The way that Israel has recently militarily dispatched a number of adversaries simultaneously has no real parallel since . . . well, since it did so in 1967. And that is already proving to raise questions that deeply divide Israelis. And no camp has good answers.
The mood of triumphalism among some parts of the Israeli political spectrum is understandable. And just as understandable is the sense of quagmire in Gaza and international isolation. But alongside and underlying such reactions is a strategic debate that is remarkable for its poverty.
While the country might seem to have a region in front of it to remold, in fact the real debate is actually an unattractive choice between two alternative ways to snatch strategic defeat from the jaws of victory. Either Israel decides to deploy military force whenever and wherever it pleases—a strategy that promises to work well until it does not—or it pursues diplomatic and political strategies based on outdated assumptions about Palestinians and regional powers.
Strategy I: The Limits of a Pax Israelitica
A Pax Israelitica would likely not see much pax. The drama of recent events—bombing Doha in September, confusing signals about occupying all of Gaza without saying so in August; horrific scenes emerging out of Gaza in July; June’s brief war between Israel and Iran; ongoing, serious diplomacy about transferring Palestinians to distant war zones—should not erase from view a steady series of more mundane recent events that collectively give a more detailed view of where the currently dominant Israeli strategic thinking leads. In July, Israeli forces attacked Syrian military installations to protect a unilaterally declared buffer zone. As opposed to Israel’s intervention in Suwayda, this attracted virtually no international (or even domestic) attention. But the public justification given was almost Orwellian in the logic apparently at work: In 1967, Israel seized the demilitarized zones that had been separating its forces from Syria’s—and indeed, took the entire Golan Heights, claiming to be protecting northern Israeli territory. At the end of 2024, it then seized the resulting post-1973 demilitarized zone to protect the territory it had seized in 1967; now in 2025, Israel launched attacks to protect that new so-called buffer zone, which did not actually buffer anything. The drift into Syrian territory—and the insistence that anything beyond the buffer zone was still likely to be targeted when needed—holds the promise only of a regional forever war in which today’s unilateral military actions make tomorrow’s further unilateral actions seem more necessary.
However oddly phrased, there is a strong logic at work here: Israel’s security is seen as best met by acting decisively, constantly, and militarily. Political and diplomatic discussions might take place (including indirect and even some direct talks about Israeli-Syrian security arrangements), but they are at worst distractions and at best ways to iron out the details of interim arrangements that prevail between unilateral actions.
There is a strong logic at work here: Israel’s security is seen as best met by acting decisively, constantly, and militarily.
When Israel began its offensive in Gaza two years ago, it should have been clear from the beginning to puzzled observers that postwar planning and Gaza governance were not official concerns: It was not absentmindedness or procrastination that led to a resistance to day after planning but an understanding that Israel was already in a forever war on that front, and Palestinians were no longer to be governed by national institutions but only by ad hoc local arrangements where necessary.
To this line of thinking, Israel had no choice but to translate its awesome military and intelligence capabilities into ongoing strategic dominance. The forever war is thus regional: While now on most continuous display in Gaza, it is also being fought intermittently in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.
On the Palestinian fronts, the new approach is difficult to deny: Attempts to come to terms with Palestinians as a national community have been shelved in favor of atomizing Palestinian society, though international diplomacy sometimes tries to look the other way. Israel has been openly targeting not simply Hamas but the Palestinian Authority, refugee camps, and UN organizations and officials with a collection of military, bureaucratic, and diplomatic tools. The fiscal strangulation of the Ramallah government is calibrated to the degree the United States will countenance. The military campaign in Gaza gets the most attention, but there are mundane bureaucratic steps as well: Remaining Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem, long isolated from the West Bank, have been shuttered; Palestinian students there have been sharply steered toward the Israeli education curriculum. There has been talk of disallowing Palestinian university degrees (a step that would undermine universities that have come to depend on tuition from Palestinians with Israeli citizenship). And, of course, most of the housing and infrastructure in Gaza has been turned into rubble with Palestinians herded into shifting supercamps for an indefinite period.
The Palestinian front has seen the most sustained and systematic military campaign—the longest and most brutal in the country’s history—but the new approach is on display in other regional arenas. And it has achieved the successful decapitation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the seizure of Syrian territory and destruction of some of that country’s remaining military capabilities, and the execution of an attack on Iran that had been threatened for over a decade. There is evidence of a combination of an extreme sense of danger among Israelis (Palestinian nationalism, the new Syrian regime, the Iranian regime, and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement are described by leaders and members of the public not merely as problems or adversaries but as existential threats) now coupled with an overwhelming sense of opportunity.
By its military actions over the past two years, Israel is seen by the triumphalist camp as having reached the point that it can create a new regional order, perhaps akin to the post–World War II moment in Europe. Abraham Accords countries (and perhaps Saudi Arabia) will be led by their own interests into cooperative roles; they can be seen as sharing security and economic interests but no borders with Israel. Countries with long-standing peace agreements with Israel that do share borders (ones that require ongoing security coordination) can be brought to accept the new regional order by the partnership of Israeli might and Gulf wealth.
