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The End of the Forty-Year Peace between Israel and Arab States

(New Republic) Robert Satloff - In the forty years since the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Israel has fought no wars against an Arab state, and its history has been characterized by frequently successful diplomacy with intermittent bouts of terrorism and asymmetric war against non-state actors. With Hamas' strong political backing from regional states, future historians might very well view the recent Gaza conflict as the first episode of a new era of renewed inter-state competition and, potentially, inter-state conflict in the Arab-Israeli arena. The "old new Middle East" was a region of peace, trade, and regional cooperation. It reached its heyday in the mid-'90s, when Israelis were welcome everywhere from Rabat to Muscat. The "new new Middle East" is the region defined by the twin threats of Iranian hegemonic ambitions and the spread of radical Sunni extremism, where Israelis are not only unwelcome but where they are building fences along their borders to separate themselves from the fight around them. There is much the U.S. can do to postpone the return to inter-state Arab-Israeli conflict. Such a strategy begins with strengthening American-Israeli cooperation and includes such initiatives as preventing Hamas from winning a political victory over the moribund Palestinian Authority, incentivizing moderate behavior from the calculating Islamist leaders of Egypt, speeding the demise of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, and preventing the collapse of a wobbly Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The writer is executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
2012-12-05 00:00:00
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