Many Israelis and Palestinians who yesterday strove — or at least hoped — for a more peaceful and just future now find themselves living in the tomorrow of their worst fears. What is the present reality they failed to avoid? And can a new and better prospect ever emerge?
In the waning weeks of 2023, Israelis and Palestinians were grappling with events that were newly horrific in scale. At first, though, these events seemed to be occurring within a framework of actors and violence that was so familiar as to seem frozen. But even from early on in the Gaza war, it was clear that Israeli leaders were paving the way for new realities in the enclave. More than a year later, the qualitative shifts are beginning to spread to a regional level in ways that the Lebanese vaguely expected but the Syrians most definitely did not.
There are some political winners from these events, although the overall effect for Palestinians will be startlingly grim. In Israel, the sense of opportunity in some quarters will likely give birth to new realities that will come back to haunt even the victors. Some long-term trends signal possibilities for a better future for Israelis and Palestinians, but they will not deliver anything positive in the near or medium term.
Cassandra-like warnings have been a staple of political writings on Israel and Palestine for half a century: A given policy or goal, it is argued, should be adopted to prevent a host of dark outcomes ranging from civil war to apartheid. Of course, the original Cassandra of Trojan War myth was not only given the gift of prophecy but also never believed. Today’s dark writings, however, are not prophecies for the future but descriptions of the current reality.
For Palestinians, today’s problems are obvious. The devastation in Gaza is staggering for all those who care to look, which is precisely why many avert their eyes. Others — in the White House and among Israel’s leadership and public — embrace the destruction and see it as a reason to evict the survivors.
Palestinians, of course, are all too aware of their plight. For them, despair comes not only from the raw numbers, though those alone are staggering. The vast majority of Gazans are displaced, many of them multiple times over. The number of injured is in the six figures, and the number of killed is halfway there. Those leaving Gaza are also in the six figures, fleeing the destruction of its infrastructure, universities and most schools, including those of UNRWA. Behind the numbers, though, are many individual stories of tragic death, starvation, surgery without anesthesia and piles of rubble so extensive that even if reconstruction ever begins, it will take years to remove the remnants of Gaza’s neighborhoods. In the West Bank, the prevailing mood seems to be that what is happening in Gaza will likely happen there, too. Politically, the structures of Palestinian life have decayed, their leaders are without strategy or direction and their calls for international support have fallen on deaf ears in most governments, resonating only among activists.
For many Israelis, the present seems at first sight to hold fewer perils. For them, it is easy to look away and treat this as a moment of triumph and opportunity. The military decimated Gaza, which means that Hamas no longer poses the threat that led to the events of Oct. 7, 2023. The senior Hezbollah leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah, has been killed, and the military has carried out attacks on the organization’s key positions in Lebanon. Iran is now isolated and seems, for now, to be cowed. Israeli forces were able to take the “de” out of the “demilitarized zone” on its eastern border, the part of the Syrian Golan that Israel occupied in 1967 and annexed in 1981. In early December, as the regime of Bashar al-Assad collapsed, the Israeli military moved to expand its control several miles deeper into Syria, to the side of Mount Hermon that had been under Syrian control. Israel initially said the move was a temporary security measure and strangely claimed to be creating a buffer zone rather than eliminating the existing one. But on Jan. 28, Yisrael Katz, the newly appointed minister of defense, announced that the military would remain indefinitely in the newly occupied Syrian territory.
Yet despite their country’s significant military and intelligence victories, many Israelis speak of a grim national mood. Such a feeling is far from universal; it depends on whom one listens to.
On the right of the political spectrum, there is no such sense, with leading political figures calling to formally annex territory that had come under de facto annexation over many years. And talk of restored settlements in Gaza, expanded settlements in the West Bank and even expulsion of Palestinians is now part of Israeli policy debates. The most extreme positions on population transfer are no longer denied or decried — they are simply not explicitly adopted as policy. But with the support of the American president, even that shyness is disappearing. It is pointless to speculate about what Trump’s motivations were in calling for Israel to finish the military task and then hand Gaza over to the United States and for Gazans to be moved out. But the short-term effects are clear: a blank check to the current Israeli leadership to do what it likes with Palestinians.
