ISRAEL IN A NEW STRATEGIC ERA / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

Israel in a New Strategic Era

With Iran’s proxies weakened, state actors are again shaping Israel’s security environment.

By: Kamran Bokhari

With the weakening of Iran and its proxies beginning in late 2023, Israel largely neutralized the nonstate threats that had constrained it for decades, but the challenges of its strategic environment are not getting any easier. 

Now that the U.S. is attempting to unload more of the security burden in the Middle East onto its regional allies and partners, Israel finds itself needing to engage with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to construct a new security architecture.

For Israel, the new era is off to an inauspicious start. 

On Feb. 20, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said in an interview that “it would be fine” if Israel took control of all the land from the Euphrates River in Iraq to the Nile in Egypt. 

More than a dozen Arab and Muslim-majority countries (including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Lebanon and Syria) swiftly issued a joint statement condemning the ambassador’s remarks.

A day before the release of the Huckabee interview, the Board of Peace – the centerpiece of the Trump administration’s new Middle East strategy – gathered in Washington for its inaugural meeting. 

In a development that reduced Israel’s unilateral influence over Gaza’s postwar trajectory, leaders from Muslim-majority states such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Indonesia confirmed their role in Gaza’s reconstruction and stabilization. 

Attendees pledged billions of dollars in relief funds and outlined plans for an international stabilization force.

Despite this broad participation, the core responsibilities are expected to fall on a few regional powers: Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. 

It is unprecedented for such a broad coalition of states to take active responsibility for guiding the Israeli-Palestinian issue toward stability. 

This is especially unusual for Israel, which has historically managed the Palestinian issue largely on its own, coordinating when necessary with Egypt and Qatar on Gaza and with Jordan on the West Bank. 

The United States, of course, has also long played an active role in conflict mitigation and diplomacy between Israel and the Arab states. 

In 1978, U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s administration brokered the Camp David Accords, which led directly to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty a year later. 

Though most Arab states condemned Egypt for making peace with Israel, the move effectively ended interstate conflict between Israel and its neighbors, which had fought multiple wars – in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 – since Israel’s founding.

With Egypt, the region’s largest Arab country, no longer pursuing war, Israel had largely neutralized the conventional threat from surrounding states. 

The primary danger shifted to nonstate actors, chiefly the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its dominant Fatah faction. 

Until 1971, the PLO operated from Jordan, but after attempting to challenge the Hashemite monarchy, it was expelled and relocated to Lebanon.

The PLO used Lebanon as a springboard for attacks against Israel for much of the following decade. 

Lebanon’s descent into civil war in 1975 allowed the organization to establish a stronger foothold in the south. 

From there, it was able to operate with greater freedom, launching cross-border attacks against Israel. 

This continued until Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which forced the PLO to relocate to Tunisia, effectively ending its ability to conduct guerrilla warfare against Israel. 

It would take a few more years, but the PLO had effectively been pushed toward diplomacy, as demonstrated by its recognition of Israel in 1988 and the subsequent negotiations that culminated in the 1993 Oslo Accords.

The PLO’s inability to wage war against Israel, however, did not mark the end of the nonstate actor threat. 

Instead, that threat was transformed with the rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon following the Israeli intervention. 

A key reason Hezbollah supplanted the PLO as the dominant militant organization was its backing by Iran, which had come under the control of an Islamist regime established by the 1979 revolution.

While Hezbollah remained its premier proxy, the Islamic Republic of Iran was also cultivating actors within the Palestinian political landscape. 

In the wake of the Palestinian uprising against Israel in 1987 (known as the First Intifada), Islamist groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad emerged in the West Bank and Gaza. 

These organizations sought to fill the vacuum left by the PLO, which by then had stepped back from armed struggle. 

With support from the Assad regime in Syria, Iran emerged as the primary patron of these anti-Israeli groups.

Over the next three decades, Iran strengthened the capabilities of its proxies, which, together with their patron, became Israel’s principal nonstate threat. 

The collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by the time of the Second Intifada in 2000 further strengthened Iran’s advantage. 

A series of key developments – the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Hamas’ political rise in the 2006 elections, the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war and Hamas’ takeover of Gaza in 2007 – enabled Iran to intensify its proxy campaign against Israel. 

Iranian-supplied rockets to Hamas contributed to five wars in Gaza between 2008 and 2021, while Iran simultaneously expanded its influence in Syria amid the civil war that erupted following the 2011 Arab Spring.

The turning point came when Hamas launched an attack of unprecedented scale inside Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. 

A day later, Hezbollah started launching attacks against Israel from Lebanon. 

Israel’s regionwide response decimated the offensive war-making capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah and targeted their Iranian military advisers in Syria. 

The elimination of Hezbollah’s top leadership led to the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria – a major strategic blow to Iran. 

But far more devastating was Israel taking the war to Iran and killing the senior leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

This strike against Iran’s ability to wage war on Israel marks the end of the second era, when the primary challenge to Israeli national security came from nonstate actors, and the beginning of a new era in which Israel once again has to contend with state actors, particularly Turkey. 

Neither Turkey nor the Arab states seek conflict with Israel. 

Their interest is in regional stability, especially as the U.S. is reducing its exposure to conflicts overseas. 

However, their involvement in post-conflict Gaza and the broader Palestinian landscape, as well as Syria, puts them at odds with Israel. 

Meanwhile, the future of Iran is uncertain, with the risk of U.S. military action in the event that diplomacy fails.

Regardless of what happens in Iran, it is not the main national security issue for Israel. 

Israel’s focus will instead be on finding a modus vivendi with Turkey and the Arab states, especially on the Palestinian issue.