A Spanish member of the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon patrols a bombed out village in the south of the country (Photo by ANWAR AMRO/AFP via Getty Images)
In my self-assessment for 2024 on the Russo-Ukraine war I noted that this conflict had a settled structure which meant that far less had changed during 2024 than one might have expected. With Donald Trump’s return to the White House, 2025 will start with a burst of diplomatic activity, yet the conflict’s structure sets the limits on future deals as it does on military breakthroughs.
By contrast, the situation in the Middle East has been much more dynamic, so it was a challenge to keep up with events never mind attempting to anticipate them in advance. The most radical shift was the weakening of the Iranian ‘axis of resistance’, culminating in the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, to the point that questions can now be raised about the future of the regime in Teheran. Given Hamas’s dependence on Iran’s support, and the battering it took from Israel, it also finished the year much weakened, with all its senior leadership having to be replaced, although it still held onto Israeli hostages and had not relinquished control of Gaza.
In my own analyses of the situation during 2024 I focused at first largely on the violence in Gaza while seeking to put that in a wider Middle Eastern context, noting the importance of Saudi Arabia as well as Iran. But Turkey did not get a mention, and while it now seems obvious that a combination of Russia’s preoccupation with Ukraine and the steady degradation of Hizballah in Lebanon would affect Assad’s position in Syria, I didn’t pick up on that. Even if I had I don’t think I would have predicted just how rapid his fall would be, although this is an important reminder that regimes that appear to be stable on the surface can turn out to be very brittle. By way of mitigation, Assad himself had clearly not noticed the vulnerability of his regime.
Israel’s war with Hamas
In any strategic assessment of the conduct and course of wars it is important to understand the calculations being made by the parties to the conflict, whether you approve of them or not. This should help explain why they are acting as they do, what their options are for the future, and whether they might face problems.
After the attacks by Hamas of 7 October 2023 Israel had the initiative in the fighting so it was reasonable to ask how the Israeli government expected the war to end. The persistent uncertainty of what would constitute a reasonable end state seemed to me to be the biggest flaw in Israel’s strategy, and this remains the case. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu always stressed the elimination of Hamas, while others in his government and in the IDF doubted whether that could be achieved and therefore put more emphasis on long-term plans for Gaza.
In this I thought Netanyahu’s Israeli critics were right. The best way I could imagine to resolve the conflict and get on with the business of recovery and reconstruction would be to take the future of Gaza out of the hands of both Israel and Hamas. As this would still require a prominent role for the Palestinian Authority, and so was opposed by the more nationalist members of his ruling coalition, Netanyahu resisted engaging with this issue. However, as I noted a year ago, this was not the only problem.
‘The only way to get a political process in place quickly is to internationalize the issue, getting the leading Arab states, as well as the US and Europeans, to agree on next steps. This approach, widely canvassed since the start of this war, is not greeted with enthusiasm by the likely participants. The issue is not so much the funding for reconstruction, but the difficulties of forging a consensus on what needs to be done, and the potential for a long-term commitment that will be thankless, onerous and possibly hazardous, especially if it involves peacekeeping forces.’
In addition, even before that could be considered there would need to be a durable ceasefire, yet this was something on which agreement proved to be elusive, despite regular talks and despite regular claims from Washington that a deal was close.
The question of a ceasefire was linked to the desire to end the suffering of Gaza’s population. In Western reporting and commentary the starting point was normally the humanitarian impact of Israel’s operations, more than their military and political impact. This had a major effect on support in the West for Israel to the point where challenges to its right to exist were voiced regularly, along with accusations of genocide.
There are issues that soon come to the fore with any attempt to count casualties: the balance between killed and wounded, between combatants and non-combatants, between the direct victims of the fighting and those that are caused by the collapse of civil society and health care. How they are counted and who does the counting has become controversial in the debates surrounding the Gaza War. All wars, especially those in the Middle Eastern, where heavy death tolls are tragically common (Iraq, Yemen, and Syria), are bound to be viewed through a humanitarian as well as a geopolitical lens. The two are related: the human costs create the pressures for ceasefires. Yet the relationship is not straightforward. Ceasefires are unlikely to happen unless the prevailing balance of power means that they make sense for both sides.
