Remaking the Middle East: does it always have to be for the worst?

This week marks the first anniversary of the Hamas attacks against Israeli kibbutzim and military bases on 7 October 2023, in which 1145 Israeli soldiers and civilians lost their lives, thousands were injured and 251 Israelis were taken hostage to be held by Hamas in Gaza. Ninety seven hostages are still in captivity although it is uncertain how many of these are still alive. The Hamas attack was the worst blow against Israel since the founding of the Jewish state in the War of Independence in 1948. The death toll greatly exceeded what Israel’s enemies had been able to inflict on it in the Six-Day War of June 1967 or the Yom Kippur War of October 1973. Indeed, it was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and the anti-Jewish pogroms that followed in Eastern Europe in the immediate aftermath of World War Two.

When Israel is attacked, or its civilians are targeted (at home or abroad), Israel always retaliates. It is the first law of the country’s security policy and deterrence posture. Usually, this has led to Israel going after the instigators of the attacks and the support network behind them. Targeted assassinations, based on painstaking intelligence work, have long been the hallmark of Israel’s security establishment. So, after a cell of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) attacked the Olympic village in Munich in 1972, taking hostage and killing several Israeli athletes, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, Mossad, spent the next decade compiling a list of all the Palestinians who had helped to plan and finance this operation. Israeli hit squads then scattered across the globe to locate and kill these individuals one by one. There is a myriad of other celebrated examples. The Palestinian militant, Yahya Ayyash, known as ‘The Engineer’, was killed in Gaza in 1996 when his mobile phone exploded. The second Secretary General of Hamas and predecessor of Hassan Nasrallah, Abbas al-Musawi, was assassinated in his wheelchair by an Israeli strike in Beirut in 1992. What has happened over the past 12 months is that we have seen Mossad take the practice of revenge through targeted assassination to the next level. The booby-trapping of pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon last month represented an unprecedented weaponisation of household civilian devices. Over 2000 Hezbollah operatives and associates, including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, were hit, including women and children. Some were killed and most sustained life-changing injuries such as loss of sight. Gaza and Beirut are well-known hunting grounds for the Israelis but since the 7 October attack, they have shown the capacity to strike further afield: killing senior commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, taking out the Hamas head of operations, Saeed Atallah, in the northern city of Tripoli in Lebanon and going directly into the capital of the arch Iranian enemy, Tehran, to assassinate the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh. Yet what has impressed most of all has been Israel’s decapitation of the senior Hezbollah leadership despite the extensive efforts these individuals took to protect themselves in their southern Beirut stronghold of Dahieh. On 27 September, the Israeli air force struck the headquarters of Hamas killing its long-standing leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and a dozen of his senior commanders. Within days, another Hezbollah leader had been named, Hashem Safieddine, but then it was reported that he had been killed in an Israeli strike too. The goal of targeted killings is to disrupt the leadership and operational capacity of the adversary so that its ability to inflict harm is reduced- at least for a while. The manner in which Israel’s intelligence services have been able to infiltrate Hezbollah and Hamas, including their communications and supply chains, is remarkable in its audacity. Technical intercepts have undoubtedly been supported by human intelligence from the inside. Together, they have certainly taken the traditional objective of pushing the Iranian-supported groups that threaten Israel down a peg or two to a new level. After their tragic failure to anticipate the Hamas attack on 7 October Israel’s intelligence services needed badly to redeem themselves, and they have certainly achieved this in Lebanon. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth have rarely been so ruthlessly applied.

