Shapeshifting

A year ago, after Hamas broke through a Gaza border fence on the morning of Oct. 7, the rulers of Gaza not only killed 1,200 people and took hundreds more hostage, they set off forces that many believe have profoundly changed the region.

Since then, for example, the enclave is devastated after Israel’s pummeling response, with its leaders either dead or hiding in tunnels. Iran, despite attacks on Israel this year, looks weak as its missiles are mostly captured by the latter’s formidable defense systems. To the north, Iran’s most fearsome proxy, Hezbollah, saw its longtime leader killed last month in airstrikes. Now, the Lebanese political party and militant group is in a state of panic over the loss of Hassan Nasrallah.

“It is not too early to conclude that Nasrallah’s death will reshape Lebanon, and the region, in ways that would have been unthinkable a year ago,” wrote the Economist.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is embracing this possibility. “We are in the midst of great days,” he said in a live television address covered by the Times of Israel recently. “We are changing the strategic reality in the Middle East … Israel is winning.”

He hopes the new environment will create opportunities for new alliances, including, as the Forward noted, with Saudi Arabia, traditionally an enemy of Iran. Quietly, the Gulf kingdom has indicated it is still open to that possibility despite its criticism of the ongoing violence in Gaza and the West Bank, and now Lebanon.

Still, Netanyahu might be engaging in magical thinking. A critic at the Middle East Monitor argued, for example, that Netanyahu’s vision of a new Middle East won’t deliver security for Israel because it necessitates steamrolling the hopes and dreams of Palestinians and others who have legitimate complaints about Israel’s policies.

Now, Hezbollah will regroup and redouble their efforts to destroy Israel, wrote World Politics Review. Israeli officials themselves have admitted that “Hamas cannot be destroyed.”

Meanwhile, Iran has pledged a more robust response, leading to fears that Iranian officials might construct and deploy nuclear weapons to stop Israel, Newsweek reported. Israeli leaders have proposed joint preemptive strikes against Iran’s nuclear program to forestall a nuclear war, though such strikes might also precipitate one, too.

The history of the past few decades is illustrative, too: Israel has been trying to destroy Palestinian militant groups for decades. Despite years of oppressing the restive Palestinians in the occupied territories and conducting attacks on neighbors to eliminate threats, Israel is not any safer, CNN explained.

But now, the country is paying a steep price in diplomacy. Embroiled in cases at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, the war in Gaza and now Lebanon has split the world: From Latin America to Asia, Israel has lost support for its mission, even in Europe. On Friday, French President Emmanual Macron called for a halt to weapons shipments to Israel for its fight in Gaza and criticized the ground invasion in Lebanon, the BBC reported. That’s a remarkable turnaround from the staunch support Israel received a year ago from France and most of the European Union.

Meanwhile, there are the costs of the past year, tallied in lives. Since Oct. 7, 1,664 Israelis have been killed, 17,809 wounded and about 143,000 displaced from their homes, according to the Jerusalem Post. In Gaza, 41,689 Palestinians have died and 96,625 have been injured, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Almost two million have been displaced, or about 90 percent of the population, according to the United Nations.

And in Lebanon, more than 1,000 have been killed in Israeli airstrikes over the past few weeks, with more than 6,000 injured, according to Lebanese health officials. More than a million people have been displaced, many fleeing to Syria.

On Oct. 7, 2024, despite tremendous efforts over many months, there is no ceasefire, no peace in sight, and little to no talk about “the day after.”

Writing in the Washington Post, David Ignatius said that while some things may have changed, the main thread that runs through the region hasn’t – there will be more violence.

“Perhaps Israel’s sword of vengeance has broken the power of Iran and its boldest proxies, as Netanyahu and his supporters seem to hope. But this is the Middle East,” he wrote. “A more likely outcome is that, at the cost of so many thousands of dead, this war has restored the old paradigm of a strong Israel that can crush its enemies – until the next round … The displaced Gazans, the stunned Hezbollah fighters, aren’t likely to forget. And in the Middle East, memory is an addictive drug, and a poison.”