But underlying the military triumphs is something that is widely felt, if most often expressed in oblique or subtle ways: The political framework that helped maintain security along Israel’s borders, including those it has defined for itself in the West Bank and Gaza, is gone. In some cases, the borders themselves no longer exist. At best, maintaining Israel’s security will now involve constant running in place — an unappealing future that will require ongoing, sometimes expanding, military involvement or informal arrangements with deeply resentful neighboring populations.
In Israel, the shift from “peace process” with the Palestinians to de facto annexation of the occupied territories has now progressed so far as to be almost impossible to deny, even among those who formerly backed the two-state solution.
There are those who put a brave face on the situation, presenting the current reality as a moment of opportunity for Israel to shape the region to its liking. Indeed, Israel’s dominance is difficult to deny. But tucked into the triumphalism is an explicit if often softly voiced concern: Nobody, certainly not within Israel’s leadership, seems to have a clue how to move from repeated battlefield encounters to a political and strategic architecture that would render them sustainable — or unnecessary. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hints vaguely at some kind of Emirati-Saudi-Israeli condominium, with supporting roles for Jordanian, Egyptian and Palestinian leaders who will have no choice but to play along. The talk is heady in the short term but unconvincing in the long term and seems more like a recipe for endless, if often low-level, conflict on multiple fronts.
For instance, one formerly enthusiastic supporter of a two-state solution, Avner Golov, a writer on security affairs who has worked in the Israeli prime minister’s office, recently co-authored an article in Foreign Affairs titled “An Israeli Order in the Middle East,” which he predicated on an understanding between Israel and key Arab states that simply abandons a two-state outcome. Instead, he envisions a scenario that offers Palestinians limited self-governance and Israel’s gradual withdrawal from Gaza (but not the West Bank), and then only if the Palestinians “demonstrate effective governance and actively work to eliminate the influence of the most radical factions from [their] society.”
That formula, of course, is precisely what the harshest Palestinian critics of the Oslo agreements said the “peace process” would lead to: isolated Palestinian islands of municipal governance whose autonomy would depend on their ability to meet Israeli security needs. Any Palestinian leader who strove to meet the conditions would not only be embarking on a road to nowhere; he or she would find few willing to follow.
Whether some formula along these lines could be sold to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia is uncertain, but it is unlikely to appeal to Egyptian and Jordanian leaderships nervous about Israel exporting its Palestinian “problem.” And it would be repulsive to Palestinians. Far from an acceptable modus vivendi, it would further entrench a reality they have failed to stave off for decades. Indeed, it would follow precisely the path that has led to the Palestinians’ embrace of any form of resistance, increasing denunciation of Israel as an apartheid state and the deterioration of Palestinian security forces. That last trend seems to be both an objective of Israel’s right wing, which objects to any armed Palestinian forces, and its main talking point in pressing for a more intensive and intrusive Israeli security presence, more settler vigilantism and even population expulsions. In short, the “order” being described seems more like a regional detente amid an ongoing insurgency.
In Lebanon, the blow Israel dealt to Hezbollah is significant but has not eliminated it as a political force. Meanwhile, the Lebanese security forces cannot meet Israeli security demands.
The election of a Lebanese president and the designation of a prime minister have led to some hope within Lebanon of a regional de-escalation similar to the one that reversed the country’s slide into civil war in 1958 and made possible a strengthening of the central Lebanese state. But that seems unlikely now, with Israeli leaders behaving far too unilaterally, Iranian moves uncertain and a regional detente unlikely. Israel seems now to be repeating the mistakes it made in the 1980s, when its intervention in Lebanon was not only extremely destructive of civilian life but also succeeded only in militarily defeating a Palestinian opponent while creating new Lebanese enemies and even provoking the formation of Hezbollah. A full Israeli reoccupation of the south seems unlikely, but continued low-level conflict seems a real possibility.