But this time it is different. Israel’s government and society have been deeply traumatised by the 7 October incursion of Hamas into Israel. The savagery of the Hamas fighters in killing civilians, including women and children, as well as the ease with which Israel’s supposedly high-tech security barriers were penetrated, have given Israelis, usually protected by their army and air defence systems, a newfound sense of vulnerability. It was also unwise for Hezbollah to come in on the back of Hamas’s attack by firing rockets into northern Israel, forcing 60,000 Israelis to leave their homes and become refugees in their own country. The Houthis fired a drone against Tel Aviv, hitting an apartment block, and tried to disrupt shipping in the Red Sea, closing the Israeli port of Eilat. Groups in Syria fired rockets into the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967. These various moves gave Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government, not to speak of many Israelis, the impression of a coordinated, multi-pronged strike by the ‘Axis of Resistance’ or ‘Ring of Fire’ directed from Tehran. So, this time round Netanyahu rejected the usual tit for tat response and decided to destroy Israel’s adversaries rather than simply weaken them. In doing so, he was no doubt counting on the sense of outrage in both Israel and abroad to give him a casus belli for a full-scale military campaign against both Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and possibly Iran, which Netanyahu has blamed for masterminding all the threats to Israel for decades already. Seeing Iran progressively encircle Israel by building up and arming its proxy groups, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq, Islamic Jihad in Syria and the Houthis in Yemen, was certainly a major headache for the Israeli security establishment. Israel tried for years to frustrate this encirclement by striking Iranian arms convoys crossing Syria to supply Hezbollah in Lebanon with more rockets and missiles, including long-range ballistic missiles. It also tried to prevent Hamas being supplied through underground tunnels at the Rafah crossing point from Egypt into Gaza, and looked on approvingly as Saudi Arabia and the UAE launched their air campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. But these measures were only partially effective, and President Trump’s repudiation of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 –although the Israelis had always found it flawed – allowed Tehran to go back to nuclear enrichment and accelerate its weapons programme. Proxy forces have always been difficult to eliminate entirely as they have numerous fighters dressed as civilians, are deeply rooted in local populations, have decentralised command structures and are skilful at hiding themselves and their weapons in civilian buildings – such as schools, hospitals, refugee camps and apartment blocks – which are difficult from a legal and humanitarian viewpoint to attack. Yet after 7 October, the Israelis declared to take this challenge head-on.

