Benjamin Netanyahu's Middle East transformation must begin at home

By Marc Champion

A year after Hamas fighters went on their nightmarish killing spree among Kibbutzniks and concert-going Jewish kids, Israel is dramatically transforming the balance of power across the Middle East. The method may be military, but the goal, says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is to create a new regional order that’s free of the fanaticism represented by Iran and its proxies, from Hamas to Hezbollah in Lebanon, to the Houthis of Yemen.

Who can’t get behind that?

It turns out, pretty much everyone. That includes Arab nations no less anxious than Israel to see Tehran defanged. It includes lifelong supporters of the Jewish state, made uneasy by its displays of brute force, and the families of hostages still languishing in Gaza’s tunnels. One year on, swathes of the world have come to view Israel, the victim of Oct. 7’s psychopathic massacre, as an aggressor drunk on military power.

Propaganda, anti-Semitism and historical ignorance all play a role in this disturbing turn of events. But a factor at least as important is within Israel’s control: Netanyahu still hasn’t defined the most fundamental of issues, a strategy to make his stated endgame believable, let alone achievable. Without that to make sense of all the violence, it looks less like a plan than revenge.

What Netanyahu’s better Middle East should look like is no mystery. It’s exactly as described in his defiant Sep. 27 address to the United Nations General Assembly. The maps he used as props were cartoonish and his language uncomfortably Manichean, but the right goal for the region is precisely “The Blessing” scenario he laid out.

This is a world in which Israel’s high-tech economy and democratic institutions could act as catalysts for development across the resource-rich Middle East. It’s one in which Israel is no longer treated as a colonial imposition and where the religious fundamentalism that has so poisoned the region can be rolled back.

In this “blessed” Middle East, there can be no place for Hamas, a Sunni terrorist organization masquerading as a government. Nor for Hezbollah, a Shiite terrorist group masquerading as a Lebanese political movement; likewise, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who’ve been attacking shipping lanes to the Suez Canal, which accounted for 22 per cent of global container traffic in 2023. That flow fell by 67 per cent by the first quarter of this year, drilling a sizeable hole in Egypt’s budget.

In fact, there is no room for any “Axis of Resistance,” committed to Israel’s destruction. Each of its member militias owe their first allegiance to Tehran and compromise the sovereignty and governance of the territories in which they operate, whether that’s Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon or Yemen. The more chaos they sow, the more space they have to maneuver.

Most Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians and Yemenis don’t want chaos. In fact, most Lebanese aren’t Shiite and despise Hezbollah. They don’t want their country used as a pawn in Iran’s expansionist games. In the same way, most Iranians don’t want to be ruled by Islamist clerics and — while horrified by the plight Palestinians in Gaza — have no desire to destroy Israel. Even in Gaza, many Palestinians dislike Hamas and the catastrophe that its actions on Oct. 7, 2023, have brought them.

All of this creates room for hope and potential partners in any project for improvement. Yet hope, and the strategy that might create it, are the critical missing ingredients from Netanyahu’s call for a better Middle East — most glaringly when it comes to the Palestinians. Nobody believes this can be easy; it’s a question that has resisted resolution for 70 years, with the fault widely shared. But until it is, no amount of military success will create a secure future, either for Israel or its neighbors.

So, when Netanyahu, in his UN speech presented Saudi Arabia as Israel’s key partner, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan followed up with a response in the Financial Times just days later. Such a partnership, he wrote, can come only if it’s based on a cease-fire in Gaza, and the establishment of “an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.” 

What Saudi Arabia has now understood and Netanyahu has not, is that failure to address the Palestinian question was a fatal flaw at the heart at the otherwise hugely positive Abraham Accords that former US President Donald Trump’s administration brokered between Israel and several of the Gulf States, in 2020. Saudi Arabia was about to follow suit last year, when Oct. 7 and the devastating Israeli response to it made that politically impossible.

The key here is that Israel must also transform itself. Because, just as there is no room for Hamas or Hezbollah in Netanyahu’s – let’s face it – for now utopian new Middle East, there can be no room either for the religious and nationalist fanatics represented by Israel’s current ministers for national security and finance, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

These are men who have advocated for the “voluntary” emigration of Palestinians from Gaza, at a moment when it has been rendered a wasteland. They believe Israel should span the entire Holy Land, including the Occupied Territories that would comprise a Palestinian state. They have justified torture and the blockading of humanitarian aid. And whenever some move is floated that might create hope, they have threatened to collapse the government.

What these Israeli cabinet members are proposing is, when unvarnished, ethnic cleansing and a recipe for constant war. They fit right in with the old Middle East and are indistinguishable from their radical Sunni or Shiite counterparts. It is their grip on Israeli policy that has created the void where Netanyahu’s blueprint for the future should be. 

As Israel prepares for another round of retaliation against Iran and remembers the hostages and horrors of Oct. 7, it’s time to fill that strategic void.  To achieve security, reconcile with the Arab world and isolate Iran’s clerics, Netanyahu needs to clean house. He needs to start offering hope, as well as showing power, starting with a plan for Palestinians that includes the prospect of an end to their perpetual  occupation.

Disclaimer: This is a Bloomberg Opinion piece, and these are the personal opinions of the writer. They do not reflect the views of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper