Netanyahu risking regional explosion, giving false image of victory with Hamas leader’s assassination: Mustafa Barghouti

ISTANBUL

As its war on the Gaza Strip enters a fourth deadly month, Israel is trying to compensate for its failures with tactics that are raising the risk of a “complete regional explosion,” according to senior Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti.

Barghouti was commenting on the assassination of Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy chief of Hamas killed in an attack in Lebanon on Tuesday, marking a serious escalation that many fear could trigger a wider regional conflict.

Al-Arouri, considered one of the founders of the Al-Qassam Brigades during the early 1990s, is the most senior Hamas leader killed since Oct. 7.

He was targeted in an Israeli drone strike in the capital Beirut along with two other commanders of the Al-Qassam Brigades, with Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warning that the assassination on Lebanese soil “will not go unpunished.”

Israel has not officially confirmed nor denied responsibility for the attack, but Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, hailed it as a “surgical strike against the Hamas leadership.”

In Barghouti’s view, the strike on al-Arouri reflects the reality that Israel’s campaign in Gaza“failed drastically in achieving any of its main goals.”

“What they’ve done in the assassinating Saleh al-Arouri was a way of trying to compensate for this failure,” Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Anadolu.

“Of all the Israeli goals, they couldn’t conduct fully the ethnic cleansing, they couldn’t destroy the Palestinian resistance, and they couldn't impose their occupation.”

Netanyahu believes that with this assassination “he can provide to the Israeli public an image of victory, which is not true,” Barghouti added.

“In reality, he is risking a total explosion of the region. But Netanyahu doesn’t care, not only about Palestinian lives, he doesn’t care even about Israeli lives. All he wants is the extension of this war for as long as possible to save himself from losing the position of the prime minister and going to jail eventually,” he said.

For this, Netanyahu is “even hoping to expand over into the north and into the West Bank, and he is encouraged by the fascist ministers in his government, like (Bezalel) Smotrich and (Itamar) Ben-Gvir,” he said.

These people view this war as one “of ideology and religious ideological action, because their goal is to annex not only the Gaza Strip but all of the West Bank,” he added.

Barghouti emphasized that this assassination “will not break the Palestinian people or the Palestinian resistance.”

“So many leaders before have been assassinated. Al-Arouri himself had said many times that he is expecting to be killed or becoming a martyr at any time, but he will not stop his struggle,” he said.

According to Barghouti, Netanyahu “will not succeed because there is a lot of growing opposition to his position thanks to the Palestinian resilience and steadfastness.”

“Eventually they have to stop. Israel cannot continue this war because it is affected seriously and by a very huge and deep economic crisis. They are also very sensitive to the big number of human losses they are encountering in the field,” he said.

“Also, the whole world is changing. We’ve never seen such an amount of solidarity from the peoples of the world as we see today.”

He said South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) could bring an end to the “act of genocide in Gaza.”

With the hearing set for next week in The Hague, Israel is trying to “neutralize the effect of what this court could decide, because this court is very serious,” he said.

“It’s not going to give just an advisory opinion, but in my opinion, it can actually issue an order to Israel to stop the act of genocide in Gaza,” said Barghouti.

“Israel will play games and the US will help Israel and the British government will try to help Israel. But that’s why so many other governments of the world should stand up now and support our call and support the South African case.”

Regional fallout

If Israel continues its “war crimes,” there is a high possibility of a regional spillover that “could affect Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and many other countries,” said Barghouti.

“I do believe that the peoples of many Arab countries will not allow the continuation of this passive behavior of some governments when it comes to the solidarity with the Palestinians,” he said.

Israel’s attempt to resolve the Palestine issue through normalization with some Arab countries has “failed dramatically,” he said.

“Nobody can now substitute or diminish, marginalize or shelve away the Palestinian issue,” he stressed.

Barghouti recalled the transformative impact of what happened in 1948 with the establishment of Israel, which Palestinians call the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” referring to the forced displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands, and the destruction of their society, culture and identity.

He said the events precipitated profound changes across the region, unleashing unrest and revolutions.

“I think this war is not just any other war. It will have a very serious impact on the whole region for two reasons. First of all, because the level of atrocity and war crimes that were committed against the Palestinian people have been exposed and this time they cannot be covered up,” he said.

“They are everywhere on social media. Nobody can hide away from them. But another factor is that the Arab world and the whole world showed that even when you are poor and weak and under occupation, you can still resist injustice. The whole idea of resistance will become very prominent, not only against Israeli occupation but against any colonial imperial system.”

‘Palestine has become a universal issue’

Barghouti stressed that Israel’s atrocities in Gaza have exposed it as “a Zionist, colonial settlement project and …. a country that is capable of committing war crimes to achieve their goals.”

“This will have a very serious effect in the long run. It actually has also affected the Palestinian behavior because a whole new Palestinian generation has been politicized in understanding that our struggle for freedom is unavoidable and that all these hopes that there can be a compromise with this Israeli establishment are going away,” he said.

Along with its deadly assault on Palestinians, Israel and the Netanyahu government have also tried to mobilize the “racism that exists in many countries of the world, but also all this idea of white supremacy and … Islamophobia against Palestinians,” he explained.

Some governments around the world “are not only complicit with these war crimes that Israel is doing, but they are participating in it, in particular, the United States and Britain … with their weapons, with their planes, with their soldiers,” said Barghouti.

However, he pointed out that there “is a great gap and division between the public opinion and the government opinion.”

“That is exactly similar to what happened in the Vietnam War, at the end of it, and exactly as it was with the struggle against apartheid in South Africa,” he said.

“There are many governments who have changed their position thanks to the pressure of their own people. So, at the public level, we see a big rise of support to Palestine, including in the United States, where the majority of people are against (President Joe) Biden’s position.”

In the first few weeks, Israel managed to distribute its propaganda and its own narrative, but now we are in a different situation, he said.

“Everybody is seeing the massacres, horrible massacres. Thousands of children killed. People are beginning the see the reality. Social media has allowed the world see the reality,” he said.

Many younger Americans, including Jewish people, are now siding with Palestine, he said.

“The most important impact today is that the issue of Palestine has become universal, humanitarian, and a human issue for the whole world,” he added.

Need for unified leadership

The current crisis has shown the imperative need for Palestinians to have “a unified leadership and … unified interim national unity government,” according to Barghouti.

“This is what we need as Palestinians. No other solution would work. And the majority of Palestinian forces and groups agree with this vision. Some people are still hesitant about it, but this is the only way to sustain and keep the unity between West Bank and Gaza, and to prevent the separation of West Bank and Gaza,” he asserted.

This is also essential to “block all the efforts of some countries to use the strategy of divide and conquer against us,” he said.

“We should work more with the peoples of different countries. We should work with civil society, with different political parties, parliaments,” said Barghouti.

“In addition to that, there should be a rise of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, BDS, movement, which is the best way of translating solidarity with Palestinians into material effect,” he added.

Barghouti said Palestinians are paying for their freedom “a high price that nobody should pay.”

“We’re talking about 29,000 Palestinians killed, if you count the people under the rubble, and no less than 12,000 children … I think this eventually will lead to getting us closer to freedom and to end this terrible occupation and system of apartheid and racism that Israel has created,” he said.

“There is no way today for us to stop struggling for our freedom, because life has shown that the Israeli establishment is not interested in a two-state solution or peace talks or any kind of compromise … This has made Palestinian people more resilient, more determined, and more insistent on getting their freedom. We will get our freedom. Nothing will stop us from achieving that.”