How much more insecure is the region after 7 October last year?
It depends on how you define security, whether you narrowly define
security as just military security, physical security or if you look at
all kinds of spectrums of security, like economic security, societal
security, identity security. I would say Palestine in general since at
least 1948 has been somewhat a source of insecurity across all these
different domains. And that's not different in 2024 so I'd say the
region is collectively far less secure, far less stable than it was
before 7 October and that's not just in the physical domain. It's also
to do with identity security, societal security and also regime
security. If you look at the relationship between communities and
political elites and regimes across the Arab world, I think there's been
so much mobilisation. The silence of Arab regimes (about Gaza) has also
created a lot of friction between the regimes and the people on the
ground. And I think this is another element of security that most people
are not looking at because we're always looking at physical violence,
we're looking at military insecurity and kinetic action. But there's a
lot of underlying currents that I think are probably more threatening to
regional security than the physical military element. And I think we
will see, potentially, a new trajectory emerging which could eventually
lead to another Arab Spring 2.0 because, especially in Egypt and
Jordan, we see all these sorts of tensions internally, socio-politically
playing out which is an aspect of security that does lead to
mobilisation.
Many experts are now looking at what has been called Israel's
northern front, weighing up the likelihood of a major confrontation. How
likely is it that a full-scale war could break out between Hezbollah
and Israel?
At the moment most people are speculating because it's in the hands
of a few individuals who make subjective decisions. And despite all the
checks and balances that exist in Israel, there is a prime minister at
the helm who is unhinged and has shown time and again that he is not
acting rationally and that he's not abiding by international law or, in
fact, directions he’s getting from very close allies such as the United
States. So a lot of things are possible but if we were taking a rational
approach to this I do think that Hezbollah is extremely rational. I
think Hassan Nasrallah, despite the fact that we always try to portray
both the Iranians and most of their network of non-state actors as
irrational, ideological players - and they are extremely ideological -
they are still also very rational in terms of wanting to continue
fighting another day and, particularly in Lebanon, Hezbollah has always
been interested in governance and so survival is extremely important.
There is this idea that they're being suicidal which is what the
Israelis are always pushing as a narrative. I think it’s not true and
certainly what happened since 7 October suggests that Hezbollah isn't
suicidal. Obviously it is using and exploiting the current dynamic of
the Gaza war for its own gain but at fairly limited costs. Hezbollah is
happy to keep escalation where it is right now. On the other side,
you've got the Israelis for whom the status quo is not bearable and
therefore not sustainable. They have 150,000 Israelis who can't return
to their homes in northern Israel. That, I think, is a constituency that
is extremely powerful and also fairly loud and is a constituency that
Netanyahu and the far-right in Israel actually respects, unlike the
constituency of hostage families who have been somewhat disregarded by
the Israeli government for a long time. But people who live in northern
Israel who've been displaced are saying, ‘we need to return, the
government needs to be able to give us the ability to return to our
homes’. That is a much more problematic issue that Netanyahu and the
far-right can't ignore
And if a major war were to break out what will it look like?
A full-out escalation with Hezbollah mobilising all that massive
arsenal of drones and missiles and launching that on Israel will be
destructive. I think this would be a war where the home front in Israel
would be more affected than probably in any other war since 1967. It
will hit critical national infrastructure in Israel from water supply to
electricity to internet. The fact is that there is no defensive system
in Israel that will stop drones and missiles coming in. So an all-out
war is certainly not in Israel's interest. And I think rational voices
will tell the prime minister that this is really not an option. I think
both sides should have an interest to return to a status quo whereby you
have a level of deterrence where both sides don't want to cross certain
red lines.
Would you agree that Israel is losing the war in Gaza and if that
is the case given what you’ve said about Hezbollah and the potential it
has on Israel's northern border, how insecure is Israel now?
I think Israel has already lost the war. There is no way to turn this
around. Strategically speaking, a war is always supposed to deliver on
political ends. Israel is now more isolated than it has been in decades.
Israel has lost key allies and particular constituencies in the West
which should be very worrisome for them. Israel is economically very
badly hit by this war. It has made very little progress in getting the
hostages back and actually defeating Hamas. Hamas has avoided direct
confrontation and is sitting and waiting in the bunkers to fight another
day. The entire network of tunnels underneath Gaza is still fairly
intact. The brigades that were attacked and allegedly destroyed by
Israel are still mostly operational and they've been able to recruit
more people. From a grand strategic point of view of trying to undermine
the idea and notion of armed resistance across Palestine, I think for
Israel that's been very counterproductive. There are more people in
Palestine now ready and willing to pick up arms and fight Israel, not
just in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. So you have created more
grievances, more mobilisation against Israel. That is certainly
counterproductive to security and it certainly pushes Israel further
away from achieving its targets. There isn't really a military
alternative to diplomatic engagement with Hamas and trying to find a
ceasefire that is conducive to long-term stability and allows
reconstruction in Gaza. Hamas, in one shape or form, will survive,
whether as an idea or as a fighting force. So, in that respect, Israel
has already lost the war and I don't think there is anything it can do
to recover its losses in that respect.
