After two years and two days, a ceasefire was decided on the Gaza Strip according to President Trump’s plan (in reality Netanyahu – Ron Dermer’s plan). Once Hamas and Israel approved the plan last Thursday in Sharm El-Sheikh, Arab and international satellite channels began discussing it, raising tough questions about who the winner and loser are, who is victorious and who is defeated. The two-year aggression on Gaza penetrated the global and especially Western mindset, instilling two convictions:

First: The occupying state is weak and unable to endure without daily military, political, and media support from the United States and Western European countries.

Second: “Israel” is a state ruled by a savage gang lacking any ethical or legal system after the atrocities committed in Gaza. Consequently, it has become a danger to itself and to the lie it promotes about being part of the global democratic system allied with the Western world. This lie distorts the image of the entire West, which hastened to take somewhat balanced positions after successive recognitions of the Palestinian state.

Returning to the very early question of who is the winner and who is the loser, I am compelled, since I raised it in this article, to try as much as possible to outline the boundaries of gains—not victory—and the boundaries of losses—not defeat—for each side, based on the fact that what happened after October 8th aggression on Gaza is a dramatic and historic event comparable to the Arab defeat in June 1967. I can draw the following conclusions:

Regarding Netanyahu’s gains:

• He re-occupied the Gaza Strip after 18 years of Hamas’s full control. Importantly, this occupation occurred with an official agreement with Hamas itself, where occupation forces will control, according to agreed maps, about 60 to 70 percent of the Strip’s land, whereas before October 7th, the occupation had no soldiers on Gaza’s land.
• The occupation succeeded in destroying Hamas’s military capabilities and devastated the entire Gaza Strip according to the Samson theory “If I perish, I will take my enemies with me,” turning all Gaza residents into prisoners in exchange for releasing Israeli prisoners held by Hamas.
• According to opinion polls, Netanyahu is now Israel’s strongman and has regained the title “King of Israel,” which could return him as prime minister in any upcoming elections—something he could not have achieved without destroying Gaza and committing massacres there.

Regarding Netanyahu’s failures:

• His greatest failure is the failure of the displacement project for Gazans. Objectively, this failure was not only due to resistance and Gazans’ steadfastness on their land but mainly due to the positions of King Abdullah II, President Sisi, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and the UAE as major supporting forces that foiled and even crushed the project in its cradle.
• His failure to find an alternative Palestinian body in Gaza according to his theory (no Fatahstan nor Hamasstan). The attempt to create the phenomenon of thuggery represented by the Abu Shabab gang was a blatant example of this failure. By a Palestinian body, I mean a national Palestinian entity with legitimacy from the national Palestinian factions, specifically referring to the technocratic government being discussed to manage Gaza as a unifying national option.
• His failure to market the justifications for the war on Gaza after flooding the Strip with blood, killing, and destruction. Global sympathy during the two months following October 7 turned into repulsion and then condemnation of him and his government, cementing the image of the Palestinian “victim” in the world, which now understands the Palestinian cause as a people robbed of their land under the cover of Talmudic lies.

And what about Hamas?

Hamas did not win the war, that is true, but it gave the Palestinian cause presence and a humanitarian credit that began to reach towards the global mind’s rejection of the premise that a people like the Palestinians remain without an independent state.