With Gaza, once Israel determined that it needed to dismantle Hamas’s military capabilities then heavy civilian casualties were likely because of the extent to which these capabilities had been integrated with civil society, with mosques, schools, and hospitals used as cover, as well as the underground tunnel network. But to this was added relaxed rules of engagement. A recent investigation by The New York Times has shown that Israel
‘severely weakened its system of safeguards meant to protect civilians; adopted flawed methods to find targets and assess the risk of civilian casualties; routinely failed to conduct post-strike reviews of civilian harm or punish officers for wrongdoing; and ignored warnings from within its own ranks and from senior U.S. military officials about these failings.’
The consequences of this approach left Israel more politically isolated than it has ever been, at least since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and on the wrong end of UN votes. This did not lead it to stop the operation. One reason for this was that it was not put under any severe pressure to do so by the US government. Joe Biden was reluctant to be seen to be coercing Israel. In my post of a year ago I noted that Biden had made ‘a calculated gamble that by showing generous support to Israel in the aftermath of 7 October he could push it towards sensible responses.’ Yet by then he was already being accused of not doing enough to get a ceasefire and relief into Gaza, and so in practice was providing cover for the Israelis, despite their uncompromising stance in ceasefire negotiations and grudging and tardy responses to requests to allow in more aid.
The Administration’s position was complicated by the US election which meant that it was caught between pressure to denounce Israel on the one hand and to give it unconditional backing on the other. This left Biden, and his Vice President Kamala Harris, trying to find ways to show that they were unhappy with Israel’s actions, without doing much about them, leaving an impression of weakness, demonstrating that they lacked the will or capacity to change Israel’s behaviour. Most European governments were prepared to be sharper in their criticisms of Israel but they were also still wary about being seen to be taking the side of Hamas, with its long history of violence against civilians, still holding hostages, and, with its demands for a complete Israeli withdrawal, also showing no great interest in getting a ceasefire except on its terms.
I suggested in February that time was running out, referring largely to the intensification of the humanitarian crisis.
‘Israel has to work out whether whatever marginal further gains it may make against Hamas are worth its almost complete international isolation, and how can it improve its security without addressing the demands of Gaza’s reconstruction and governance.’
Well it did work it out and came to a different conclusion to mine. The political issue has not changed that much since then although the humanitarian position has worsened. I stuck to my position, arguing in April that ‘the lack of a credible political dimension to Israel’s strategy has been its most evident flaw.’
So I have been a bit of a broken record on this, yet I still see no reason to change my view. This year has started with yet another round of tortuous ceasefire negotiations, with hostages still held and Hamas, although perhaps a shadow of its former self, by no means eliminated. So long as Netanyahu insisted that his war aims required its elimination, Hamas can claim some sort of victory just by surviving the onslaught and maintaining a prominent position in Gaza. A desperate and anarchic situation inside Gaza will allow it along with other radical groups and criminal gangs to flourish.
With Biden being replaced by Trump there is a view inside Israel on the nationalist right that it will now be able to address the Palestinian issue, in the West Bank as well as Gaza, with more extreme measures, including mass expulsions into neighbouring territories. The candidate hosts for these expelled Palestinians, notably Egypt and Jordan, have long been clear that they will not go along with schemes of this sort. If they did, these countries would be destabilised, which would also not be to Israel’s advantage.
In his first term Trump showed some interest in a more positive solution to the problem, although not one that would begin to address Palestinian aspirations. His main initiative was to promote what became the Abraham accords, which saw a number of Moslem countries recognize Israel. He has expressed a wish to see this extended to Saudi Arabia, a country which he (unlike Biden) continues to view favourably. Netanyahu has also shared this vision, although when he spoke about it enthusiastically to the United Nations in October, the Saudi delegation had already walked out in protest against his actions in Gaza.
The internal pressures within Israel make diplomacy of this sort problematic for now. Although outside of Israel a two-state solution is still promoted as the only possible way out of the conflict, as I argued in March, it is not going to happen soon. The place to start is not getting bogged down in discussions of the mechanisms of Palestinian statehood, but to hammer out plans to address the big and immediate issues of relief, reconstruction, governance, and security.