From a strictly military perspective, the balance sheet after one year of conflict is a positive one for Netanyahu and his government. Hamas has been decimated in Gaza losing around 60% of its fighters with 15,000 killed or captured, and having many of its tunnels and rocket launchers destroyed. As with Hezbollah, its leadership has been decimated although the new Hamas leader, and mastermind of the 7 October attack, Yahya Sinwar, is still hiding out in a tunnel in the Rafah area and there are still 97 Israeli hostages to locate and bring back alive, if this is still possible. Israel has been able to reduce its military presence in Gaza and send troops to its northern border facing Hezbollah. It is now focusing on controlling the main roads north to south and east to west in Gaza to prevent an influx of Palestinian displaced persons and Hamas fighters back to Gaza city. The Israeli Defence Forces fear that Hamas may be trying to reconstitute itself in the north of Gaza, so they still are launching frequent raids back over the border. Israel has also inflicted real damage on Hezbollah, demonstrating its ability to penetrate its innermost circles and damaging its reputation for competence. Tel Aviv claims to have destroyed one-half of Hezbollah’s arsenal of 120,000 Iranian-supplied missiles and 2000 of its missile launchers and ammunition depots in southern Lebanon, killing to date 450 Hezbollah fighters. Israel’s fabled air defence system (based on Arrow, David’s Sling and Iron Dome interceptors) has proven its worth in shooting down the vast majority of the 500 or so drones and missiles that Iran has fired against the country in two salvoes, in April and September. Some Iranian missiles were even shot down in space, a first for missile defence. Although the Iranians inflicted some damage – a school and apartment block were hit and in the most recent strike a Palestinian Arab was killed by falling debris in the West Bank – the strategic impact of these missile attacks has been minimal, apart from the worrying precedent of Iran attacking Israel directly, leading to the spectre of escalation and a widening regional war. At the same time, and despite the clear frustration of not being consulted by Netanyahu or having its advice heeded by his government, the Biden Administration has stood firmly behind Israel, sending it new weapons packages worth billions and using the US Navy in the region to help it shoot down the Iranian missiles. Other allies have also continued to supply Israel, such as the United Kingdom, France and Germany, despite some domestic controversy, and the UK has participated too in Israel’s missile defence by intercepting Iranian missiles from its airbase at Akrotiri in Cyprus. When the Israeli airforce strikes Hezbollah in Lebanon, fuel depots at Hodeidah in Yemen or destroys a radar site in Iran in retaliation for Tehran’s first missile salvo, its pilots are flying in US-made F15s and firing US-made 1000 and 2000-pound guided munitions. The US and the UK have also served Israel’s cause by launching airstrikes against Houthi missile launchers and weapons sites in Yemen as well as sending ships to patrol the Red Sea and keep this important economic lifeline for Tel Aviv as well as international commercial shipping open. Moreover, thus far there has been little uproar in the Middle East. No massive demonstrations in the Gulf States, generally supportive of the Palestinian cause like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. The Arab countries participating in the Abraham Accords have not cut diplomatic ties with Israel, and Egypt and Jordan have not denounced their long-standing peace treaties with the Jewish state. There have been Israeli airstrikes and clashes with Palestinian radicals in the West Bank but, so far, no general uprising or Intifada as we witnessed in 2006. Demoralised by decades of catastrophic civil war in Syria, Libya and Yemen, political paralysis in Lebanon and worsening economic conditions, climate change impacts and public health failings across the region, many Arabs seem to prefer to play out their anger and frustration on social media rather than in the streets. In 1973 in the wake of the Yom Kippur War the oil price quadrupled and the global economy tanked with lasting effects. This time round the oil price has remained stable, at least until a week or so ago when the prospect of Israel strikes against Iranian oil production sites and port terminals sent prices up by 5%. In launching his attack on 7 October, Yahya Sinwar was undoubtedly hoping for stronger support from both Iran and the Arab states as well as more military intervention from the other Iranian proxies in the region. But they have been either unable or unwilling to supply this. Israel has not so far been restrained by either its allies nor its enemies.

Yet the humanitarian and economic consequences of the Israeli retaliation have been appalling – and growing. Health officials in Gaza report that over 42,000 people have been killed, over half of them women and children. Two million inhabitants have been displaced. The BBC reported on one family living in a flimsy tent that had been forced to move 15 times in the past 12 months to avoid the violence. Nearly 70% of the buildings in Gaza have been entirely destroyed or severely damaged. The editor of The Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes, visiting the strip, reported that she could not see a single building left intact. The UN has repeatedly warned of famine in Gaza as despite the chronic food and freshwater shortages Israel is still not allowing sufficient humanitarian assistance into the strip. There is the risk of disease and as Israel has bombarded most of the hospitals, claiming that they were being used by Hamas as command posts, the public health system has completely collapsed. How Gaza can ever be rebuilt and jobs and welfare services recreated for its 2.1m inhabitants seems beyond the human imagination at the present time. In Lebanon over 1mn people (a quarter of the population) have been displaced. Israel’s bombing of southern Beirut, a particularly densely populated area, has forced thousands to sleep in the open or in nearby mosques. Over 1200 Lebanese civilians have already been killed and this number of deaths is bound to go higher as winter approaches and the humanitarian crisis worsens. Many Syrian refugees have tried to flee back into Syria but with Israel striking the border crossings, to prevent supplies for Hezbollah reaching Lebanon from Syria, and all but a few commercial flights out of Beirut airport suspended, leaving Lebanon is becoming increasingly hazardous and expensive. In Israel too, there is a humanitarian crisis, albeit on a vastly smaller scale, with the 60,000 people displaced from the north living in hotels at the government’s expense and the kibbutzim along the border with Gaza, and attacked by Hamas on 7 October, still devastated and depopulated.