And, therefore, has the security that Netanyahu claimed he was going to achieve just vanished in the haze of war?
It has. I mean it was always kind of a joke that he called himself
Mr. Security because the opposite is true. He has led Israel into a
false sentiment of stability and security where most people in the
centre of Israel forgot that they were right in the middle of a conflict
zone and now it has all come back. They're realising they have made no
progress in the last couple of years or decades in terms of building
stability and security in the region because the root cause of that has
not been addressed. Obviously there's now a lot of mobilisation against
Netanyahu but most Israelis are still convinced that the IDF is strong,
the IDF can win. 'We are the strongest military in the region. We can
defeat Hezbollah. We can defeat Hamas because the IDF is just the best.'
And I think there is a bit of an illusion of the actual capabilities
that Israel has. And in the eyes of Israel's antagonists, Hezbollah,
Hamas, but also in the eyes of many Arabs the narrative that Israel is
invincible and that therefore you have to make peace with Israel, which
was always the deterrent for Israel's security, that deterrent has
broken down in the minds of most Arabs. They don't believe in that
anymore. They see that Israel is fairly vulnerable. Israel is
strategically indecisive. It has lost its dominance of escalation, not
just vis-â-vis Iran but also vis-â-vis non-state actors. And, to be
honest, Israel hasn't won a major war since probably 1973 which is 50
years ago. So it's a country and a military that is living in an
illusion and an echo chamber, telling itself how good it is and how
stable and secure and how much capabilities it has. None of the
capabilities Israel has today can make up for the strategic deficiencies
and its inability to politically address the root causes of the
conflict in Palestine.
So in this incredibly unstable, volatile scenario what needs to happen to take the temperature down?
For too long the regional order and stability was built around a
single hegemon which is the United States and the primacy of US
leadership in the world. And despite all the competition during the Cold
War, it was always the US who was able to somewhat bring a degree of
stability by having relations with authoritarian states. The empowerment
of the Arab street and the Arab people through social media since the
Arab Spring means that this authoritarian notion, this notion of
authoritarian stability, is no longer feasible. It's non-state actors
who are on the rise and so what you end up with is an unstable
spontaneous order that lasts for a very short period of time and can be
easily upended or thrown into imbalance by a singular event being able
to completely throw regional order upside down as we've seen with 7
October. And that is a trend that's been ongoing since 2003 and the war
in Iraq. 7 October has really speeded up that process. And in the future
we will have to come to terms with the fact that the Middle East will
be even less stable and less secure than it has been. That being said,
you can still get to an equilibrium of stability but that is going to be
an equilibrium of stability that is mediated, if you will, or
negotiated between a host and a whole variety of different state and
non-state actors.
That sounds like a big lift, Andreas, from where we are right now.
The problem we have is still some people in Western capitals take a
very state-centric approach to the region and say it's all about stable,
authoritarian regimes and states and they disregard the street
communities, NGOs and also armed non-state actors. The fact that someone
like the Huthis are able to impose a naval blockade on one of the
busiest logistical trade routes in the world, the Bab el-Mandeb, is
quite impressive and is something that means we need to engage with
them. The fact that we're just bombing them without really making
overtures to get them to the negotiation table shows that we're unable
to really engage with the variety of different actors that we need to
engage with. So, basically, what we need is good governance because bad
governance is the root cause of insecurity in the region. That means we
need to find more efficient ways of governance. That means including
non-state actors and having multi-stakeholder initiatives to negotiate
stability and security. We have to sit down with actors that we now
consider to be terrorists, such as the Huthis or actors that we consider
to be our enemy, anyone in the Axis of Resistance, for example,
including Hezbollah. We need to open our minds to the network-centric
order that is appearing and states are very ill-prepared for it. And
beyond that, also, I think most European states and the United States
are so preoccupied with their own stability and insecurity at home that
the Middle East becomes some sort of afterthought. We need to prioritise
(new approaches), especially in Europe because the Middle East is right
on our doorstep. Whatever happens there will have implications across
all domains of statecraft for Europe.
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