‘Out of that a peace process might and hopefully would emerge. Without it a serious peace process will be even less likely. What is possible in the long-term depends on the management of the short-term.’
Israel’s War with Hizballah
In my second post of 2024 I addressed another aspect of the concern about the consequences of a continuing conflict – the risk that it would escalate into something larger. There was clearly substance to these concerns, yet by then it had become apparent that Iran was also bothered by the prospect of escalation. This matter is still debated, but while Hamas had reason to suppose that Iran would welcome its attack of 7/10, given its regular ‘Death to Israel’ slogans, in practice it left Teheran and its proxies in a quandary.
If the Hamas attack had been part of a properly coordinated plan orchestrated from Teheran then it would have made sense to throw everything at Israel from all directions at once. In the event they decided on a more equivocal response, doing enough to show solidarity but not enough to trigger a major confrontation with Israel and the US (which made clear from the start through naval deployments that it would back Israel actively in the event Iran joined in).
Iran only allowed itself to be drawn into direct action twice, the first time in April 2024 after Israel had killed two of its personnel in Damascus. The second in October after the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Teheran at the end of July and then the September assassination of the Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, a figure almost as important as Iran’s own leader. In both case the Iranian response involved large-scale missile attacks. Neither caused Israel significant damage, although this was not for want of trying. In the first case most of the missiles, and preceding drones, failed to reach their targets. Many were shot down by the US, UK and France, as well as Israel, with further support from Arab countries. In the second attack more got through but the damage was limited, although military targets were reached. Neither case led to massive scalation. In both cases Israel struck in response military installations, including air defences, that left Iran more vulnerable in the future.
Of the proxies, the Houthis were most successful by their campaign which threatened shipping passing through the Red Sea. Many of their missiles were intercepted and the US and the Uk launched strikes against Houthi targets, but the threat never quite went away. If the aim, however, was to create an energy or economic crisis in the west it did not succeed.
The most important intervention was by Hizballah in Lebanon on Israel’s northern border. There were regular missile and artillery exchanges between the two, just about stopped short of full-scale hostilities. Hizballah was quite explicit about its lack of interest in expanding the war but made clear that it could do so if required, and indicated that it could hit targets throughout Israel. As with the Houthis it held to the position that it would only agree a ceasefire when Israel agreed one with Hamas.
For Israel this conflict was a serious problem because it had evacuated over 60,000 people from the border areas with Lebanon (about 100,000 were evacuated from the Lebanese side). So long as Israel was facing serious resistance in Gaza it was prepared to contain the situation in the north. But once it dealt with Hamas’s regular brigades it began to reduce the IDF presence in Gaza and move units to the north. In June I noted that ‘Israel is now gearing up for an incursion into Lebanon to push Hizballah back from its current positions’, and that Hizballah was trying ‘to deter Israel from embarking on yet another major military operation by reminding them of the difficulties they will face.’ At the same time I reported on the first stage of the presidential election in Iran, in which a relative moderate, Massoud Pezeshkian had come out ahead.
‘The chronic economic and social problems faced by the country might at some point lead to a big change and should that happen regional politics will change once again.’
In September Israel made its move against Hizballah with an extraordinary audacious move to decapitate Hezbollah, at first using exploding pagers that had been distributed around the militia’s commanders. I had previously questioned reliance on targeted killings of leaders – on the grounds that most individuals can be replaced and there was only limited evidence of them having a major impact.
‘Successful ‘decapitation’ of radical and insurgent groups that have been around for many years is rare. They have sufficient popular support and organisational structures that will continue even as individual leaders come and go. If one is killed a replacement will be found, and their replacements may be more capable and dangerous.’
That conclusion remained valid. Both Hizballah and Hamas survived as organisations even after their top leadership was eliminated. Yet the scale of the September pager detonations, and the follow ups, including the strikes against the rest of the Hezbollah leadership, including Nasrallah, a completely different order. They did not put Hizballah out of business but left them much weaker.