The escalating humanitarian crisis in the Middle East is one important reason why we cannot afford the next 12 months to be like the past 12 months. Yet there are a number of political and strategic reasons as well why a change of course by Israel and greater pressure on it by the US and its European allies is now urgently necessary.

The first is that despite Israel’s unquestionable military successes, we are no closer to knowing what Tel Aviv’s war aims look like, and how, in the long run, Israel, the wider region and the transatlantic community, will come out of all this more secure and peaceful than when Netanyahu went full in. Yes, we are undoubtedly better off with terrorists with blood on their hands, such as Nasrallah or Sinwar or the mastermind of the 1983 attack against US marines in Beirut, Fuad Shukr, taken off the field of action. Yet these actions in themselves will not remake the Middle East or make Israel more secure. Netanyahu always talks as if Iran is the one and only problem and if the Iranian regime could be overthrown or at least weakened, all would be well. Yet since Israel’s founding in 1948, its most serious and enduring security problem has been how to live side by side with its Palestinian population and Palestinian neighbours, immediately beyond its borders. Whatever happens in Tehran is not going to change this fundamental reality, which can only be solved within Israel, and not by attempts to re-engineer the wider region. It is Palestinian disenfranchisement that destabilises the region and sustains the radicals, not the other way around. It was ironic and telling that at the moment of Iran’s second missile salvo – which, as mentioned, killed one Palestinian – eight Israelis died in a Palestinian terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. So, to use the expression of Queen Elizabeth I of England advising the Earl of Essex how to conduct the Irish campaign in 1601, the key thing for Israel is to focus on the Palestinian trunk of the tree rather than the regional branches. Without the trunk, the branches simply wither away. Moreover, there is the issue of diminishing returns as military campaigns drag on. During the Second World War, Nazi Germany lost one-third of its army in the last four months of the war when its defeat and capitulation were already inevitable. Most US soldiers died in Korea in the last two years of the 1950-1953 war, when the battle lines were frozen, and thousands died on both sides for the capture of insignificant hills. So, for Israel the issue is when has the high point of its military operation been reached – when it is achieving maximum results for minimal losses and levels of destruction on its side. Afterwards, it is the law of diminishing returns. Both Hamas and Hezbollah have been severely weakened, but eliminating them entirely is a wholly different proposition. In the case of Hezbollah, this will require a ground invasion of southern Lebanon (and probably beyond), which the Israeli Defence Forces have already begun. But ground operations mean casualties. Israel has already had 300 and more of its soldiers killed in Gaza and around a dozen so far in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has still been able to fire 135 rockets into Israel in a single day, hitting the port city of Haifa. The movement was clearly vulnerable at the level of its leadership and support network in Beirut but its fighters on the ground will be energised by a direct clash with Israeli forces and fight doggedly to reclaim some of Hezbollah’s lost credibility. Foreign occupations have not gone well for Israel in the past. It withdrew from the Sinai in 1980, from Gaza in 2005 and from Lebanon after two cross-border invasions in 1982 and 2006. The foreign occupations were costly and damaged Israel’s image as a democracy in the eyes of global opinion. There is no reason to believe that it would go better this time round. Indeed, some opinion polls conducted in Lebanon and the West Bank among Arabs demonstrate that support for Hamas and Hezbollah has been rising whereas before 7 October, it was falling due to the manifest failings of both organisations when it came to government and administration. In particular, Hezbollah was blamed for preventing the election of a new President in Lebanon and thereby the formation of a new multiparty and reformist government. No doubt, after the Israeli retaliation neither Hezbollah nor Hamas will have difficulty in replenishing their ranks or weapons stockpiles. So, it makes little sense for Israel to use up its precious military and economic resources in a futile attempt to totally eliminate Hamas or Hezbollah, or break their lock hold over their territories. Even if they did disappear, other equally radical groups will sooner or later spring up to take their place, as they have always done in the past. In this kind of warfare, there is no decisive battlefield victory but only grinding attrition. States can be deterred but it is difficult to do this with radical groups. They can be demilitarised but not deradicalised – at least not in the current climate of universal hatred.