On the Syrian front, Israel’s moves recall earlier tactical successes that seem tethered to an unpersuasive strategy — or untethered from a strategy altogether. The 1949 armistice between Israel and Syria created a demilitarized zone that was the subject of constant conflict. The Security Council mediated an endless series of disputes involving small amounts of territory and the impact of water shortages, military incursions and other issues affecting civilians in the area. Various U.N. members and organizations held Israel responsible for significant — and occasionally bloody — infractions.
In 1967, Israel not only seized the demilitarized areas but occupied significant portions on the Syrian side of the border. In the 1973 war, the line between Israeli and Syrian forces moved during heavy fighting. In 1974, a disengagement agreement negotiated by the United States created a new demilitarized zone between Israeli and Syrian forces in which Israel held on to significant portions of Syrian territory. Israel constructed settlements for its civilians in the occupied Golan Heights and claimed sovereignty over the area in a manner that violates international law. But while such moves were widely condemned — and, of course, rejected by Syrians — the post-1974 arrangements were remarkably stable until December 2024, when Israel seized control not only of the demilitarized zones but of territory on the far side of Mount Hermon, while simultaneously carrying out aerial bombings of Syrian military installations and equipment throughout the country. Israel claimed it had to destroy the buffer zone to save it. As with Lebanon and Gaza, it met its short-term and tactical objectives easily but exacerbated tensions. Periodic violence now seems likely if Israel continues its military operations and refuses to withdraw from the newly occupied Hermon region in Syria.
Only on Israel’s borders with Jordan and Egypt is there a political and diplomatic framework that is respected — and highly valued — by all sides. Although they appear stable compared with Israel’s other borders, the Egyptian and Jordanian frontiers are maintained by governments that face growing domestic pressure over Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza. Open talk of expelling Palestinians has sparked existential concerns that have barely been contained to date.
Israel’s security over the long term seems to rely heavily on a gamble: Those who can do something to challenge its moves will not care enough to do so, and those who care enough to change things will not be able to. That strategy seems likely to work well — until it does not. Unexpected events similar to the collapse of the Assad regime or the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks could disrupt the status quo, already deeply resented, and provoke resistance.
A generation ago, discussion of “instability” in the Middle East was often a reference to the seemingly ever-present threat of large-scale war among regional states or even a larger U.S.-Soviet confrontation. But the current instability will be more grinding for Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians. And for all but the most right-wing Israelis, existential dread will likely give way to gradual demoralization, as a steady stream of casualties, domestic repression and international opprobrium further exposes their bombastic, short-sighted and self-interested leaders.
This is the future that the political leaders and senior security officials of the 1990s believed they could avoid by negotiating peace agreements with the Palestinians and Jordan, followed by Syria and Lebanon. With the peace and stability they believed in now collapsing, yesterday’s tough-minded officials, such as former Shin Bet director Ami Ayalon and former Mossad director Efraim Halevy, sound left-wing compared with the main players of the Netanyahu government.
There have been many surprises over the past year and a half, but other than the collapse of the Asad regime in Syria, the trajectory of Israel’s long-term security was clear more than a year ago. To open the new year, Ehud Yaari, perhaps Israel’s most senior and internationally known commentator on Arab affairs, wrote for the Hebrew news platform Mako that rather than a clear “day after” for Israel’s multiple conflicts, “Israel will be required to deal with shaky, half-baked, and vague agreements, which will require constant supervision and systematic, intermittent operation of IDF forces.” Only wishful thinking and political timidity could have pointed to a different conclusion. Indeed, any sober assessment of the past 15 months would have concluded that, given Israel’s tactics, there could be no day after Oct. 7, 2023.
