With Gaza in ruins and Lebanon under siege, what defence remains for Israel’s actions?
‘Existential threat’ is a thin excuse: the out-of-control force that is pushing the Middle East to the brink is Israel itself
Acommon defence of Israel’s belligerence, both within the Palestinian territories and in the wider region, is the claim that it must act in this way because it is surrounded by countries that are trying to annihilate it. Like many of the arguments that attempt to justify Israel’s disproportionate response to 7 October, it is not only incorrect but also an inversion of reality. The events of the last few months and the assault on Lebanon over the past few days demonstrate that it is Israel which is a threat to its neighbours.
On last Monday alone, Israeli airstrikes killed 558 people in Lebanon – half the number who died in a whole month of war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. Among the dead were 50 children, as well as humanitarian workers, first aid responders and government employees. Lebanon’s prime minister, Najib Mikati, says a million people could soon be displaced. The strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday levelled six apartment blocks in Beirut. A Gaza in microcosm is quickly unfolding – thousands fleeing for safety, traumatised children, high casualties, an escalation where there is no limit on the civilian lives that can be sacrificed to achieve Israel’s goals.
Since the start of the conflict in Gaza, Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in a war of signalling military capability and resolve, exchanging missiles and strong rhetoric but never initiating open and unrestrained warfare. That changed with the pager and radio attacks, widely believed to be by Israel, followed by airstrikes that escalated last week. Israel is looking not just for a show of decisive military might and a cowing of Hezbollah, but for the military victory that still eludes it in the quagmire of Gaza. But there is a risk that Hezbollah and Iran, which have so far refrained from a clear-cut declaration of war, will be goaded into a face-saving conflict which neither they or Israel can win outright.
And so here we are again: in a situation where civilians are caught in the middle and Israel justifies their deaths with a defence that – as always – draws on fears of an “existential threat”. But in terms of real and grave threats to regional stability, Israel is the pugnacious out-of-control force, embarking on its recent campaign in Lebanon and the assassination of Nasrallah against the United States’s explicit wishes. Its neighbours and the wider region are reluctant to be drawn into any sort of war with Israel, let alone one in which it is annihilated. Israel’s response to 7 October overturned the status quo – and given the choice, its neighbours would surely turn back the clock.
The Gaza war has endured so long and expanded so much that we no longer see the smaller pictures – only the cliche of “rising tensions” in the Middle East. We no longer see the others killed on its edges, in the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria. And we cannot see the contours of individual nations – their challenges and long histories of grappling with both Israel and Palestine, and their own conflicts. Lebanon, a country still scarred by civil war, is being retraumatised; elsewhere Israel’s actions since 7 October have upturned the domestic politics and regional political calibrations of the Arab world and the wider Middle East.
Rather than wishing for Israel’s destruction, many states in the region recently considered the Israel and Palestine question settled or at least sidelined, largely on Israel’s terms. Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel more than 40 years ago and bowed out of a conflict it knew it couldn’t win. Jordan relinquished its claim to the West Bank – occupied by Israel since 1967 despite repeated UN calls for it to withdraw from all Palestinian and other Arab territories – in 1988, and made peace in 1994. In the Abraham accords, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan all agreed to normalise relations with Israel and recognise its status as a sovereign nation or to begin that process. Saudi Arabia’s normalisation of relations and recognition, a significant win for Israel, was on its way before 7 October. The consensus among analysts and insiders I have spoken to is that the Gaza war is not seen by Saudi Arabia as a gamechanger in its relationship with Israel, and that if and when it ends, the Gulf state would still be keen on normalisation.
The Gaza war, and the wider Israel-Palestine issue, is also a test for Arab countries that are negotiating their own challenges and managing domestic discord. It is a distraction and disrupts their relationships with western allies. Egypt is in the throes of an economic crisis and is under the intense pressure to decide about letting in Palestinian refugees, potentially enabling the ethnic cleansing of Gaza in the process. The UAE is already embroiled in a war in Sudan, for which it is drawing intense heat and some damaging international media coverage. Saudi Arabia would very much like to leave all foreign politics behind, having overdosed on it during the time when it projected its power using religious influence and wealth, and get down to the business of building shiny mega cities, buying up sports franchises and cleansing its reputation. Qatar is a staunch US ally and hosts the largest US military facility in the Middle East. Jordan, a resource-poor country with a fragile economy, has received more than a million refugees from Syria in recent years, and is almost entirely dependent on staggering amounts of US aid to remain viable. Syria has remained quiet despite strikes in its territory by Israel. Lebanon is home to what is in effect a Hezbollah state within a state, the latter being one with no president and an economic and political perma-crisis.
And so to the threat to Israel. Why does it continue to cast itself as besieged in a region that has either long been domesticated or has too many of its own problems to care? If the cause of Israel’s belligerence can be externalised, portrayed as a necessary response from a state surrounded by threats because of the simple fact of its existence, then Israel’s own role can be obscured and exculpated.
The source of Israel’s security challenges, the heart of the “rising tensions” in the region, is Israel’s siege on Gaza, what is widely condemned as apartheid in the West Bank, its continuing occupation of territories that it has been ordered by UN security council resolutions to vacate, and its illegal expansion of settlements. As long as these conditions continue, uprisings through both justified and illegitimate means, from intifada to 7 October, will persist. And so will incidents of sharp confrontation, deadly to Palestinians, with Israeli forces and settlers, triggering a cycle of response among states such as Iran and non-state actors such as Hezbollah and the Houthis. A profound threat does exist, but it is to the stability of the Middle East and the wider Arab world, which Israel is increasingly drawing to the brink.
Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
This article was amended on 30 September 2024 to rephrase reference to Jordan’s previous claims over the West Bank.