The related problem for Israel is that it is being drawn deeper into multiple conflicts on multiple fronts, which could soon overwhelm the resources of this small country of 10 million people. All the more so the Netanyahu government doesn’t seem sure of what it is trying to realistically achieve. In Gaza, there is no plan for reconstruction although French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested that Paris will hold an initial international conference on this soon. Some Israeli officials propose an international peacekeeping force for Gaza; others want an Arab-led force or a return to rule by the largely ineffective and discredited Palestinian Authority, which was evicted from Gaza by Hamas in 2006 and today has only tenuous control over Palestinians in the West Bank. Some Israeli politicians on the far-right advocate a permanent Israeli military occupation of Gaza and a return of the settlements to the north, which the Israeli forces had to dismantle using force in 2005. What is certain is that Israel will not be able to move 2.1mn Gazan Palestinians to somewhere else in the Middle East. Egypt will not take them, and neither will Jordan or Lebanon. Whatever arrangements are made for administering Gaza, the welfare of its population will remain a responsibility of Israel, unless of course the latter finally accepts the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Similarly, Israeli invasions of Lebanon have weakened the already fragile Lebanese state and army as much as they have undermined Hezbollah. This, in turn, only gives the Islamist movement a larger blocking minority in the Lebanese Parliament and allows it to gain credibility with the population by providing the social services that the corrupt and enfeebled Lebanese state is unable to deliver. Military strategy counsels against taking on too many adversaries on too many fronts at the same time and dispersing precious and limited military strength in the process. Going into Lebanon may well take the pressure off Hamas in Gaza. There is also an impact within Israel itself. The economy is sinking as more reservists are being called up and abandoning their peacetime jobs and businesses. Rising defence spending is bound to impact on inflation and reduced social spending. Yet the war has not reduced the deep divisions in Israeli society with 70% of the electorate saying they will vote against Netanyahu, much the same as when hundreds of thousands demonstrated against the government’s plans before the war to reduce the independence of the judiciary. Netanyahu has refused to accept any blame for the events of 7 October and so far, has not established a commission of enquiry into the security lapses. True, the campaign against Hezbollah and potentially Iran is more popular among Israelis than Gaza as there are no hostages at stake. But the Orthodox Jews still refuse to do their military service depriving the army of 60,000 extra recruits. Israel’s right-wing settlers illegally occupying Palestinian territory on the West Bank are not helping Israel either. In pushing Palestinians out of their villages, they are only giving the impression that Israel tolerates violent illegality when it serves its own side and stirring up more Palestinian resentment. Moreover, it is clear from the resignations from Netanyahu’s cabinet over the past 12 months that not all of Israel’s security establishment share the view that war is the only solution and that ceasefires or humanitarian pauses are dangerous illusions that are designed to frustrate Israel from achieving its victory. The problem comes from mixing Israel’s domestic politics with its external strategic interests, particularly if Netanyahu pursues the war primarily to keep his unruly coalition together, and to postpone his day of reckoning with the electorate in the hope that war with Hezbollah or Iran could revive his political fortunes.The West too has much to fear from a continuation of the violence. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the streets of European capitals or US university campuses have not so far led to enormous violence or social unrest. But antisemitism is reported to be on the rise. There have been attacks against the Israeli embassies in Copenhagen and Stockholm, and Denmark has instituted border controls on its frontiers with Sweden and Germany. In the UK election last July, five safe Labour Party constituencies went to independent candidates campaigning on a pro-Palestinian platform. Many governments, including those of Joe Biden in the US and Keir Starmer in the UK, are having to walk a delicate dividing line between continuing public support for Israel and arms deliveries, on the one hand, and the pro-Palestinian activists within their parties and electorates on the other. Western intelligence services worry that the wars in Lebanon and Gaza could radicalise a new generation of jihadists, leading to a revival of terrorism in Europe and North America just at the moment when ISIL and Al-Qaeda seemed to be in retreat, and turning their attention to Africa. It is disturbing that some of the demonstrators wave placards in support of Hamas and Hezbollah and deny Israel’s right to exist or even question whether 7 October actually happened.  Combating disinformation and the rewriting of history is an urgent task of all of Israel’s partners, even while they justifiably call on Israel to exercise more restraint. So, although the blowback from the war has been limited in the West so far, it is sufficiently serious to threaten the election chances of the Democrats in the US if they lose the Arab-American vote, or to force the EU to re-impose the travel and border restrictions that we all hoped were behind us. As the Middle East consumes all the political oxygen, other conflicts like Ukraine, Sudan or Afghanistan move to second stage, as we saw recently from the debates at the UN General Assembly in New York.