The Middle East is unlikely to see a return to the optimism of the 1990s. The region has changed too much. The trends at work today are so pernicious, some key leaders so extreme and others so weak, that it is better to think in terms of decades rather than years. From that perspective, there are several long-term trends worth watching, not because they are necessarily moving in positive directions but because any positive direction depends on the emergence of more hopeful possibilities. For now, hope has to lie in social trends that, despite being powerful, are more difficult to forecast in the coming decades.
International solidarity for Palestinians grew after the start of the Gaza war. That movement is publicly receding in some critical locations, most notably in the United States — likely due to a combination of repressive countermeasures, exhaustion and, at times, rhetoric that has arguably alienated many more than it has attracted. But in the Arab world, something deeper than a moment of youthful activism is at work: In meeting with younger people in the region, I am increasingly struck by how much more easily they can access cultural, technological, social and intellectual trends outside their own societies. This makes them more networked, more resourceful and imaginative, and less deferential and beholden, even to nationalist strictures. It means the reputational risk that more globalized Israelis now live with — the feeling that if they leave their borders they might be forced to explain themselves — is real. Israeli teenagers can also easily look to their counterparts in other countries and imagine what a life without grueling military service and international stigma might mean. The gap will widen between Israelis who see themselves as part of a global society, who will feel that isolation painfully, and those who are happy to hunker down in their homeland.
On the Palestinian side, globalized social spaces allow some young people to search for alternatives to the sloganeering that has hobbled the older generation and to present their own demands, not as strident, but as simply seeking normality. Others line up loyally behind the old factions, parties and movements. Across the board, though, Palestinian activists struggle to transform individual initiatives into sustainable institutions.
In Israel, key institutions that have retained some level of professionalism have so far parried attacks from the populist right, but those in the security, higher education and judicial sectors face persistent threats. These institutions are certainly not bastions of the left; at best, they are centrist. But they can incubate new approaches and also provide some space for critical thinking. Israel’s undermining of Palestinian institutions — not merely political movements, but universities, schools and nongovernmental organizations — is a longstanding worry. But for all their problems, many of these institutions survive, and some have built links to the diaspora or professional counterparts abroad.
It is possible that, for all its problems, the current situation will give birth to a modus vivendi in which actors who define each other as existential threats still manage to work out informal arrangements on a daily basis. These won’t lead to a better future, necessarily, but they could enable the emergence of other trends, like informal networks, long-term economic prospects and new alliances. That seems unlikely in the current environment but could happen over time.
Finally, there is the precise opposite possibility: As Israel, backed by the United States, seeks to constantly exercise its dominance, simmering conflicts could give birth to asymmetric tactics. This would recast conflicts that can be managed between governments as popular struggles, which can yield surprises like the overthrow of the Assad regime. The absence of any political and diplomatic framework undergirding the current order — or disorder — is precisely the right atmosphere for creative thinking. Engaging in this kind of thinking is urgent, not least because the Oct. 7 attack made horribly clear what happens when creativity is applied, not to diplomacy, but to violence.
Beginning a war or launching a bold offensive is rarely an irrational act, but it is often an unreasonable one. Those who do so can generally explain what they hope to achieve, and their goal usually makes sense within the context of their reality. But they often overlook or underestimate failures, unintended consequences and long-term and indirect effects. Hamas leaders could present the Oct. 7 attack to Palestinians as bold and necessary in the absence of alternatives. After all, they could argue, other attempts to gain freedom had failed. But the people of Gaza have paid a horrific price, and the situation is now almost unimaginably worse for them. The atmosphere in Israel since Oct. 7 has provided its leaders with a blank check to support the most extreme form of Zionism and a forever war to sustain it.
Those who have experienced war can learn to be a bit more modest about their ability to control events and secure goals. Over two decades ago, during the Second Intifada and a harsh Israeli military campaign against Palestinian leaders, cities and institutions, then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak dismissed calls for going to war against Israel: “The people who send these calls [for war] do not know what it means.” It is a measure of the poverty of today’s leadership that yesterday’s discredited leaders now sound wise.
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