What is striking about this vision is that for all its ambition, it seems to rely for its continuation on a combination of unilateral military actions, American cooperation (or at least acquiescence), and informal coordination with a few regional partners deemed to be sympathetic. If formal agreements are to be made, they might be conducted through U.S. mediation or through bilateral diplomatic recognition.
For all its ambition, this vision relies on a combination of unilateral military actions, American cooperation, and informal coordination with a few regional partners.
And that is one of a series of reasons the approach seems risky. It ties security indefinitely to a qualitative military and technological edge and betrays a heavy reliance on unilateralism and military action. Yet it is simultaneously dependent on a regional security consensus among very different actors. But its current success has provoked the very conditions that undermine it. Israel has already dealt severe blows to common challengers without much need for formal coordination from Gulf states. As a result, potential regional partners today show evidence of concern that Israel is less a regional hegemon than a rogue state. Further, its strident rhetoric rejecting Palestinian statehood and even suggesting transferring Palestinians to other countries has alienated even those potential partners who might have been satisfied with future pledges for some kind of process. The combination of regional projection of power and territorial ambitions is utterly unsupported by the sort of economic, cultural, and ideological assets that assisted the United States in the post-1945 era. As a result, in the eyes of many in the region, Israel is beginning to appear more like current-day Russia and Iran than the America of NATO and the Marshall Plan.
And even if—or as long as—the approach works, it has other costs. A Palestinian population in the West Bank with no leadership or peaceful options carries dangers that, while far short of existential, are already corrosive both domestically and internationally—and the situation will likely worsen. Inside Israel, the past two years have seen a cowed population of Israeli Palestinians who may be rediscovering their voices. An Israeli center and left that has been repelled by the illiberal domestic vison of the populist and religious right began in the summer of 2025 to show some signs of discomfort at the scale of killing and destruction in Gaza. The alienation of large parts of the Jewish community in the United States (long-growing but, since October 2023, somewhat obscured from public view by the wave of anti-antisemitism) is taking on profound depths, particularly among younger Jews. And the terms of the debate at a global level—now taking place in the United States itself in various parts of the political spectrum—about whether Israeli actions in Gaza constitute genocide is an ominous development. Even those who reject the rapid spread of the term are forced to a defense that claims that there are no credible figures on the death toll and that official statements indicate lack of genocidal intent (with more strident comments overlooked or played down).
Strategy II: A Nostalgic Return to Oslo and Arab Peace Initiative Minus
The triumphalism that underlies the hegemonic regional vision has many doubters in Israel. It is not that they deny the military accomplishments of the past two years, but they worry that without any supporting diplomatic or military framework, the benefits could be ephemeral. The flaws I have just listed are hardly lost on critics of the current leadership—and those critics are located not only on the radical fringes of Israeli politics but also in its center, among public intellectuals, and even in positions of leadership in some state institutions. Hard-nosed retired security officials are often the most vocal, and leaks from current intelligence and military leaders flow endlessly. Those who insist that the Israeli state should be both Jewish and democratic are casting about for an alternative.
And when they do produce systematic, alternative ideas, they sometimes can be remarkable in their tone and content: Thoughtful and less inclined to overstatement, they stress diplomacy, politics, the necessity of separation with Palestinians, and suspicions of expansionism. While the atrocities of October 7 loom large (and the scale of destruction in Gaza is generally passed over lightly), government critics have gradually shed some of the vitriol against Palestinians that was endemic to commentary issued during late 2023 and 2024. While sometimes quite supportive of post–October 7 military actions, most domestic critics show little enthusiasm for continued reliance on military superiority alone.
With regional diplomacy, they consider the possibilities for an alliance against Iran, radicalism, Islamism, or the axis of resistance a realistic strategy. Including the Abraham Accords states and ambitiously adding Saudi Arabia (and sometimes even Syria)—as well as Jordan, Egypt, and perhaps the United States as an organizer—they suggest a regional alliance based on combating common enemies and pursuing mutual security and economic interests.
And critics search for a way to accommodate and not merely pulverize Palestinians in what passes for dovishness today. In that sense, the approach might seem at first glance to grasp the quarter-century-old Arab Peace Initiative (which offered full normalization in return for a two-state solution). But there is an important caveat: Most discussion includes vague suggestions about the future instead of a realistic and concrete pledge of Palestinian statehood.
But the diplomacy and politics thus offered are based on hopes rather than realistic plans.
But the diplomacy and politics thus offered are based on hopes rather than realistic plans—or, more accurately, they are based on realities that have evaporated. If a European analogy is helpful, this second strategic vision thus bears closer relation to the post-Napoleonic Concert of Europe than the complex network of security, political, and economic institutions that constituted the post-1945 order. But even that analogy—to a group of like-minded regimes united by common fears—itself is limited since it is not clear that Israel and its putative partners have like minds.
As with the triumphalist variant, the idea of regional security partnerships has lost much of its grounding in recent months with the more critical variant—partly as a result of Israeli military successes. Again, Israel now appears as much a disruptive actor to many who were worried about Iran. And the perception of an Iranian-led threat has decreased markedly with the effective Israeli military moves—ones that required no diplomatic normalization whatsoever.