In this context, a war with Iran, even though Tel Aviv sees it as the arch-enemy, doesn’t make sense. What Israel really wants to do is to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. But the time when this was feasible has passed. The facilities are now deep underground, and Israel would need US-specialised bombs and aircraft to do the job, which will not be forthcoming as the Biden administration wants to avoid an all-out war, which would inevitably suck the US in. Strikes on Iran’s oil industry or power grid would disrupt global oil supplies and prices or essentially harm Iranian civilians who have opposed the regime of the Ayatollahs. Israel may believe that Iran is economically weak as the result of sanctions and is ripe for regime change. But it is difficult to see how Israeli strikes on Iranian infrastructure and cities would topple the regime as opposed to giving it a new resistance legitimacy. Tehran would certainly accelerate its nuclear programme in response and probably attack commercial shipping and oil tankers, in particular in the Strait of Hormuz as well. It has lots of tools in its toolbox including cyberattacks like the one against Saudi Aramco a few years ago. Also, Israel’s air and missile defences, although impressive, are not impregnable. Iran has thousands of more powerful, fast-flying ballistic missiles that could overwhelm those defences and kill thousands of Israeli civilians. Again, Israel could certainly punish Iran, but it is a resilient country used to hardship, and if its regime and military production capabilities remain in place, it is not clear what long-term strategic purpose a major Israeli attack on Iran would achieve. As Israel seems determined to attack Iran in retaliation, a better response would be a limited strike on Iranian military bases to destroy missile launchers, radars and ammunition sites to demonstrate its vulnerability but also convey the message that Israel will desist if Iran refrains from further direct attacks on its territory. Israel’s eastern partners will then need to return to the policy of containing Iran’s nuclear programme and belligerence by denying it technology and tightening the sanctions regime. It’s not perfect but it’s better than a war that would not change the regional reality in the way that Netanyahu and his supporters would hope. Keeping Iran in a weak position and reducing its regional malign influence are better strategies. Israel should rest on its laurels in shooting down Iran’s missile salvoes thus far.

The irony of Israel’s history is that it has fought three major wars against its enemies (in 1948, 1967 and 1973), each time with shattering success. But none of these military successes have brought Israel lasting peace or security. Turning military success into diplomatic breakthroughs and political and human reconciliation has always eluded Israel, even its governments that were more far-sighted than that of Benjamin Netanyahu. The right-wingers in Israel believe that peace will come from territorial expansion: incorporating all the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights into Israel and perhaps a slice of southern Lebanon along the current Israeli border as well. But this course of action would be disastrous for Israel. It would vastly increase the country’s Palestinian and Arab population, stop the Abraham Accords with the Arab states in their tracks, burden the Israel Defence Forces with a permanent and costly military policing role and dismantle the Palestinian Authority, leaving the leadership of the Palestinians even more in the hands of the extremists. It would also be completely illegal, violate multiple UN Resolutions and cost Israel the residue of international support and sympathy that it still enjoys. A different strategy is required.

