Are the neighbors impressed?
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer.
Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
Q. Have the IDF’s recent military achievements, culminating in the blows inflicted on Iran, enhanced Israel’s relations with its neighbors?
A. That depends which neighbors, and what the circumstances are. Certainly not the Palestinians, with whom the situation gets worse and worse.
But let’s come back to that later. Instead, we can start with Israel’s veteran peace partners, Egypt and Jordan. Quite a few Israelis stranded abroad by the 12-Day War’s freezing of commercial aviation to and from Israel returned home overland without incident via Egypt and Jordan. Moreover, the Israel Air Force overflew Jordan unhindered on its way to and from Iran. And Jordan’s air defenses were activated repeatedly against Iranian UAVs headed for Israel.
All this strategic interaction is not exactly new to the countries involved. But it appears to have been upgraded last month when Israel needed it.
Q. The IAF also overflew Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon repeatedly, unhindered, on its way to bomb Iran. What does this tell us about Israel’s relations with these countries?
A. Damascus and Beirut recently witnessed dramatic leadership changes that installed anti-Iran forces in power. Then too, neither country has an air force that might conceivably oppose IAF overflights. But this is not the case with Iraq, whose regime is Shiite-dominated and broadly pro-Iranian. That Iraqi aircraft and air defenses did not oppose the IAF speaks volumes about the Arab perception of the evolving balance of forces in the region and the need to adjust, pragmatically.
Q. Will we now see additional Arab countries joining the Abraham Accords? Making peace or normalizing relations with Israel?
A. Speculation centers on Syria, where a revolution installed a pragmatic ex-jihadist anti-Iranian, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, in power last December. Al-Sharaa has already met with US President Trump and his regime has reportedly established clandestine security links with neighboring Israel. While Turkey, which backed the anti-Assad Syrian resistance led by Al-Sharaa, is considered a more dominant neighbor than Israel, Al-Sharaa is known to be wary of trading Tehran’s Assad-era hegemony for that of Ankara.
An overt, not-too-warm Israel link focusing on mutual security and commerce could conceivably help to balance things for Syria. So could ties to Azerbaijan, which has security links with Israel and is reportedly mediating between Jerusalem and Damascus.
If there is going to be a post-12 Day War breakthrough in Arab relations with Israel, Syria is the prime candidate. Trump administration pressure and financial links, backed by Saudi and UAE generosity to Al-Sharaa, are key. Trump has already removed Assad-era US sanctions. Turkey for its part is cooperative, particularly insofar as it wants to send home some three million Syrian refugees from the Assad era.
Then, too, because of Lebanon’s delicate ethnic composition, including several hundred thousand Palestinians and a large Shiite sector, Beirut is not likely to warm up relations with Israel even after the latter’s defeat of Hezbollah, unless Syria does first. Meanwhile, with Washington’s help, the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire is taking root, expanding, and laying the groundwork for a possible future Israel-Lebanon peace breakthrough.
One more pressing and delicate issue in Syria-Israel relations is the Druze minority. In Israel, the Druze are influential, particularly when it comes to the welfare of their brethren in neighboring states; in Syria they fear oppression by the new Islamist regime. Along with the territorial issue, Israel needs to negotiate with Syria regarding the status and welfare of Syrian Druze.
Q. And the territorial issue?
A. In the post-October 7 era, Israel fears surprise Islamist attack along its borders – even, conceivably, attack by Islamists connected with the not-yet-stable Al-Sharaa regime in Syria. Accordingly, the IDF wants to hold onto fortified outposts it has built on the Syrian side of the Golan over the past half year of anarchy in Syria. Al-Sharaa demands Israeli withdrawal, even as he acknowledges that Israel will hold onto the remaining Golan territory it conquered in 1967.
Q. Leaving aside Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors, the 12-Day War reminded old-timers that belligerents Israel and Iran were once friends and even allies…
A. Prior to the fall of the Shah’s regime in Iran in 1979, Israel, Iran, and Turkey were allies in a strategic pact known as “Trident.” They collaborated against shared Arab and Soviet enemies alike. Now not only is Iran Israel’s enemy, but an increasingly Islamist Turkey under President Erdogan is hostile too.
Back before 1979, these three regional non-Arab powers – Israel, Iran, and Turkey – confronted an often hostile Arab world. Now Israel finds itself contemplating a hostile non-Arab Islamist northern belt and a friendlier Sunni Arab world. Notably, prior to 1979 the only Arab actor that aided the anti-Shah Iranian Islamist opposition led by Ayatollah Khomeini was the Assad regime in Syria with its Alawite quasi-Shiite ethnic orientation.
In the Middle East, what goes around comes around.
Q. In the course of recent decades, Israel has destroyed an Iraqi military nuclear program, a Syrian nuclear project and now, together with the United States, an Iranian nuclear project (or at least a portion of it). What is the message for the Middle East?
A. That a hegemonic Israel wants to keep the region nuclear-free, except for itself. This image of Israel after the recent 12-Day War says a lot about the real nature of an evolving Israel-Arab relationship: built not on warmth but on deterrence and deference.
Q. But let’s get back to the Palestinians. Are improved Israel-Arab relations conditioned at all on ending the war in Gaza and restraining settler violence in the West Bank?
A. The 2019-2020 Abraham Accords, which witnessed breakthroughs in Israel’s relations with the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco, had the flimsiest of Palestinian linkages. The message then was that commercial and security ties with Israel, and a Trump administration payoff, were more important to the Arab countries involved than the Palestinian issue. Now, conceivably, the message could once again focus on security ties with Israel (against Iran) and a Trump payoff.
Q. Perhaps in the case of Syria. But Saudi Arabia?
A. The Saudis appear to have made it clear that they will not normalize ties with Israel until and unless the Gaza War ends and Israel at least commits to the emergence of a Palestinian state. As matters stand, this is not about to happen. Last week the IDF attacked the Gazan town of Bet Hanoun, scarcely one kilometer from the Gaza-Israel border, for the fourth time in two years. This was yet another costly attempt to clear Hamas fighters from tunnels bordering on Israel. To watch this happening yet again is to appreciate that Israel has no formula for outright victory in this war.
Q. And a formula for peace?
A. Not as long as PM Netanyahu and his messianist supporters insist that the war on Hamas has to continue even after yet another partial hostage-for-prisoner exchange. (This, despite the view of some 75 percent of Israelis--in the latest Channel 12 poll--that Israel should end the war now.) And not as long as Hamas for its part insists that the IDF has to clear out of Gaza and leave the Islamist movement in power before it hands over the last hostage.
Q. So where does that leave Israel?
A. Severely hemorrhaging internally as the Palestinian issue and renewed ‘judicial reform’ erode Israeli democracy and society from within. And as a largely indifferent Arab world looks on, benefitting from economic and security ties to Israel while addressing the Palestinians as “Israel’s problem.”
In other words – as Israel increasingly resembles the rest of the Middle East: non-democratic, tribalized, and militarized.