory that will erase the disgraceful images of the assassination of the senior members of the military wing of, Khaled Mansour and Taysir Al-Jabari.
Despite the severe blows that Israel inflicted on his head and even humiliated him, the Palestinian Jihad is still considered on the Palestinian street as the only organization that keeps its word and fights for the Palestinian people, while senior members of the Hamas leadership left the Gaza Strip and moved to Turkey and Qatar, living a life of luxury and rolling over hundreds of millions of dollars they stole from Gaza Strip for the purpose of establishing businesses for them and their families.
Despite the severe blows it received from Israel, the Islamic Jihad credits itself with achievements:
it managed to fire heavy rocket barrages at Israel until the last moment despite the assassination of the organization’s military elite and it managed also to make the lives of the residents of the Jewish settlements on the border of Gaza Strip bitter and paralyzed.
Hamas claims that the Islamic Jihad operates according to an Iranian agenda and that it has lost the independence of the Palestinian decision making and that its failure to change the rules of the game and create a new equation eroded the achievements of the “Sword of Jerusalem” operation initiated by the military wing of Hamas in May 2021.
The equation ” Gaza-Jerusalem” was eroded and hundreds
of Jews went up to the Temple Mount on the Tisha B’eAv fast without any problems and Israel is no longer deterred by the military power of the terror organizations in the Gaza Strip.
The Islamic Jihad was also weakened in the West Bank, the autonomous empire it began to establish in northern Samaria (Jenin and Nablus) while pushing the Palestinian Authority and Hamas out of the region is in the process of collapse following the arrest operations of the IDF forces.
The Islamic Jihad was also humiliated in front of the administrative prisoners on hunger strike in the Israeli prison who were sure that thanks to the military escalation and the firing of the rockets, the Israeli prison authorities will reach arrangements with them that will allow their immediate release.
Yoni Ben Menachem
Senior Middle East Analyst