At the moment, Israelis are looking back as they remember the 7 October attack and come to terms with the grief and pain that it has caused throughout their society, and well beyond the families of those killed by Hamas or taken hostage. Support for a separate Palestinian state is at an all-time low and the desire for revenge against Israel’s opponents is still strong. Yet half of the population senses that business as usual, whereby Israel enjoys a fragile peace for a while, then experiences a short crisis, and then goes back to the fragile peace until the next crisis cannot be the recipe for the country’s future. The fundamental issues need to be confronted. So, in a few days, millions of Israelis will start to ask how the wars are going to end, and what the future of Israel is going to look like. The country is clearly going to need outside help to move to a new, more hopeful strategy. So, now is the time for Israel’s partners who care deeply about its future to start debating the elements of a future course. What could be on the table?

First and foremost, the allies should commit to support Israel’s legitimate right of self-defence against unprovoked attacks. The US and key European states like the UK, France, Germany and Italy, could deploy missile defence batteries in Israel on a rotating basis to complement Israel’s own Iron Dome and Arrow systems. As the US has done recently, they could station air defence frigates and destroyers, like the UK’s Type 42, off Israel’s coast, again on a rotating basis, to support the Israeli defence forces in deterring missile and drone strikes or help to shoot down incoming missiles. They should continue to supply Israel with the most advanced military capabilities provided that these are used only for legitimate self-defence and that the Israeli forces respect international standards of humanitarian and civilian protection and human rights. At the same time, the allies should work with Israel on a strategy to choke the Iranian proxies, like Hezbollah and Hamas, in the region by restricting their access to finance and weapons. They need to pool intelligence and restrict the movements of the leaders of these groups. It would be helpful too if the allies could have a common agreement on designating the groups as terrorist organisations. For instance, unlike the US, the UK does not yet recognise Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organisation, although the current Labour government, during its years in opposition, criticised its Conservative predecessor for not doing this.

Next, the allies need to work with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel to make Palestinian governance more efficient and better able to compete with Hamas and other radical groups for the loyalty of Palestinians. It will not be easy. The current leadership of Mahmoud Abbas is weak and he has postponed elections for over a decade arguing that the PA cannot expect a free and fair vote in Hamas-controlled Gaza, but in reality fearing the outcome of the popular verdict. The PA has a reputation for corruption and division. Yet its moderation, control of the Palestinian police and willingness in principle to recognise Israel and work with it still make it the best option to lead a future administration in Gaza. So, as soon as the war ends, there should be elections for a new PA leadership and the allies need to help that new leadership with finance and expert personnel to set up a post-war government in Gaza. Hospitals and schools will need to be rebuilt, along with critical infrastructure such as ports, airstrips and telecommunications, and a long-term system for the equitable distribution of humanitarian aid established. The UN agency in Gaza, UNRWA, will need to be resourced. For a few years, an international tutelage can oversee the work of the PA to ensure that the billions of dollars needed to rebuild the housing stock are properly and cost-effectively spent to reduce corruption or the diversion of funds for weapons. Gaza will need to be demilitarised and the cooperation of Egypt secured to ensure that weapons do not enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing. But freedom of movement for Palestinians between Gaza and the West Bank should be restored. Yet Israel too needs to play its part in the reconstruction of Gaza, having been responsible for its current destruction. It too should provide finance to the PA and encourage Israeli construction firms to enter into joint ventures with Palestinian firms. Allowing Palestinian workers to cross the border to work in Israel is an important step in boosting the incomes of families in Gaza.

