Exactly one year on from Hamas’s deadly attack on 7 October it is Israel that is now looking to reshape the Middle East by force.
Despite repeated attempts by US, Egyptian and Qatari diplomats to negotiate a ceasefire and hostage release deal, the conflict in Gaza remains “unresolved” and peace between Israelis and Palestinians seems “less likely than ever”, said Foreign Policy.
With Israel now turning its focus towards Lebanon and Iran, the region is “on the edge of an even worse war; wider, deeper, even more destructive”, said the BBC‘s Jeremy Bowen.
What did the commentators say?
With Gaza effectively in ruins and Hamas depleted – if not yet defeated – Israel’s pivot towards Hezbollah and Iran “makes sense”, said M.L. deRaismes Combes and John Nagl from the US Army War College in Foreign Policy.
Yet “looking at the conflict another way, the Hamas war is only in its infancy”. The militant group might suffer “attrition in the short term” but the “manner in which Israel achieves any such pyrrhic victory has in reality already created the next generation of Hamas or Islamic Jihad or whatever other group feels pushed to the brink of despair and anger”.
Military experts agree that it is difficult for Israel to achieve a decisive victory against Hamas or Hezbollah. “Things seem to be headed in the direction of a sustained low-intensity war,” said the Atlantic Council’s Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib in Foreign Policy. In such a scenario, a “steady rhythm of strikes, incursions, attacks, guerrilla warfare, assassinations, and an overall game of whack-a-mole will be a daily occurrence instead of the high-intensity tempo that was characteristic of the first months of the war”.
The last year has “seriously exposed Israel’s newly minted operational doctrine”, which planned for “short decisive” conflicts against non-state actors and avoiding extended wars, said The Guardian. “Instead, the opposite has happened.” This has raised “serious questions” as to whether Israel has “any clearer vision for its escalating conflict with Iran”.
What next?
At the moment Israel is “not seeking a diplomatic off-ramp”, said Dalia Dassa Kaye in Foreign Affairs. “It is looking for total victory.” If this means an “escalation and tactical military successes against Hezbollah and Iran, then Israel has indeed succeeded”. But this is an “ephemeral victory” that “carries unpredictable costs and outcomes, and it appears uncoupled from any serious momentum toward peace with the Palestinians – Israel’s most serious existential challenge”.
Some hawks in Israel and the US have begun talking openly about a complete reordering of the Middle East by force. The last time this was contemplated seriously was 20 years ago in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks and the allied invasion of Iraq. This “did not purge the Middle East of violent extremism”, said Bowen. “It made matters worse.
“The priority for those who want to stop this war should be a ceasefire in Gaza. It is the only chance to cool matters and to create a space for diplomacy. This year of war started in Gaza. Perhaps it can end there too.”