 Last week, Israel launched yet another round of bombing raids on the besieged Gaza. The three-day bombing killed over 45 people, including 16 children. The attack comes a year and three months after the brutal air raids and bombing of Gaza that killed over 260 people. The regular attacks on Gaza have led to the destruction of basic amenities and pushed a huge section of the population into poverty. What are the factors that led to this latest brutal attack by Israel? The regional politics also play a role in these attacks. So there were a few reasons why the Israelis launched this supposedly pre-emptive operation on August 5th against the Gaza Strip. I mean, first of all, this is what Israel does to Gaza, right? Gaza's been under this air, land and sea blockade for like 15 years. And Israel does these periodic massacres in Gaza, which are intended to cause suffering to civilians. This is what Israeli strategists openly call, quote-unquote, you know, mowing the lawn. The idea that, you know, they have to regularly terrorize the population in Gaza into submission in the hope that they'll like abandon resistance or become unable to resist. And that's never been the case. But that's why every, you know, few years you'll have these massive bombing campaigns on Gaza. Sometimes they last a few days. Sometimes other times they've lasted a month. So that is first and foremost important to understand that this is part of how Israel, as far as Israel sees it, maintains its kind of like siege on Gaza, maintaining it as this open air prison. Where let's remember, you know, over 2 million people live in Gaza. About 80 percent of them are refugees or the descendants of refugees from 1948, from the Nakba, when Israel was founded and they ethnically cleansed over 700,000 Palestinians. So this is like, Gaza really is this open air prison for people who were forced out of their homes because they happen to be the wrong, the wrong religion, the wrong ethnicity. So that's a side, you know, that we have to always keep that in mind whenever there is an Israeli attack on Gaza, that that is really the underlying reason for these periodic massacres. That said, you know, the stated pretext by the Israelis for this bombing campaign was that Palestinian Islamic Jihad was planning to launch an attack from Gaza on Israelis. And earlier in that week, you know, Israel had actually arrested one of the group's leaders in the West Bank city of Janine where there have been ongoing Israeli raids. So this is the pretext in the lead up to this Israeli assault. The Israeli media was really playing up the idea of this like imminent Islamic Jihad attack that was going to supposedly target Israeli settlements at the border with Gaza. So the Israeli population was primed for an assault on Gaza. Like the groundwork was laid for them to be to understand there was going to be an assault. The Israelis had put the border settlements in Israel on alert, cancelled schools, told everybody to be prepared to go to bomb shelters. So it's important to emphasize, however, that there never was an Islamic Jihad attack, right? There wasn't one that took place either before or after Israel's assault on Gaza. Whether there was going to be an attack, we'll really never know. But this sort of preemptive nature of Israel's attacks, this idea that Israel can attack before anything has even happened is also an ongoing pattern in the way that the Israelis attack Palestinians. They reserve the right, which actually violates international law to launch preemptive attacks on Palestinians, never really providing evidence that anything was going to take place. So that's, you know, so why did Israel launch this attack? It did take many observers by surprise. There's I think a few reasons that we need to take into account here. First, we have to take into account internal Israeli politics. So Israeli elections are coming up in November after the collapse of its coalition government under the far right Naftali Bennett. So the supposed centrist, Yair Lapid, replaced Naftali Bennett as prime minister since the collapse of the government. And we know that Israeli politicians regularly brag about their willingness to kill Palestinians as a way to win votes, right? So Lapid maybe was trying to gain popularity by showing he's willing to kill Palestinians. And the same goes for Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who we should remember, ran for office back in 2014. And during his campaign in a video, he actually boasted, sorry for office in the last round, but during his campaign, he boasted in a video that back in 2014 he had been responsible for bombing Gaza back into the Stone Age. So again, this is what Israeli politicians do. And it appears like, you know, Lapid's poll numbers did actually go up after this recent campaign in Gaza. And Netanyahu, according to recent polls, is actually likely to do quite well and be able to form a coalition or be able to form a government with like 61 seats. So Lapid, and that's how much you need, right, to like form a government. Lapid is actually very, very concerned about Netanyahu's high poll numbers. And so a part of, you know, this might not be the only reason why Lapid chose to launch this military operation because it doesn't really matter who's in charge in Israel. You always have these kinds of killings of Palestinians, but this certainly probably played a role in the calculation to launch this campaign as well as other acts of violence that we've seen across the West Bank in recent weeks by his government. So then another reason that has been brought up as possibly why the Israelis decided to do this is that, you know, there's this idea of sort of splitting the resistance, splitting the Palestinian resistance. So during this kind of 15-year long siege on Gaza, like I mentioned, you know, there's been several periodic Israeli attacks on Gaza that have killed thousands of civilians, destroyed tens of thousands of homes. Yet we have to keep in mind that all of these attacks, except for the one that we just witnessed, the target was Hamas. But this time Israel's target was Islamic Jihad, which is a much, much smaller group that, unlike Hamas, has no actual governing responsibilities. And also Islamic Jihad is closer to Iran than even Hamas is, and is much more aligned with the, you know, what we call the resistance axis, which includes Iran