Israel surprised the Islamic Jihad organization, took the initiative and began the operation by assassinating Taysir Al-Jabari, the commander of the northern brigade of the Islamic Jihad and 9 of his men.
Israel’s task now is to preserve the deterrence that has been restored against the Islamic Jihad, especially in light of the Islamic Jihad’s threats to escalate if its operatives Khalil Al-Awawda and Bassam al-Saadi are not released from Israeli prison.
The Islamic Jihad tried to change the rules of the game and create a new equation, its leader Ziyad Al-Nakhala announced the strategy of “Unification of the Fronts” in order to engage Israel’s security forces on additional fronts: in East Jerusalem ,in the West Bank, in the Arab sector of Israel and in the mixed cities, but he failed to implement his strategy because Israel’s security forces have learned the lessons from the last war in the Gaza Strip and were prepared accordingly.
Israel managed to maintain its freedom of action and this is a very important achievement , its new message reached Hamas and also Hezbollah in Lebanon.
One must not enter into euphoria because of the success of the last round of fighting in the Gaza Strip, it must be remembered that Hamas did not participate in the fighting alongside the Islamic Jihad, if it had done so, things would have looked completely different.
Israel learned the lessons from the last war in May 2021 and shaped a new strategy of separating the various fronts and cutting the connection between the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israeli Arabs.
This time it proved that it does not hesitate to take the initiative and deliver a pre-emptive strike.
The Hamas organization made the right decision from its point of view as the sovereign of the Gaza Strip not to start an attack against Israel because of the arrest of two operatives of the Islamic Jihad.
The Islamic Jihad climbed a high tree. It was wrong in its considerations and in its decision-making process ,it did not estimate correctly the strategy of the Israeli government, it acted according to Iran’s agenda and paid a high operational price and its prestige was also damaged.
The impact on Hezbollah in Lebanon
The assassinations of Islamic Jihad commanders in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli army put a lot of pressure on Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who warned on August 9th from Israel’s attempts to assassinate Palestinian leaders inside Lebanese.
“Any attack on any person in Lebanon will not go unpunished and unanswered,” Nasrallah warned.
Ziyad Al-Nakhala, the leader of the Islamic Jihad, and Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy head of the political bureau of Hamas, live in the al-Dahiya neighborhood in Beirut.
The prevailing opinion on the Lebanese street is that Israel carried out its military operation in the Gaza Strip, among other things, to signal to Hezbollah to be very careful following Hassan Nasrallah’s threats to attack all of Israel’s gas facilities in the Mediterranean because of the dispute between Lebanon and Israel over the maritime border and the gas field of “karish”.
Lebanese sources say that Israel’s military operation against the Islamic Jihad proves that Israel has abandoned the policy of containment and moved to the policy of initiative and pre-emptive strike and assassinations.
This is an important message sent directly to Hezbollah aimed to give a massage to Hassan Nasrallah to carefully consider his threats as he may find himself becoming very soon an Israeli target..
Yoni Ben Menachem
Senior Middle East Analyst
