November 30, 2025 |
Good morning, world! It’s become a pattern: Since the cease-fire in Gaza was reached, Israel has carried out a steady drumbeat of attacks not just in Gaza, but in Lebanon and Syria. Last week, its forces killed at least 13 people in Syria, including two children, according to Syrian health officials, in one of the bloodiest incursions since the fall of the Assad regime last year. Israel said the operation allowed it to capture a number of militants; Syria’s government responded with outrage.
My colleague Roger Cohen recently witnessed one of those attacks in Lebanon. Today he writes on whether Israel’s military dominance over its neighbors, far from making the country safer, is actually making peace more elusive.
| After an Israeli drone strike in Lebanon in September. David Guttenfelder/The New York Times |
‘Imperial Israel’ in the new Middle East
By Roger Cohen
Last month, in yet another display of its reach, Israel assassinated one of Hezbollah’s top military officials, in an airstrike that killed him and four others on the outskirts of Beirut.
This strike made news because of its target. Haytham Ali Tabatabai was part of the group’s senior leadership, and had been a member of Hezbollah since its earliest days.
But such strikes happen so often these days that most of them don’t make news. Their targets are typically less prominent Hezbollah members. I witnessed one such strike on a recent trip to Lebanon. A New York Times photographer, David Guttenfelder, and I sat on a cliff above a highway, and happened to catch the moment when an Israeli drone fired a missile that turned a white car below us into a ball of fire.
When we reached the scene, we found a driver’s seat that had been blown to oblivion. Two distraught young men, dressed in black, picked up small pieces of charred remains, one by one, and dropped them into plastic bags to be buried the next day.
Israel’s military dominance across the Middle East has proved overwhelming in the two years since the devastating Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack. The region is adapting to what Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a prominent political scientist in the United Arab Emirates, calls an “imperial Israel,” a country whose defense forces operate almost at will in the air and on the ground, and will kill enemies anywhere: from Lebanon to Syria, Gaza to Iran, Yemen to Qatar.
But can the superiority of the Israeli military be turned into strategic security? Or does the Israeli approach — almost daily strikes against Hezbollah operatives and often civilians who happen to be in the line of fire — make peace impossible?
David and I recently traveled on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border to report on the first anniversary of the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah. In our reporting, we found little sign that Israeli power, as currently deployed, will create a more peaceful long-term future for Israel and the region.
A gray zone between war and peace
Today that cease-fire is fraying fast. The U.S. has demanded that Hezbollah be completely disarmed by the end of the year. But that goal looks near impossible.
Both Israel and the United States have an interest in Hezbollah’s disarmament, as does the state of Lebanon. But regular Israeli killings and bombings make that disarmament much more difficult.
“The Israelis say they can’t leave unless Hezbollah disarms, and Hezbollah says how can we disarm as long as the Israelis don’t?” Nawaf Salam, the Lebanese prime minister, told me in an interview. “Hezbollah knows things have changed in the region but are still trying to resist.”
Each death inflicted by Israel seems only to fortify the resolve of its enemies, no matter how weakened, and erode any impulse for peace. A Hezbollah billboard on the coastal highway said it all: “When we are victorious, we win, and when we are martyred, we win.”
Lebanon exists in a gray zone between war and peace. (This gray zone could also be the fate of Gaza as Hamas resists disarming, and Israel strikes selected targets.) The situation weakens the Lebanese government, which is trying to achieve something new — establishing the state’s exclusive right to bear arms.
“I fear we’ll see a major Israeli escalation, further undermining the very best president and prime minister Lebanon has had in decades,” said Jeffrey Feltman, a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon.
Domination is not enough
Both in Lebanon and Syria, Israel appears unwilling to forgo, or even cut back, military action to prioritize a diplomatic path with new governments that offer at least the possibility of some form of dialogue. As Israel wields a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Israel’s military dominance is not in question. The Iran-led “axis of resistance,” of which Hezbollah has been a central part, is a shadow of its former self. Iran, battered by Israel in a brief June war, is weaker. Syria, after the fall of the Assad regime last year, is no longer a friend of Tehran; nor is it the pipeline for Iranian arms to Hezbollah that it once was.
The issue is how to make these changes into foundations for peace in a region whose wounds are deep. Domination alone looks like a dead end. For one thing, the question of Palestinian statehood, as long as it remains unresolved, will always be an obstacle. President Trump speaks of a new dawn in the Middle East. For now, much seems to look the same.
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