Gaza: An Entry Point to the Protracted War

Description

The central theme of the book is the concept of a “protracted war” and the roots of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This is a war that does not begin at a specific moment—such as the “Al-Aqsa Flood” of October 7, 2023—but rather represents a continuation and culmination of a series of events and trajectories that shape the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Ghanem argues that this war is, at its core, an extension of a century of colonial rule over historic Palestine and the result of the interaction between Palestinian resistance forces and the unchecked expansion of the Israeli settler-colonial project. This perspective places the current conflict within a broader historical context and deconstructs narratives that attempt to confine it to isolated events. It emphasizes the enduring and conflict-ridden nature of the occupation, envisioning a war likely to span many years—or even decades. Through this book, Ghanem outlines the objective factors—Israeli, Arab, Islamic, and international—as well as the subjective Palestinian factors that will drive this protracted conflict. He anticipates wars that may differ in nature from previous ones, particularly given the alarming state of Palestinian institutional decay, the lack of a legitimate alternative or strategic vision for the national movement, the absence of serious planning, and a tendency to succumb to the illusion of the Zionist entity’s imminent collapse—an illusion that fosters complacency and precludes serious confrontation.