Peace in the Middle East looks increasingly out of reach
3 min read
Sometimes a country suffers a trauma so searing that it changes the risk calculation which underlies any national security strategy.
That was the case with the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, which led to the War on Terror and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The horrific Hamas terrorist assault on Israel on 7 October 2023 has had the same transformative effect in Israel. Up to that point, Israeli governments had relied on the deterrence effect of their military power to constrain Iranian-armed Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. What happened on 7 October changed that risk assessment.
What is lacking is any Israeli plan to turn its military victories into political success
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set the goal of destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages. After a year of relentless Israeli assault, Hamas has been badly damaged – but at astronomical cost in human life, humanitarian suffering and devastation across the Gaza Strip. Yet Hamas are still fighting, and many hostages are still in captivity.
Hezbollah in Lebanon has long posed a more potent threat to Israel. When a Hezbollah rocket accidentally hit a school sports field on the Golan Heights in July, killing 12 children, Netanyahu seized the opportunity to change the security balance for good. Iran tried to stand back from direct conflict, leaving its proxies to attack Israel. Now it too has been drawn into an escalating exchange of missile strikes.
Three factors make this year of war different to any other conflict in the region in the last 50 years. The first is the massive scale of Israeli anger and grief. Although the conduct of the war in Gaza has aroused much controversy in Israel, there is public support for dealing with the Hezbollah problem once and for all.
The second difference is the step change in the quality of intelligence from artificial intelligence and drones.
Third is the lack of any effective US leverage. Netanyahu has repeatedly ignored strong American pressure to accept a ceasefire deal in Gaza and a political settlement in Lebanon. Yet US weapons deliveries continue unaffected.
At this most dangerous moment in the region for decades, what is lacking is any Israeli plan to turn its military victories into political success. The aim seems to be to use overwhelming military superiority to bring its adversaries in effect to surrender.
That does not look to be a very likely outcome. Rather than breaking the cycle of violence, this security-first policy is more likely to perpetuate it with a new generation of traumatised young people determined to continuing the fight with Israel.
The old diplomat in me says there has to be a better way. The crisis started in Gaza, and that is the place to begin the work to wind down the tensions. At the moment neither Israel or Hamas are ready to accept the US-brokered ceasefire and hostage release deal. This would at least allow humanitarian relief to begin and a new Palestinian governance to emerge. The deal would not be zero risk for Israel, but neither would long-term military occupation of the territory.
Looking further ahead, it has become a truism to say that the solution of two independent states, Israel and Palestine, is dead. Yet no one has yet come up with a better way of enabling these two ancient peoples to live as neighbours in the same narrow strip of territory.
In the darkest days of the Second World War, British and US officials started to shape the future peace with the 1941 Atlantic Charter. The world needs a similar level of statesmanship from a new generation of leaders in the region to use the present crisis as an opportunity to build a better future.
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