Israel is now the military hegemon in the region, and Hamas is a shadow of its former self.
I t took the Israelis days to fully clear the Gaza envelope of the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters, as well as the Palestinian civilians who joined in the bloody bacchanal on October 7, 2023. Even before the area had been pacified, and as a long war loomed on the horizon, Israeli officials resolved to destroy Hamas once and for all.
If the cease-fire agreement that appears set to enter effect this weekend encounters no snags along the way, the Israelis will fall somewhat short of that goal. It would be ahistorical to assume that the agreement Donald Trump secured with the region’s relevant parties is destined to progress beyond the initial stages. Nor should we assume that Hamas is going to willingly surrender its role as the preeminent political and military force in Gaza to a technocratic body of experts overseen by a Trump-led “board of peace.”
However, even if Trump’s vision for a post-Hamas Strip fails to fully materialize in full, Isreal’s longest war will not end in a stalemate. The Jewish state has secured victories that were, at the outset of this war, all but inconceivable.
On October 6, 2023, Israel was still surrounded by what Iran’s provocateurs described as a “ring of fire.” The so-called axis of resistance consisting of Iran’s terrorist proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, among others — had, according to one 2018 Israeli Defense Forces document, established a “balance of deterrence.”
These outfits have since been decimated by the work of the Israelis and their Western partners, the United States in particular. Hamas is a leaderless shadow of its former self. So, too, is Hezbollah following conventional and spectacularly impressive unconventional attacks on its leadership and foot soldiers alike. The Syrian channels through which Hezbollah trafficked weapons and other instruments of war into Lebanon, bound for northern Israel, were closed off after Bashar al-Assad’s Baathist regime collapsed, clearing the way for a Western-facing regime that is, at the very least, skeptical of Assad’s allies in Tehran and Moscow.
Speaking of Tehran, on October 6, the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program was not only intact but well positioned to develop and perhaps even test a fissionable device. Israel’s military response to Iran’s multiple volleys targeting Israeli territory culminated in U.S.-led strikes (Operation Midnight Hammer) on Iran’s nuclear facilities, setting the program back by at least two years. More important, the strikes created conditions in which Europe restored pre–Iran-nuclear-deal sanctions, and they established the predicate for additional strikes on Iran’s nuclear program if the Islamic Republic attempts another race toward a bomb. Future American presidents are unlikely to let that precedent lapse, given the lack of global support for a nuclear-capable Iran.
Even if the peace deal Trump secured between Israel and Hamas’s proxy negotiators falls apart in the later stages, it now has the backing of some of the region’s most crucial powers. Muslim governments as diverse as those of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates committed their support to a document insisting that Hamas cannot rule the Strip. Additionally, because the Palestinian Authority must engage in some unspecified “reform program” before it can assume a leadership role, these governments are compelled to take an ownership stake in Gaza’s transition and future. Indeed, by acknowledging that Israel will not withdraw fully from the Strip, Israel’s permanent interests in Gaza, too, have been legitimized. That’s a big and important development for a region where no one — Israel very much included — wanted much to do with the toxic, dominant culture inside Gaza.
And on October 6, the international consensus still held out hope for a “two-state solution” to the various conflicts between Israel and the polities that make up the Palestinian territories. It was an aspirational concept even then. Few could square how one state might be forged from two geographical noncontiguous territories with distinct economies, foreign policies, and governments (which were at war with each other when they had the chance). Today, the “two-state solution” still has credence only in Western capitals. The dream is very much alive in Ottawa, London, Paris, and Berlin. It is all but dead in Cairo, Amman, Beirut, Damascus, and Dubai, except as a vestigial shibboleth signifying a vague desire for a more permanent peace in the Levant. Something new must and probably will take its place.
But the only reason there’s space for something new to emerge from the catastrophe that took place on October 7 is that Israel fought this war with the goal of securing not a temporary reprieve from Islamist terror but victory over its attackers. Westerners are unfamiliar with what it looks like to fight a war to win. Over the past two years, they have been bombarded with well-financed propaganda about Israelis wantonly slaughtering hospital patients and refugees, using starvation as a weapon of war, and executing a systemic “genocidal” campaign of extermination to achieve its goals. The soft-hearted and naïve have fallen for these lies, and Israel’s diplomatic position in Western capitals is precarious as a result.
But Israel will emerge from its war the regional military hegemon, and the Middle East’s Sunni Arab states will probably proceed with the normalization process that the war merely interrupted. That process began as a result of a reluctant acknowledgement in the region that Israel was the strong horse and its Iran-backed adversaries were an urgent threat to everyone, not just Israel. That threat may be less urgent now, but the logic that led to an alignment with Israel is no weaker for Jerusalem’s present dominance.
All these felicitous developments are not just good for Israel. They’re good for the United States. America’s strategic interests in the region are advanced by Israel’s qualified victory over its foes because its foes are America’s foes, too. The horrors of October 7 will never be erased or forgotten. But the forces of civilization are set to emerge from that act of terror stronger and more confident.
Hamas has not been scattered to the winds, but it lost the war it started on October 7. The recognition of that, not any piece of paper, is what will beget a genuine and durable peace.