and Hezbollah. So in some, you know, some have, have, have speculated that this was a way for the Israelis to, you know, kind of go after Iran by proxy without really having to go to over the Iran as they see it and as, you know, Hezbollah as well, but also to force Hamas to choose to not get involved and therefore create some sort of fissure between the resistance groups, even though it didn't actually work. And, you know, rhetorically, Hamas actually supported Islamic Jihad's response to the Israelis. They didn't get involved themselves because they have other things to keep in mind, like that the fact that they have to actually govern the Gaza Strip. But they did support Islamic Jihad. They expressed condolences for the loss of their leaders in Israel's assassination on Islamic Jihad fighters. And they did support, you know, Islamic Jihad firing rockets back at Israel. And then another reason that's, that's been brought up as possibly, you know, part of the Israeli calculation here is sending a message to Hezbollah. So there are these maritime negotiations that have been taking place, which we've talked about in past episodes, between the Lebanese and the Israelis over delineating the maritime border, because there are these offshore gas fields in the Mediterranean that both countries would like to exploit. However, Israel is, because it's Israel, demanding more of the offshore gas fields that actually belongs to them under international law. And the Americans are the ones that are mediating these negotiations, which is of course a huge conflict of interest considering America, you know, is completely pro-Israel and funds Israel to the tune of four billion dollars a year in military aid. And also the negotiator who's been placed in charge is this guy, Amos Hodgstein, who is actually, you know, Israeli himself, as well as American, and actually serve in the Israeli military. But aside from all that, these negotiations have been ongoing. It has escalated, tensions have escalated in the past several weeks and couple months, because the Israelis sent a drilling ship to an area that Lebanon considers belongs to them. And, you know, Hezbollah has, because Lebanon has a very weak government right now, that's really unable to properly negotiate on Lebanon's behalf, especially because there's like this economic collapse and everyone in Lebanon is scared of like upsetting the Americans and U.S. sanctions. Hezbollah has kind of stepped in to act as like leverage against the Israelis. And Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly warned Israel that Hezbollah will actually go to war if Israel attempts to drill in Lebanese waters before an agreement is reached. And it has to be an agreement that is fair to Lebanon. And he actually issued a warning as recently as this week, you know, saying that any arm that reaches to steal Lebanon's wealth will be cut off. This was during his assura speech. He said that he, you know, we will not tolerate the idea that our wealth is stolen. And once again threatened, you know, we will go to war over this. So, and then also last month, the Israeli military actually shot down three unarmed Hezbollah drones flying over the Karish field, which is the field that, you know, both Lebanon and Israel have some claim over. And Hezbollah, of course, later aired drone footage showing Israeli ships in the area and saying, you know, just send them the message that we are capable of hitting your ships if you begin drilling in Lebanese waters. So the point is to say that many believe that, you know, Israel, especially Hezbollah, actually believes that Israel isn't capable of picking a fight with Hezbollah because Hezbollah is very strong and is capable of actually causing real damage if Israel were to start a war. So this was kind of pitting picking on a weaker arm of the resistance, right? Islamic jihad is sort of contained in Gaza and the West Bank certainly does not have the deterrence capacity that Hezbollah has, doesn't have the sophisticated weapons that Hezbollah has. So Israel was kind of picking on, you know, the weaker guy to send a message to Hezbollah. But in fact, Hezbollah viewed this as showing a real Israeli weakness because Israel wasn't actually able to, they weren't able to take out Islamic jihad. Islamic jihad still exists. It still has the capability to strike at Israel. And it did strike at Israel and this war ended in three days as a result. So it actually, this round of violence showed Hezbollah that Israel is actually weaker than maybe they had initially thought. So that's an element of this as well. Israel, of course, believes it did gain its deterrence, but like I said, Islamic jihad still exists. It can still launch attacks. So that doesn't seem to be true. That said, you know, after the ceasefire, which was negotiated by, brokered by the Egyptians, you know, Israel did go on to launch more operations, but specifically against the West Bank. Israel killed several Palestinians in an early morning assaults recently on the old city of Nablus. And the target of what was essentially an extra, extra judicial killing was this resistance fighter, Ibrahim al-Nablusi, who was a member of the Al-Aqsa martyrs brigade, who was wanted by the Israelis for organizing attacks against soldiers. And he had actually evaded several Israeli assassination attempts in the past few years. And he actually even recorded a fair royal message in his final moments telling Palestinians to keep fighting and to never put down their weapons. And of course, children were killed in this attack as well, which, you know, brings the number of children killed this year by the Israelis to 30. And so that, you know, all that's to say that Lapid, despite the war in Gaza ending has continued, what I believe is really this kind of campaign tour showing these far right Israelis that he can kill Palestinians and he should be the legitimate leader of Israel and trying to gain votes, which is, you know, pretty cynical, but really is how Israeli politics works. So, I mean, moving forward, we're probably going to see ongoing attacks, ongoing raids on Palestinians across the West Bank. There's always the chance of an escalation taking place once again between Israel and Gaza, especially as election season comes closer and closer. So, you know, whenever there's Israeli elections, it really is always bad news for Palestinians.