topics
What is Israel's strategy after Yahya Sinwar's death? Israel's Prime Minister seeks to destroy Iran and create a new geopolitical structure. Changes that before October 7 were happening peacefully through agreements with Saudi Arabia and other countries, but are now being implemented with weapons. The only constant is the lack of recognition of Palestine, which prevents any real evolution
After the death of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who was killed in a clash in southern Gaza, what is Israel’s strategy now?
The New Era of the Middle East. The mantra in Benjamin Netanyahu’s September 27 speech to the UN General Assembly is not new in the Israeli prime minister’s words. A year ago, from the same podium, almost twenty days before the history of the Middle East changed forever after the October 7 massacre, Netanyahu used the same words.
Back then the prime minister spoke, hoping to close the circle and lay the last pillar of the new Middle East order: peace with Saudi Arabia.
Netanyahu, thanks in part to the Donald Trump administration, has already reached a major milestone with the Abraham Accords of 2020. For the first time since signing peace first with Egypt in 1979 and then with Jordan in 1994, Israel has signed agreements with Arab countries. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were first, followed by Sudan and Morocco. The real target was Riyadh, and all signs of coming were there.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman himself said shortly before the UN Assembly that an agreement with Israel was “getting closer every day.” There were important strategic and economic interests related not only to Israel, but also to the United States, which would have “rewarded” Saudi Arabia’s choice with its participation in the Gulf monarchy’s civilian nuclear program. Not only that: a few months earlier, the India – Middle East – Europe economic corridor project was launched at the G20 summit in New Delhi, which received the approval of both the Saudis and the Israelis, among others. Also to create an alternative to China’s Silk Road.
It was with a map of this corridor that Netanyahu appeared on the podium of the Glass Palace on September 22, 2023. “Such a peace,” Netanyahu said, “would largely contribute to ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. This would encourage other Arab states to normalize relations with Israel. This would improve the prospects for peace with the Palestinians. This would promote greater reconciliation between Judaism and Islam, between Jerusalem and Mecca, between the descendants of Isaac and the descendants of Ishmael.”
One of the typical features of the New Middle East was that alliances were not based solely on religious or ethnic principles
Already Shimon Peres was talking about a new Middle East, a man who, through the Oslo Accords, attempted to change the region through a process that not only thirty years after its implementation, but after its approval, was declared to be flawed. But it opened a gap, even though Israel has witnessed the changes in the Middle East over the years as a spectator, largely due to factors internal and external to the countries, such as the American occupation of Iraq in 2003, the rise of Iran as a regional power in pursuit of hegemony and nuclear might, and the wave of Arab Spring revolutions that caused chaos in several major (Egypt, Syria) and minor (Libya, Yemen, Tunisia, Bahrain) countries.
One of the typical features of the New Middle East was that alliances were not based solely on religious or ethnic principles. Several Sunni states, such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, have expressed concerns about Iran and Shiite Islam and its allies, while Sunni states Qatar and Turkey even today have good relations with Iran. Moreover, the Sunni Arab world has united against Qatar (there was a crisis with boycotts and isolation from 2017 to 2021) because of Doha’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and its pro-Iranian policies, as well as against a number of several Sunni organizations that are considered terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and others.
This year, more than 365 days after October 7, Netanyahu returned to the UN with the same map as last year, talking about the blessing map, contrasting it with another where Iran and partner countries (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq) are marked in black, calling it a curse.
Netanyahu became convinced that the political and peace process he began with the Abraham Accords, in order to be implemented, must include one thing: the destruction of Iran
The events of October 7 effectively shifted the process of change in the Middle East, pushing it to another level. Netanyahu was convinced that the political and peace process he began with the Abraham Accords, in order to be implemented, must include one thing: the destruction of Iran, which he believed could only happen militarily.
The paradigm shift is occurring for two fundamental reasons. First, since the Hamas massacre of October 7, Israel has been under attack every day by Hezbollah from Lebanon, which fired more than ten thousand missiles in total, forcing sixty thousand or more people living on the border to flee their homes. Israel was subsequently attacked twice by Yemen’s Houthis, by Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and by Iran itself with three hundred missiles. It is clear that Netanyahu, in order to eliminate the “axis of resistance” that unites Shiites and Sunnis and undermines the very existence of the Jewish country, must eliminate Iran.
The US approach to Tehran, raising fears of easing sanctions that Jerusalem has always opposed, has strengthened the ayatollahs’ regime and proved to be misguided. After all, it is the Shiites who give Israel an “excuse” to consider itself in danger because it is threatened by Iran and its associates. If in fact Hamas was acting on behalf of the Palestinian people (I’m convinced it was acting to accredit itself as the sole protector of the Palestinians, as opposed to the weak Palestinian National Authority, but ultimately it didn’t care about the fate of the citizens, given how it uses them as a shield), it doesn’t explain why Hezbollah acted against Israel if the Palestinians in Lebanon are treated as pariahs.
The same goes for other countries and groups united not by political motives of “liberation” but by the destruction of the Israeli white fly.
The second reason lies in the fundamental mistake Israel has made, namely, the idea of acting also politically in order to change the Middle East without the possibility of a Palestinian state. Despite the claims, even the Saudis would not fight hard for Palestine if they had to choose between their own and Israeli-American trade and defense agreements. But the presence of right-wing fundamentalists in the Israeli government, totally opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state, has not helped change. A change that not even war can help.
