Winners and Losers in the Middle East: The Story So Far

JNS.org – After more than a year of bloody conflict in the Middle East sparked by the Hamas pogrom in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, it’s becoming clearer as to which of the multiple parties involved have registered net gains and which net losses.

Let’s start with the Palestinians. The enduring achievement of the Hamas rapists and murderers has been to thrust the Palestinian question back into the heart of the world’s consciousness. For at least 10 years prior, the civil war in Syria, the war against ISIS, the failure of the “Arab Spring” to introduce stable and lasting democracy in the region, and the normalization treaties between Israel and a cluster of highly conservative Arab monarchies displaced the Palestinians from their jealously guarded position as the region’s overarching, unresolved question.

Oct. 7 changed all that by turning the Palestinian issue into a domestic concern in a range of countries—a status that typically eludes the myriad other conflicts around the world. “Palestine” has been an issue in elections in Ireland, France, the United Kingdom and, of course, the United States. It has been an issue for law enforcement, as police departments in cities around the world have struggled to deal with mass demonstrations and campus encampments, too often resulting in police officers looking the other way as screaming mobs have openly supported terror organizations, recycled the crudest antisemitic tropes, engaged in vandalism and assault, and disrupted sporting and cultural events. And, let’s face it, the war in Gaza has given the lives of millions of restive, poorly informed people a sense of meaning and purpose as they face down the Zionist war machine they believe is at the root of the Palestinians’ travails—and therefore at the root of theirs as well.

Yet actual Palestinians, particularly Palestinians in Gaza, might question whether any of these outcomes were worth a year of bombardment that has wrecked their coastal enclave and placed them at the mercy of outside states when it comes to reconstruction and post-war governance. Hamas has been decimated, and it remains unclear who will rule Gaza going forward and how they will do so. The price of the aforementioned political victories for the Palestinians has been military disaster and long-term uncertainty.

For Israel, that effect has essentially been reversed. Militarily, thanks to the discipline and courage of the Israel Defense Forces, the Jewish state is in a much more commanding position than it was before Oct. 7 on both the Gaza and Lebanon fronts (meaning, its southern and northern borders). As well as delivering powerful blows against Hamas, Israel has fundamentally weakened Iran’s other proxy, Hezbollah, to the point that it cannot muster fighters to defend the tottering regime of Bashar Assad in Syria, as it did a decade ago.

Yet in political and diplomatic terms, the past 14 months have seen Israel’s global position significantly undermined by repeated accusations of “genocide.” Its prime minister and former defense minister cannot travel to much of the rest of the world, including most of the European Union, for fear that they will be arrested under the warrants issued last month by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. From literary festivals to soccer matches, Israelis are feeling the kind of opprobrium once reserved for apartheid South Africa, albeit with much deadlier violence involved. Relatedly, Jewish communities in the Diaspora are experiencing a wave of antisemitic intimidation unseen since the 1930s. The imminent arrival of a new administration in the White House may, as many hopefully expect, shift these fortunes, especially when it comes to the crucial issues of the plight of the remaining hostages in Gaza and the return of thousands of Israelis displaced from their homes in the north by Hezbollah’s attacks. Nothing, however, is guaranteed.

Dealing with the Iranian regime, whose machinations lie at the core of this conflict, will be a major focus of the next Trump administration’s foreign policy. Yet even before Donald Trump enters the Oval Office (again), Iran is already looking damaged and weaker now when compared with Oct. 7. While its missile attacks on Israel failed to dent either the IDF or the Israeli population’s resolve, Jerusalem’s responses have badly frayed Iran’s air defenses and highlighted the vulnerability of its nuclear program. As well as seeing its Hamas and Hezbollah proxies degraded, Iran is now watching as the Assad regime in Syria clings to survival. Iran still retains its proxies in Iraq and Yemen, but these, too, may also find themselves in the firing line with a new administration in Washington. “Although today’s Iran is confident that it can fight to defend itself, it wants peace,” wrote its former foreign minister in a frankly ludicrous article for Foreign Affairs. That sounds suspiciously like a plea to the regime’s adversaries to hold off because the reality is that the regime cannot defend itself from Israel—not to mention the Iranian people, growing swaths of whom truly loathe the Islamic Republic and are determined to get rid of it.

For two states in the region, the outlook is unfortunately rosier. One is Turkey, whose membership of the NATO Alliance remains undisturbed despite the increasingly unhinged attacks on Israel leveled by its autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and its open support of Hamas. Ironically, Israel’s punishing of Hezbollah has helped Erdoğan in Syria, where Turkey is backing anti-Assad forces in the north of the country, though don’t expect him to acknowledge that.

Secondly, there is Qatar, an emirate grounded in Sharia law, where a little more than 10% of the population enjoy full citizenship while the vast majority—mainly migrant workers toiling in slave-like conditions—live under a form of real apartheid. The Biden administration’s faith that Qatar—a financial and diplomatic backer of Hamas whose capital hosted the terror organization’s leaders—could act as an honest broker in negotiations to release the hostages was spectacularly misplaced, with more than a year dragging by since the one-and-only prisoner exchange that compelled Israel to release Palestinians convicted of terrorism and violence. Despite this dismal failure and its two-faced stance on terrorism, Qatar’s ruling family continues to be feted by international leaders, most recently in London, where the British Royal Family dutifully trooped to The Mall for a parade welcoming the visiting emir. For the foreseeable future, Qatar’s astonishing wealth, coupled with its financial hold over many of the world’s capitals, is a guarantee of immunity from criticism, let alone actual sanctions.

For Turkey and Qatar, then, net gains. For Iran and its Palestinian and Lebanese proxies, net losses. For Israel, the jury is out. The first year of Trump’s term in office will doubtless tell us more.

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