A third prerequisite of peace is a plan to help Lebanon. This country is not Syria or Iran. It is a democracy, albeit a fragile and divided one, and has a vibrant civil society and media. It should be a regional partner for Israel. But it has never recovered from the civil war that wracked it in the 1970s, and the massive explosion of 2,750 tonnes of badly stored ammonium nitrate in the port of Beirut in August 2020, killing and wounding hundreds. The blast destroyed the last vestige of faith that the Lebanese had in their political leaders. Millions of highly educated, cosmopolitan Lebanese have fled abroad, the economy is on the brink of collapse and the population, including the middle classes, have been impoverished. Lebanon has also had to play host to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian and more recently Syrian refugees without having the resources to integrate these people. This has made it all the easier for Hezbollah to sink its claws deep into Lebanese society, particularly among the poorer Shia Muslims, and to paralyse political reform. Lebanese leaders constantly complain in the West that their country has been forgotten, except in France, the former colonial power, where President Macron has tried to rally international support and provide emergency rescue loans to the country. But a stable and prosperous Lebanon on its northern border, less susceptible to Iranian interference, and with a stronger Lebanese army able to police its borders and clamp down on radicals would be a massive security enhancement for Israel. At the moment, we are going backwards. Beirut may soon look like Gaza with buildings and infrastructure in ruins and a spiralling bill to repair the damage. So, a Lebanon strategy to end the war there as soon as possible and develop a strategy for the country’s political and economic recovery is an urgent task.

There are things that Israel has to agree to as well for a new strategy to work. One is to define more concrete and realistic short-term war aims so we know where it is going. Let us keep going until we have destroyed all our enemies is not a strategy and will not serve Israel’s long-term security interests. So, further US and European arms sales and deliveries to Tel Aviv should be tied to Israel formulating an agreed set of realistic war aims with a concrete timetable for implementation. Israel should also agree to more restrictive targeting guidelines, similar to those used by NATO forces, to assess the ‘collateral damage’, or likely civilian death toll from its air and missile strikes and take more care and precautions to minimise these casualties. Where Israeli troops in Gaza, southern Lebanon or the West Bank encounter wounded civilians they have a duty to give them first aid and transport them to hospital. Simply warning people to leave combat zones is not sufficient. The displacements cause a massive humanitarian crisis each time and Israel has to deal with the consequences. Protecting aid workers is key. More have died in Gaza than in any other modern conflict. Demonising UNRWA in Gaza (because of its alleged complicity with Hamas) only starved the organisation of international donations at a crucial time and set back its work. Israel needs to agree to ceasefires and humanitarian pauses to allow vital food, water and medicines to be delivered to civilians. It is also the only way that Israel will get the remaining 97 hostages back alive.

Yet in the final analysis, only diplomacy can heal the wounds of the Middle East and provide Israel with the security that it craves. Destroying Lebanon or Iran will not make Palestinians more quiescent and submissive and more willing to live under Israeli rule. Israel’s friends need to push back vigorously against the rhetoric of right-wing politicians to the effect that the Middle East is a jungle where the law of the strongest and most dominant counts. In short, that Israel, a Western democracy, cannot be expected to follow the rules and norms of the other members of the liberal international order. Vigorous pushback is needed too against efforts by Jewish settlers to appropriate more Palestinian land on the West Bank and to create more ‘facts on the ground’, which will make it even more difficult to create a viable Palestinian state. The EU has already taken sanctions against these settler entities and companies. They need to be reinforced. Because of 7 October a two-state solution seems more distant than ever and it will take a long time, and inspired leadership by both Israeli and Palestinian politicians to re-establish trust. Yet even Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and no fan of Israel, went to Jerusalem to visit Leah Rabin, the wife of the assassinated Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, to pay his respects. So, the task is not hopeless. From Camp David to Wye Plantation and the Oslo Accords, Israelis and Palestinians have signed peace and cooperation agreements before. We need to study how this was achieved and get the process back on track. Above all, no one Western leader should indulge Israelis in the fantasy that there is an alternative to the two-state solution through endless cycles of conflict, playing Arabs off against each other, permanent foreign occupation or total victory over Israel’s many adversaries. A two-state solution will be hard and no doubt a long and winding road. But the sooner the overwhelming majority of Israelis become convinced that it is the only way they will survive as a prosperous, secure democracy and maintain the international sympathy and support on which they have always depended – even if Israeli leaders like to pretend otherwise – the sooner and better the two-state solution will happen.

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.