On the Palestinian front, the ideas discussed simply disregard developments (and the effects of Israeli policy) of the past two decades. A vision of a two-state outcome that embraces the concept in a robust and detailed way does exist in Israeli discussions—but it sits on the edge of the Israeli political spectrum. What remains in the mainstream is a vague embrace of separation from Palestinians, but the two-state solution sounds hopelessly naïve to most and indeed remains an “existential threat” to an electoral majority. What opinion researcher Dahlia Scheindlin has called an “occupation consensus” places sharp constraints on politically viable suggestions. So an arrangement that is something less than full statehood (and even less than the protectorate status effectively offered by center and center-left Israeli leaders two decades ago) is to be offered to a Palestinian leadership that has lost all credibility and vitality because of its failure to deliver statehood. This does not seem like a promising path when Palestinian political realities are considered. It is unlikely that Palestinian leaders who promised their followers a generation ago that the limited autonomy allowed by the Oslo Accords was just a temporary step will now be able to sell them on even less autonomy as a permanent condition.
When the unpopularity of the current Palestinian leadership is addressed in such efforts, it is often met by suggestions of “reform” of a kind that would only deepen leaders’ unpopularity through a combination of technocratic improvements and changes in a host of areas designed to meet Israeli concerns (such as payments to prisoners) but not Palestinian ones.
Can Outsiders Find Something More Helpful to Be Nostalgic About?
Israel’s military victories are harnessed at present to strategic thinking that can be either monstrous or vapid: They require either constant war or prioritize nostalgia over today’s realities. But however problematic, the debate about Israeli strategy has broad implications. For the United States, the issue can be phrased like this: “How much longer should we go on subsidizing a stalemate that is manifestly untenable for all concerned?” The answer to that question might be that the half century since George W. Ball wrote those words is time enough.
Ball’s 1977 Foreign Affairs article entitled “How to Save Israel in Spite of Herself” suggested an alternative approach. But the presentation was unappealing for two reasons. First, any policy that is based on persuading foreign leaders (or even entire societies) that they misunderstand their own self-interest is implausible. Indeed, slightly later, Ball observed that Israel’s relationship with the United States worked “to encourage Israeli positions and actions that cannot be in the long-term interest of Israel itself.” That was both patronizing and incorrect: What the United States did was to change the incentive structure for Israeli leaders by providing legal and diplomatic protection for what has been so often termed “creeping annexation.” By increasingly avoiding—and eventually harshly penalizing—any invocation of international legal norms, by excluding other international actors (for instance, by vetoing most Security Council resolutions condemning Israeli measures), and by providing financial, military, intelligence, and diplomatic support to Israeli governments that oversaw the slow, unsteady, but unmistakable set of measures that have created today’s “one state reality,” the only reason for Israeli leaders to move in any other direction was a vague sense that the trajectory would ultimately undermine a state that was, as the phrasing goes, “Jewish and democratic” over the long term. And vague, long-term senses are not the strongest motivators for most political leaders and their publics, especially when faced with determined, tactically adept leaders and broad-based forces who resist them.
But second, focusing only on the bilateral U.S.-Israel relationship—not only implicitly sidelining other global actors but also working on the explicit assumption that all regional actors were simply hobbled by domestic politics or weak—was shown to be mistaken within a few months of Ball’s 1977 article. An unexpected initiative by Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat transformed the context and led to very different outcomes than had been anticipated. Today, taking other global actors as well as regional ones seriously—and forming a coalition that offers a different set of incentives to Israelis—is a difficult prospect, but it may be the most realistic one out of the strategic cul-de-sac. It would require an approach that not only combined features of the 2003 Road Map for Peace in the Middle East and the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative but also infused those ideas with far more initiative and persistence than those easily exhausted and deflected efforts. And the context for pursuing them—the situation on the ground—is so very much more challenging.
So the most promising initiatives now are therefore ones that are multilateral and involve some regional initiative (and not merely reaction). There are several embryonic efforts—the French-Saudi initiative; the promise of some initiative from the United Kingdom; and noises of coordination among famously fragmented Arab states.
It is easy—and quite proper—to be skeptical about the short-term success of these initiatives. When the current crisis fades, diplomacy might simply fall back on facile talk that has been trotted out to obscure diplomatic failure and inaction for decades: the inevitability of the two-state solution. Such talk is buttressed not with serious diplomacy but only by the curious idea that because something is good, it must happen, and that harsh realities are unsustainable simply because they are harsh. If any short-term measures are suggested, they simply amount to the constant calls for “reforming” a Palestinian Authority that would detach it further from its base by forcing it to meet shifting Israeli demands.
So if there is any path forward today, it must be at once multilateral, proactive, and designed to present the parties with attractive alternatives. And it must be sustained in the face of sometimes ferocious opposition from Israel (sometimes joined by the United States).
That is an extremely difficult combination. It would require an American openness both to multilateralism and to ending the exemption of international law from the issue, an Israeli openness to a version of the second path that is more in line with regional realities, and a Palestinian leadership that can lead. So any step forward should be judged realistically not by whether it provides such missing ingredients immediately but by whether it is a step in the right direction.
