Lebanese academic and diplomat Ghassan Salamé wrote a long article in the Financial Times in which he talked about the magnetic attraction of the Middle East region, which enjoys a strategic location, symbolic density, and social diversity that makes it politically unstable, and thus lures invaders and politicians, from Cyrus of Persia and Alexander of Macedon, to the American President. Former George Bush Jr. and then, more recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
With the decline of colonial empires in the twentieth century and the prosperity of the era of independence, a largely arbitrary political map began to take shape in the Middle East. Mountains, plains, plateaus, and deserts were distributed among the new states extending around the rivers Jordan, Orontes, and Euphrates. It became clear that these modern states were fragile and threatened by ethnic conflicts and mismanagement. Political and external interference.
History of unrest
The Middle East has recently witnessed many such episodes – according to the author – Egypt, during the era of Gamal Abdel Nasser, used the wave of Arab nationalist enthusiasm to try to impose its hegemony, and was brutally contained by superior Israeli weapons, the machinations of conservative Arab regimes, and active Western hostility.
Khomeini’s Iran also engaged in a similar project from the first days of the Iranian Revolution, entering into a war with Iraq, and supporting armed groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Palestine.
The last person to attack the region was Netanyahu, who continues to announce his ambitions, and his actions prove that he means what he says. Following the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, he turned Gaza into rubble, displaced its residents, bombed them, starved them, and deprived them of their humanity, then moved north to war. With Hezbollah, it bombed the port of Hodeidah to punish the Houthis and continued to strike weapons depots and militants in Syria.
Changing the balance of power
Meanwhile, Netanyahu did not allow anyone to forget that his first goal is to annex the occupied West Bank, where assassinations of Palestinian activists, the destruction of entire villages, and the confiscation of lands are multiplying, in anticipation of what many fear will be a complete annexation that may include the transfer of about 3 million Palestinians to the east of the Jordan River. Especially since Netanyahu recently announced his desire to establish a Jewish state extending from Iraq to Egypt.
On the military level, while Israel’s behavior in Gaza seemed instinctive, chaotic, and vindictive, its war in Lebanon was carefully planned, and the result was intelligence victories and a barrage of continuous bombing, with Netanyahu boasting of Israel’s success in “changing the balance of power in the region for years.”
The writer pointed out that the series of tactical successes achieved by Israel on both fronts are indisputable, and that many pro-Israel observers feel a state of euphoria, which encouraged Netanyahu to think about a new Middle East, redesigned with Israeli weapons and reflecting the will of the new hegemon.
There is no doubt that Israel has changed the balance of power, and has succeeded – according to Ghassan Salamé – in paralyzing the Hamas movement and Hezbollah to a large extent, and has placed itself in a position that makes its government believe that it is capable of dictating the new regional configuration, with the help of its army, the silence of the Arab regimes, and the generosity of the United States in supplies. Weapons, dollars, diplomatic support, and a collapsing international order.
However, the issue – for the writer – is not the fact that this fundamental change occurred, but rather the extent of its continuity, because previous attempts to reshape the Middle East generally ended in failure, including the attempt of former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the Bush Jr. initiative led by the United States in 2003 to export Democracy across the region through regime change.
Will Israel succeed?
Ghassan Salama doubted the possibility of Netanyahu succeeding where all of them failed, for a few good reasons, the first of which is that whoever seeks hegemony must be willing to redraw the borders and install loyal presidents in the surrounding countries, which is difficult to do.
The second reason is that the silence of the Arab regimes over the past year is closely linked to the compatibility of their desire to weaken Iran with Israel’s desire to destroy Hamas and Hezbollah, which are loyal to Iran.
However, if Israel’s activity goes beyond this occasional convergence of interests, Arab silence may be replaced by significant opposition to attempts to displace Palestinians to neighboring countries, and Israeli political hegemony in the Levant will not be acceptable to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or other regional powers.
The third reason is that the excessive use of force would keep Israel’s opponents in a state of anger, and thus Israel would not be able to convert its victories into stable hegemony, and the Palestinian issue would continue – as the writer sees it – as if it were the burning bush of the Bible, which would not be extinguished until it ignited again.
The fourth reason is that Israel’s hegemony – if it is established – will be in an unstable environment. Syria is effectively occupied, Iraq has not regained its national unity, Jordan fears annexing the West Bank, and Lebanon is financially bankrupt, politically paralyzed, and threatened with a repeat of the civil war.
The most important reason is that the regional hegemony that Israel is trying to build does not seek to integrate the defeated, but rather to exclude him, and therefore it is unpalatable even to the region’s least warlike residents, who will have to pay the price for Israel’s crimes just as the Palestinians paid the price for the crimes of the Europeans and the Jewish Holocaust.
Ghassan Salama believes that there is still a way to avoid the worst in this tormented and turbulent region, which is to refocus on the political rights of the Palestinians, because they are the core of the issue, and it is what many Israelis want to forget, and what Israel is embarking on its regional adventures to evade.
