Israelis and Palestinians react to the ceasefire

The sacrifice has been so great, the misery so complete, that few can claim with certainty that this was all worthwhile

There may be no winners in war, but history suggests combatants are often eager to convince the world otherwise.

The ending of the 15-month conflict in Gaza may prove an exception. The sacrifice has been so great, the misery so complete, and the ultimate future for Gaza so uncertain that few can claim with certainty that this was all worthwhile, or likely to benefit Israel’s security in the long term. The damage to Israel’s reputation may last decades.

In their final interviews and speeches as they prepared to leave office, it was noticeable the key foreign policy figures in the Biden administration often looked beyond Gaza, as western diplomats have turned to what could be the momentous consequences of the war for the wider Middle East.

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Even Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s outgoing national security adviser, was left uncertain. “What is the outcome of all of this? I think it is too early to predict. Even when good things happen, there are bad things around the corner. That’s true across foreign policy. It’s especially true in the Middle East,” he said.

Similarly, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, argued that often in the Middle East, change is not what it appears. He saw at best “a historic window of opportunity”. In every country sucked into the Israel-Gaza war – Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Iraq – and in Israel itself, the balance of forces has been changed by the war, but not irreversibly transformed.

That is true of Gaza itself, where even if a full ceasefire holds, the future remains deliberately clouded. Blinken implicitly criticised this in his Atlantic Council speech this week, when he said he recognised the need for Israel’s war, but could not support what may be its plan for peace.

As long ago as May 2024, the Biden administration judged that Israel had secured its main objective in Gaza of “ensuring Hamas is incapable of committing another October 7 atrocity”, he said – challenging the need for the subsequent eight months of further conflict.

He underlined the futility of continuing the war by admitting “Hamas had been able to recruit almost as many new militants than it had lost, a recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war”.

Security for Israel, he argued, had to include a credible political horizon for the Palestinians, or else Hamas “or something equally abhorrent” will “grow back”. He said the country “must abandon the myth they can carry out de facto annexation, without cost and consequence to Israel’s democracy, to its standing, to its security”. Yet, he complained, “Israel’s government has systematically undermined the capacity and legitimacy of the only viable alternative to Hamas: the Palestinian Authority”.

If Israel wanted the prize of greater security, he said, that lay through forging greater integration across the region, specifically through normalisation with Saudi Arabia. He said that was ready to go, but only if Palestinians were allowed to live in a state of their own, and not as “a non-people”.

Trump’s return to the White House may have helped pressure Benjamin Netanyahu into a ceasefire, but not to a particular peace. The incoming US president is unlikely to pick up Blinken’s plan for a reformed and UN-monitored Palestinian Authority (PA) to oversee governance of a unified Gaza and West Bank. Israel for its part will risk a bigger vacuum by acting on its commitment not to co-operate with Unrwa, the UN agency for the Palestinians, and other NGOs.

Nor is there any certainty that Palestine will have the quality of leadership required to take sole administrative charge of Gaza. The PA, led by the ageing Mahmoud Abbas, is increasingly reviled on the West Bank and has failed to bury its differences with Hamas in talks in Moscow, Beijing and Cairo.

It is only if the perspective is broadened away from Gaza that Netanyahu and the Israeli military can claim, by deciding to broaden the war with intensified attacks on Hezbollah and Iranian targets, that they changed its course and character. The chain of events that led to the annihilation of the Hezbollah leadership in Lebanon – and then to the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and so to Iran’s loss of its crown jewel – may be sketchy, but it is clearly discernible.

Indeed, the weakening of Iran is probably the biggest regional impact of the war in Gaza. Biden had a point this week in claiming that, all told, Iran “is weaker than it has been for decades”. He elaborated: “Iran’s air defences are in shambles. Their main proxy, Hezbollah, is badly wounded, and as we tested Iran’s willingness to revive the nuclear deal, we kept the pressure with sanctions. Now Iran’s economy is in desperate straits.” A 35-year tack to build a defence strategy around a proxy army had been eviscerated in a matter of months.

The change has had an accelerator effect on Tehran’s foreign-policy elite. Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian reformist president, and his strategic adviser, Javad Zarif, are placing numerous olive branches at Trump’s feet.

The latest came in the form of an interview on NBC in which the English-speaking Pezeshkian said Iran is ready for honest and honourable negotiation with the US.

The fissiparous nature of Iranian internal politics makes it hard for Iran to deliver a consistent message to the west, however, and at the moment there are not many diplomats in France, UK or Germany yet convinced by Iran’s offer to negotiate a new nuclear deal. Iran has a reputation for buying time by offering fruitless talks.

Moreover, Trump’s top team is deeply hostile to Iran. Voices within Israel may propose the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites while its air defences are down.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia disapproves and argues national sovereignty cannot be a principle that the west only espouses on Nato’s borders. Riyadh, ever more a convening power in the region, also argues that Israel would be mistaken if it thinks it has remade the region in its image.

Saudi Arabia has condemned Israel for committing genocide in Gaza and will not normalise relations without a pathway to a Palestinian state.

In Lebanon, two years of paralysis have ended and a new, elected leadership will listen to Iran-backed Hezbollah, but not be beholden to it.

But the new prime minister, Nawaf Salam, is the former president of the international court of justice and fresh from delivering the landmark legal verdict that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal and must end within a year. He will be a standing reminder that Israel has unfinished business in front of the international courts.

In Yemen, where a 10-year civil war lies unresolved, hatred of Israel is the unifying ideology of the Houthi movement that controls the capital, Sana’a.

In Iraq, the sway of the Iranian proxy groups on Shia-led government remains. Syria has a leader with a jihadist past, but also an understanding that the state of his country requires him to put conflict with Israel at the bottom of his to-do list. His first priority is to convince the west he is not establishing a caliphate by stealth. Yet at some point, Syria will turn to the issue of Israel’s occupation of its territory.

If Israel does not seek reconciliation, the friendship offered to Israel by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain will not be unconditional, Blinken pointed out.

Israel may no longer face Iran’s once-powerful axis of resistance, but it is hardly surrounded by well-wishers.
There will also be a profound fallout for the west. Sullivan recalled meeting a voter in Ohio, and talking to him about the liberal democratic order, and the man turned to him and said: “I don’t like any of these words.” Many American voters will follow Trump’s reluctance to embroil the US in the Middle East.
In the global south, meanwhile, the concept of a liberal democratic order can raise a hollow laugh. It is in part because profound questions about the enforceability of the rules of war, and their selective application, have been raised by the west’s support for Israel.
For the US Democrats, as the cable news channels finally enter Gaza and document the destruction, the soul searching will only worsen as to why the Biden team tolerated the killing and the restrictions on aid. Labour in the UK will not be immune. The foreign office unit charged with judging whether or not Israel’s attacks breached international humanitarian law still claims it lacks the detailed real-time information to adopt such a view.
There may be a changing of the guard in Washington that in time will weaken Israel. Jack Lew, the strongly pro-Israel outgoing US ambassador to Israel, said: “The generational memory doesn’t go back to the founding of the state or the six-day war, or the Yom Kippur war, or to the intifada even. It starts with this war, and you cannot ignore the impact of this war on future policymakers. Joe Biden is the last president of his generation whose memories and knowledge and passion to support Israel go back to the founding story.”