The question that inevitably haunts Middle Eastern governments today is where will the madness of Israel’s far right government stop?
The war in Gaza is entering a new and horrific phase, with widespread military operations in cities, orders to evacuate buildings and facilities, and the displacement of civilians within the Strip. While repeated attacks on Lebanon and Syria continue despite ceasefire agreements here and ongoing political negotiations there, the back-and-forth between Israel and the Houthis in Yemen is escalating through drones and missiles.
At the heart of all this, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to deliberately sabotage all mediation and negotiation efforts to end the war and release Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. The Israeli raids on the Qatari capital Doha, which targeted the political leadership of Hamas, are nothing but the clearest message from Netanyahu and the far right ministers in Tel Aviv: they do not welcome the efforts of mediators, are not interested in negotiating, and therefore do not want to end the war in Gaza.
Israel today is a state exhibiting rogue behaviour in the region. Its escalating aggression and unlimited military arrogance threaten security in the Middle East and spark violent conflicts and arms races in a region suffering from a chronic lack of stability. It undermines existing peace agreements with some Arab countries, severely limits its chances of normalising relations with others, and, ultimately, places the interests of its people in a secure existence in a non-hostile neighbourhood under the sway of extremely serious challenges.
Although the two-year war in Gaza has weakened Hamas militarily and politically and made its return to governing the Strip as it did before 7 October 2023 unlikely, it has not achieved Israel’s goals as defined by the Netanyahu government. Not all Israeli hostages have been returned to their families, Hamas has not been completely destroyed, and more than two million Palestinians have not succumbed to the pressure of displacement outside Gaza.
They continue to cling to their land despite the war that has killed tens of thousands of them and exposed their lives and security to daily existential threats. Indeed, the far right government in Tel Aviv lacks a clear vision for how to manage the affairs of the Strip once the war ends (the “next day” discussions).
Beyond promoting the return of the Israeli occupation and the crimes of displacement, it lacks specific answers regarding security issues, the needs of the population, and basic services.
If the Israeli goal is to liquidate the Palestinian cause, prevent the Palestinian people from exercising their legitimate right to self-determination, and declare the death of the two-state solution by expanding the policies of settlement and annexation in the West Bank and by genocide and displacement in Gaza, the outcomes of the two years of war have been very different.
Instead, there has been overwhelming global sympathy for the Palestinians, comprehensive moral and political condemnation of Israel, a regional and international drive to revive the two-state solution by recognising the state of Palestine, and a regional and international consensus on the inevitability of ending the occupation of the Palestinian Territories.
While the far right government in Tel Aviv once boasted that the peace agreements it has signed with some Arab countries do not oblige it to adhere to the two-state solution or the principle of land for peace and claimed that friendly relations with them provides sufficient incentive for its neighbours to ignore the Palestinian cause and abandon their support for the Palestinians, Netanyahu and other extremists today operate in a regional environment that rejects them and views their aggression and military arrogance as either undermining the peace agreements signed with Israel, as is the case with Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and Bahrain, or as a reversal of previously looming opportunities for normalising relations, as is the case with Saudi Arabia.
The Arab League, at the initiative of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, has recently adopted a set of collective security measures spearheaded by support for the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and an independent state and including a provision for non-cooperation with Israel.
The UAE has declared that Israel’s continued annexation and settlement policies in the West Bank constitute a breach of the “Abraham Accords” signed between the two parties. Jordan has frozen the Wadi Araba Peace Agreement, and Qatar is demanding international sanctions against the Israeli government’s rogue policies after the Israeli raids on Doha.
Netanyahu’s talk about the evolving peace relations between his country and the Arab states, and about Israel’s friendship being the catalyst for normalisation without regard for the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution, has become the symbol of the state of denial that grips him and his government’s extremists. This is the other side of the military arrogance they practise.
Between the war in Gaza, the daily attacks on Lebanon and Syria, the exchange of drones and missiles with the Houthis in Yemen, the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, and the recent aggression against Qatar, there is no longer a threat to regional security and stability in the Middle East that is not linked to Israel.
Iran, another country that has consistently employed military tactics in its foreign policy, albeit indirectly through its militia proxies, is currently re-prioritising its aims following its heavy losses in the 12-day war and the losses of its proxies due to Israeli strikes. It is opening up to greater rapprochement with the Gulf states, Egypt, and Turkey, as well as to increased diplomacy regarding its nuclear programme, whether with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the European Union, or the United States.
Iran is thus significantly changing its regional behaviour and gradually moving away from using its proxies to threaten the security of the Middle East.
Israel has become the greatest threat to regional security, whether through its escalating aggression and impunity due to American protection, or through its refusal to end the war in Gaza, its disavowal of the principle of land for peace and the two-state solution, its efforts to liquidate the Palestinian cause, its undermining of peace agreements signed with some Arab countries, or its accumulation of weapons and its detonation of an arms race that the Middle East can ill afford.
Faced with the madness of the far right government in Tel Aviv, the Arabs, Iranians, and Turks have no choice but to engage in security and political rapprochement and seek diplomatic measures to contain the American-backed Israeli aberration in the region.
The writer is a political scientist and former MP. He is currently director of the Middle East Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 18 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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