Three years have passed since Hamas’s attack shook Israel and triggered the ongoing genocidal war. The image of the Israeli army as an invincible force was shattered. In response, Israel used all its military power – except the nuclear bomb – and mobilised all its Western allies to unleash an unprecedent campaign of death and destruction that has devastated Gaza.

The Israeli army did not just target military positions and fighters of the Islamic resistance, it set out to punish the civilian population through massacres and mass destruction. By now, it has killed more than 74,000 and injured more than 180,000, starved the entire population, destroyed the healthcare system, devastated the education system, and wiped out most of Gaza’s life-sustaining infrastructure, including water treatment and desalination plants and electricity grid.

If the purpose of military power is to achieve political objectives, then the measure of success cannot be the number of people killed or the scale of destruction wrought. It has to be whether the conflict has ended on the desired terms.

But three years into this carnage, Israel appears unable to translate its military superiority into a political reality that reflects its stated goals.

From the start, the Israeli government made clear it aimed to free the captives, eliminate the Palestinian resistance, impose security control over the Gaza Strip, and establish an alternative administration. It also tacitly demonstrated it wished to prepare the ground for the eventual expulsion of the Palestinians.

So what has it achieved so far?

First, all captives have been freed.........

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