The Middle East: Permanent War, or Peace in Our Time?

Once Hizballah’s pagers began exploding, it was clear that Israel had embarked on a new, kinetic strategy.? 7 October changed the Israeli mindset. No longer would it sit back and accept cross-border shelling from S Lebanon: it would lean into the problem and make it go away, putting into practice Tony Blair's comment after 9/11 - ‘Risks you were once prepared to live with, you are no longer prepared to accept.’? There is a certain irrefutable logic to this approach: what is the point in destroying your Southern enemy, if you are going to leave your Northern (and arguably more redoubtable) enemy intact.? Since Israel had mobilised itself to fighting a war, may as well fight the whole war, not just part of it.

As Israeli troops swept across the Border into Lebanon overnight, the question on everyone’s minds seemed to be ‘will this lead to a wider Middle Eastern war’?? I don’t think that is quite the right question to ask.? Israel has scored such a series of spectacular military victories over the past fortnight that there is no country in the Region that is likely to want to take on a direct fight with them.?

Who are the potential opponents? Jordan?? Egypt? Whilst their governments and populations may be seething about Gaza (and now Lebanon), they have Peace Treaties with Israel and are only too aware of the overwhelming military superiority that Israel enjoys. Saudi Arabia? Saudi is delighted with the discomfiture of its regional Shi’a rival.? Who, then, would be the country that challenges Israel and pulls the Region into a war?

Only Iran really has a dog in this fight. Indeed, Iran may feel it is obliged to respond to Israel. That not doing so would be a humiliation too far. That its regional standing demands a response. That without it, the policy of mutual deterrence which has kept a form of uneasy peace between the antagonists may be undermined.

Yet, Iran will be only too painfully aware of the risks of retaliation. Not only has the US very publicly warned Iran not to respond, but the country has suffered a humiliating series of military setbacks over the past months - from assassinations on its own soil to the downing by Arab and Western allies of the majority of the 300-odd missiles and drones it fired at Israel in April, meaning that only a handful actually made it to Israeli territory; and Iran was so fearful of Israeli reaction to its missiles that it spent the preceding two weeks telegraphing to the world exactly what it would fire and when.? Iran knows that in a straight fight, it would be devasted.? And it knows that the West (and many Arab nations) would support Israel in that conflict.

So, I cannot see this conflict spreading into a wider regional war – at least not a conventional war fought on the battlefield between two opposing armies. Another kind of grinding, never-ending conflict is possible.? One in which victory is never quite achieved and rocket fire across the border between Lebanon and Israel continues to make return impossible for the civilians (on both sides of the frontier), meaning that Netanyahu never fully achieves his Northern war aims

So, rather than stress about regional conflagration, the questions that should be keeping world leaders up at night are: Does Netanyahu have a plan to win the peace after he has won the war?? Will he know when and how to stop?? Will he want to? What does victory look like?? Will Israel pulverise Lebanon, just as it has flattened Gaza, in a show of overpowering military might to terrify its putative opponents? Will Israel get bogged down into an awful, grinding war of attrition in Lebanon?? And how and when will Lebanon recover? Because if we cannot answer those questions, then all that we are witnessing is thousands of deaths which will serve nothing but the radicalisation of the next generation and the guarantee of never-ending conflict in the Middle East.

Over the weekend, Ayman Safadi the Jordanian Foreign Minister made a brave and visionary proposal (very similar to one I had suggested on 20 October last year). A genuine Regional Peace Plan. One that included every State in the Middle East, binding them into its success. He suggested that in return for recognition of Israel by all Arab States and normalisation of relations, Israel should recognise Palestine and create the Two-State Solution that everyone has wanted so desperately for decades.? Israeli security would be guaranteed, not only by the power of its own army, but by the Arab States who would have so much more to lose by breaching any agreement. In the heat of his military glory, it is difficult to know whether Netanyahu will pause to consider the merits of this proposal.

For the cold truth is that lasting peace requires much more than military dominance.? Unless the boil of Palestinian demands for Statehood is lanced, Israeli military might (and astounding air and intelligence successes) merely serves to push the next confrontation down the road of history for a decade or so until the next generation, already radicalised and with no alternative positive vision in which to believe, takes up arms against those it views as occupying oppressors. Without hope of a better future, the mistakes of the past will be endlessly repeated in a depressing cycle of violence and destruction.

So the question that should be forefront of everyone’s minds is therefore: how to persuade Netanyahu and his Cabinet to seize this moment and translate their staggering tactical military successes into a lasting strategic success, one that finally brings peace to a long-troubled Region?? Does he have the political courage, the visionary leadership to forge out of the battering sword of victory, the blunt but enduring ploughshare of partnership?? Doing so would represent the real victory – a peace that robs Hamas and Hizballah of their raison d’être and offers the traumatised and battered peoples of the Middle East a chance not merely of a far-distant hope of a prosperous and shared future, but the opportunity to finally live that dream.