How Israel is winning the wars and losing the peace

TEL AVIV — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently stood next to President Trump in Israel's parliament in Jerusalem and summarized the last two years of war:

"Israel achieved amazing victories over Hamas and the entire Iran terror axis — Sinwar, Deif, Haniyah, Nasrallah, Assad — they're all gone."

This list refers to countries (Iran, Syria and Lebanon), groups (Hamas and Hezbollah) and individuals (Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyah of Hamas, Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah and Bashar al-Assad of Syria) that have been Israel's main enemies for decades.

Yet at the same time, "While Netanyahu was winning wars, he was not able to win any of the peace, or any of the peaces," said Paul Salem, who's based in Lebanon with the Middle East Institute. "He was not able to turn his military victories into sustainable political wins. He was digging Israel deeper into a hole."

Israel has also come under withering international criticism. This is mostly over the Gaza war, which began with the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which Israeli authorities say killed 1,144 people. In its ferocious response, Israel's military killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza health officials.

Israel faces charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice, and Netanyahu has been charged with war crimes at the International Criminal Court. Israel and Netanyahu reject both these charges.

For Israel, "From a purely military perspective, things look much better. From a foreign policy perspective, things could not have deteriorated much more than they have," said Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security advisor in Israel.

"I think the war had a long-term impact," he added. "It's going to take quite a while for Israel to regain its international standing of, let's say, 30 or 40 years ago."

Back in the 1990s, Israel and the Palestinians spent much of the decade trying to negotiate an end to their conflict, with the international community supporting those efforts.

Bodies of unidentified Palestinians returned from Israel are buried in a mass grave in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on Monday.

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Friction in Israel-U.S. ties

Today, the criticism of Israel comes from all directions. Outrage in the Arab world. Mass protests in European cities and on U.S. college campuses.

Yet Freilich says his biggest worry is the U.S.-Israel relationship, which he has seen from both sides. He was born and raised in the U.S. He moved to Israel, where he became a security official. He still lives in Israel, but teaches for a semester each year in the U.S., currently at Georgetown University.

"For me, this is really the only existential threat that Israel faces, is a loss of American support," he said. "Israel needs the United States critically for just about every issue it faces."

Israel used to have rock-solid bipartisan support in the U.S.

"Today there is an absolute collapse of support on the Democratic side, and we see the beginnings of a decrease in support on the Republican side," he said.

Trump remains a staunch supporter of Israel, but he has set red lines. He's pressuring Israel to stick to the ceasefire. He's explicitly told Israel not to annex the West Bank, where a half-million Jewish settlers live on land Palestinians claim for a future state.

Salem says with these actions, Trump is showing a willingness to go against Israel in ways that previous U.S. presidents have not.

"He doesn't always seem to follow what Israel or the Israeli lobby or the prime minister of Israel wants," said Salem.

Before the Gaza war erupted in 2023, some younger Arabs were not as passionate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as earlier generations, which championed the Palestinian cause since the first major war in 1948.

The latest Gaza war has energized the younger generation, said Salem.

"This is a war that was carried live on TikTok, and that did not happen in 1948," he said. "This has branded an entire generation."

Relations cool, but agreements hold

The recent fighting was also a stress test of the Abraham Accords. Those are the 2020 agreements worked out in Trump's first term, which established relations between Israel and four Muslim countries.

The war produced strains, but the agreements survived, notes Erel Margalit, a prominent Israeli venture capitalist who began doing business in Gulf states after the accords were signed.

"We have companies that are dealing with [United Arab Emirates] banks and Bahrain banks and Saudi banks and insurance companies and the government," he said.

Speaking more broadly about Israel-Arab business ties, which had largely stalled in the past couple years, he said, "It's not being discussed too much out in the open. It's not being hidden, but it's quiet. I think a lot of it is coming back."

However, an improvement in Israel's international standing is likely to take time.

What the region needs, said Margalit, are Israeli and Arab political leaders who can move beyond the endless cycle of conflict.

"There needs to be more political leadership, because the region could certainly use new initiatives as we're moving forward from this war," he said.

A lot may depend on what happens next in Gaza. If the ceasefire holds and rebuilding starts in Gaza, then Israel's isolation may begin to ease.

But the ceasefire remains shaky. On Tuesday, Israel accused Hamas of firing on Israeli forces still in Gaza. Netanyahu ordered "forceful strikes" in response, and Palestinian officials reported air strikes in Gaza City late Tuesday night.
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