The victory of Lebanon, in forcing the Israeli occupation army to withdraw and flee Lebanese territory, in the war of 2006, not only represented the first defeat inflicted on the Zionist Entity by an Arab force but also built a deterrence capacity against the occupying regime. This led the Israeli military to focus on the Resistance forces in the Gaza Strip, which would eventually develop its own capabilities to effectively combat the enemy.

As we mark 17 years since the 2006 July War on Lebanon, when a 33-day Israeli aggression on Lebanese territory was ultimately defeated and for the first time, the Zionist regime lost a war. Between July 12 to August 14, the Israeli onslaught proved disastrous for the Lebanese civilian population, with around a million people being displaced; while Zionist forces targeted civil infrastructure such as homes, schools, hospitals, and UN facilities, ultimately resulting in about $1.5 billion dollars in damages. In total, around 1,200 people were killed, the vast majority of whom were innocent civilians.

Despite the immense sacrifices of the Lebanese people, who were unjustly attacked by the Israeli military and air force, the Lebanese Resistance managed to not only successfully defend the nation's population from enduring further attacks but also thwarted attempts to control large parts of the country’s territory. Up until the 2006 war, despite having successfully forced the Israeli occupation out of Southern Lebanon in 2000, liberating the territory from the collaborators and Zionist forces, it was unthinkable that a local Resistance force could overcome the “might” of the Israeli regime.

What the Lebanese Resistance pulled off against the occupation army, inflicting high soldier casualties, overcoming its Merkava Tanks - said to be unstoppable at the time - and forcing the Zionist regime to retreat without achieving its objectives, was all unheard of. The evidence of this has been 17 years free of Israeli campaigns, invasions, and a relative state of calm that has managed to prevail along Lebanon’s Southern Border, despite the various Israeli provocations that have each been dealt with by the Resistance.

The 2006 victory destroyed the Israeli veneer of "invincibility" and crumbled its prized “deterrence capacity”, which it would quickly act to try and regain through its attacks on the Gaza Strip. In December of 2008, the Resistance forces in the Gaza Strip had begun developing their rocket arsenal to the point where they could strike Israeli targets to a greater capacity than before. The Zionist entity used this as an excuse to launch a show of force against a much less capable Resistance than the one they had encountered in Lebanon, adopting the idea that their 2008-9 war on Gaza would be a kind of revenge for what occurred in 2006. At least 1,400 Palestinians, the majority of which were civilians, were massacred by the Zionist regime and the amount of force used was a clear display that was intended to restore the image of the entity.

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Since that time, all of the wars launched by the Zionist entity singled out the Gaza Strip, with two more major wars in 2012 and then again in 2014. Yet, as time went by, the Resistance in Lebanon was developing in size and strength, making it less and less of a viable target. It is likely that the Israelis believed that the war on Syria would significantly weaken and/or dismantle Hezbollah, a theory that was proven wrong. And so, as a result of this, the efforts of the Zionists would be fixated on the Gaza Strip.

Interestingly, however, the Resistance in Gaza, drawing on its support from Hezbollah and other allies, in addition to inspiration from the victory of 2006 against the Israelis, continued to develop its own capacities. Although the wars in 2012 were horrific for the civilian population of Gaza, there was a sense of victory in that the Palestinian Resistance had developed its ability to engage with Zionist forces on the ground and inflict significant casualties on enemy forces. When the Israelis launched their attack in 2014, it was important to note that what they targeted and the way they behaved was different from the prior aggressions. 

The strategy had become even more targeted toward civilians, in order to have what is known as the Gazan Middle Class apply pressure on Hamas, as they had a significant say inside the besieged coastal Strip, and so they were targeted directly. The Palestinian Resistance managed to inflict significant combatant casualties on the Zionist forces, which had great social and political consequences for the ruling Israeli coalition at the time.

In 2018, the Zionist regime was dealt a significant blow, when the united Resistance factions in Gaza thwarted an Israeli raid, leading to an embarrassment of the occupation’s leadership and even the resignation of Avigdor Lieberman, who was serving as Israeli minister of war. When the Zionist regime would launch its next attack on Gaza in 2019, it then retreated to a new strategy of singling out Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), staying away from the most powerful Resistance group that governs the Gaza Strip - Hamas. Come 2021, the united Resistance factions launched their own attack in defense of Al-Quds, the battle of Seif al-Quds, which severely dented the image of the Zionist regime, and this victory for the Palestinian Resistance was achieved with the help of Hezbollah.

Since 2021, the Zionist entity has launched two more attacks against PIJ but has been deterred from a full-scale assault on Gaza and is petrified of committing to a ground invasion. It now finds itself surrounded by a united Resistance to the North and South, while it fails to prevent the development of a new Resistance stronghold inside the occupied West Bank. The Zionist entity is now the one that is deterred from attacking Lebanon, knowing the consequences of such actions, while it has no deterrence equation with the Palestinian Resistance, even in the West Bank, where its invasion of Jenin had failed to even penetrate into the heart of the Jenin Refugee Camp. None of today’s equations against the Israeli occupying entity would be in place without the victory of the Lebanese Resistance in 2006.