What do you do when a wild beast runs rampant, slaughtering and destroying everything in its path? You either kill it or try to tame it. Human societies have long faced this choice. In modern times, nation states have had to contend with this problem when faced with militarist fascist regimes that offer no alternative to war, as was the case with Germany under the Nazis and Imperial Japan. Together they set in motion a world war in which they were both defeated and forced to surrender.
Israel, today, is that type of regime. Its levels of aggression, mass killing, rampant destruction, and ethnic cleansing directed against the Palestinian people have widely been condemned as acts of genocide. In its ruthlessness it is simultaneously bolstered by the fact that it is a nuclear power with an unconditional alliance with the US. It is now unleashing unrestrained aggression against several Arab capitals. The latest is Doha. Before this came multiple attacks against Beirut, Damascus and Sanaa. Its recent strikes against the Middle Eastern capital, Tehran, brought the region to an unprecedented brink.
The Israeli regime embraces an extremely belligerent expansionist ethos. Its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has cast Israel as a “super-Sparta” that would reshape the Middle East around a “Greater Israel.” He pronounces such boasts against the backdrop of maps, in which the envisioned Israel has not only engulfed the whole of the West Bank and Gaza, but also large chunks of neighbouring Arab states. The blatant threats conveyed through this rhetoric and symbolism, which are reiterated by other members of his government and his supporters within Israel and abroad, should sound alarms in these states and elsewhere.
A monster is on the loose, and those around it have no choice but to defend themselves and their territories. This entails creating a balance of power that forces Israel to think twice before it attacks. Even the most war-thirsty regimes hesitate and recalibrate when they see their adversaries’ military, economic, and diplomatic power grow.
Following the Doha Summit of Arab and Islamic states, Israel was forced to recognise that it was “in a sort of isolation” that could last years, as Netanyahu put it at an Israeli Finance Ministry conference. He warned that Israel would have to become more self-sufficient. “We will increasingly need to adapt to an economy with autarkic characteristics,” said the man who once bragged of having launched the “free-market revolution” that opened Israel to the world. “I am a believer in the free market, but we may find ourselves in a situation where our arms industries are blocked. We will need to develop arms industries here — not only research and development, but also the ability to produce what we need… There’s no choice; in the coming years, at least, we will have to deal with these attempts to isolate us.”
Netanyahu’s remarks are a rare admission of the international pariah status he and his government have brought upon his country. Israel is now facing total or partial arms embargos from France, the Netherlands, the UK, Spain, Italy and other countries in response to its escalating crimes in Gaza. Nevertheless, it continues to receive most of its weapons from the US. Curbing that lethal flow will require more concerted action on the part of the Arab states.
Israel had built itself into a regional and international economic power, largely on the strength of its high-tech sector. But what has become the longest and most costly war in its history is taking a heavy economic toll. Israel has entered a critical military and economic phase in which its need for an “autarkic” economy will compel it to make decisions with far-reaching implications. Essentially, it has reduced its choices to two: either full-scale militarisation and constant war, or a shift to an economy that finances endless war.
Arab pressure has not gone to waste. It has contributed to important international resolutions and declarations, while the Arab media have exposed how Israel has been engineering a manmade famine, producing not only ethnic cleansing but also another Nakba or Holocaust – in short, crimes of a magnitude unseen since the genocide of the Jews.
Arab diplomacy has been nothing if not steadfast in the face of this 21st-century edition of fascist militarism on the rampage. After the Israeli attack against Doha, Arab representatives in the UN Security Council presented Israel with the only humane choice: either it ceases its madness, or it foregoes closer ties with its neighbours in the Middle East. Israel is courting grave hardship for itself through its conduct. In his speech to the Arab and Islamic summit, President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi addressed the Israeli people directly, warning them of how their leaders are leading them into an abyss of never-ending conflict, jeopardising existing peace treaties and sowing instability, the effects of which they will inevitably feel.
The Israeli beast has been offered an opportunity to shed the Nazi-like expansionist creed and to grant the Palestinian people their legitimate rights. Only when it seizes this chance will it be able to join a region striving for development and progress.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 25 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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