When Israeli forces moved into southern Lebanon they faced less resistance than would otherwise have been the case, and then proceeded to strike targets in Beirut as well as southern Lebanon to take out arms depots, command posts, and tunnels. Thus ‘what started as limited action to support Hamas has now turned into a war of survival for Hizballah.’ In this case, unlike in Gaza, it was possible to see the deal that was eventually struck because the fragile Lebanese government was struggling with the impact of the war. There was a UN resolution available to support a move by the Lebanese army and a UN force into positions into southern Lebanon as Hizballah withdrew. The key political point was that Hizballah signing up to a deal broke the bands of solidarity with Hamas – the so-called ‘unity of arenas’. In this case the fact of the ceasefire was a victory for Israel and a severe blow to a key component of the ‘axis of resistance’.
Syria and Iran
As already acknowledged I did not see the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria coming, and it was only after it had occurred that I discussed Turkey’s role. But I had begun to wonder about the durability of the Iranian regime – because of its split leadership, with an elected president constitutionally outvoted by an elderly and ailing senior cleric, evident popular discontent and chronic economic problems. The sudden loss of a friendly government, on which it had lavished massive resources, along with Hizballah’s retreat, added the failure of its foreign policy to its woes. I would not predict major political changes in Iran this year but it would not surprise me if that happened.
It is important to keep in mind that one reason why Hizballah was, to a degree, held back in the first months of the war was because its primary role was to be part of Iran’s deterrent lest Israel or the US come after its nuclear programme as it approaches completion. The consequences of Yahya Sinwar’s decision to go on the offensive against Israel in October cost him not only in his own life, and a ferocious Israeli offensive in return but has also led to a severe crisis for Iran’s axis of resistance.
The Trump administration will have a lot of issues to address. Trump himself has said that ‘all hell will break out’ should the hostages not be released by Hamas by 20 January although we have no clarity on what that might actually mean in practice. Currently more negotiations are underway surrounded by some optimism of the sort we have heard before, so we may never find out what Trump meant. But if there is a ceasefire then the aftermath questions will come rushing in and his administration will have to address them. Will Trump be inclined to punish the International criminal Court if it continues with its case against Netanyahu?
The six weeks ceasefire, which was all that was agreed in the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hizballah, will soon be up, and the Israelis have grumbled about the pace with which the Lebanese army has moved into position. They have not stopped hitting out against what they claim to be Hizballah breaches of the ceasefire.
Then there is the question of Syria. The group in charge was once affiliated with al Qaeda but claims to be reformed. The EU along with Biden Administration has been exploring whether they can stabilize and unify the country. This seems to be a tall order but it would not help anybody if yet another country collapsed into chaos. And then there is Iran. Israel appears to be itching to have a go at its nuclear programme. Will Trump agree to that or rely on even more severe economic sanctions? Might he be more interested in exploring the possibility of a deal, given the current weakness of the regime in Teheran? Lots of questions. This is going to be another turbulent year in the Middle East. Lets hope it is not going to be as bloody as 2024.
For over 75 years, Gaza’s Arabs had the option to accept Israelis' right to live in peace. The brutal 7 October pogrom/einsatzgruppen attack confirmed that they reject any peaceful coexistence, even murdering left-wing kibbutzim who once supported peace. Israel's enemies desire no settlement short of Israel’s destruction. Their expulsion would be an act of legitimate self-defence.
Sri Lanka's 2009 defeat of the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) shows how to deal with persistent threats. Known for suicide bombings, assassinations, and guerrilla tactics, the LTTE was crushed when Sri Lanka’s government launched an all-out offensive in 2006, using media blackouts and denying international oversight. By 2009, they had captured LTTE territory, killed its leaders, and ended a 26-year conflict. Civilian casualties were high, but it delivered long-term security.
Israel should do similarly: relocate Arabs to the Sinai, imposing a 50km+ buffer zone. With US support, Egypt could be compelled to accept the plan, yielding security gains, a cessation of attacks, and freedom to pursue economic stability.
Here is an outline concept of operations:
- Prepare. Israel and the US coordinate military and diplomatic steps.
- Mobilise. IDF reserves are readied; US assets move to the region.
- Blackout. Enforce a Gaza communications blackout to limit resistance.
- Pressure Egypt. US threatens aid cuts or sanctions if Egypt resists.
- Neutralise. If needed, target Egyptian defences in Sinai.
- Gaza expulsion. IDF advances south, dismantling resistance.
- Transport. Move Gazans with military protection.
- Quarantine. Create a secure 50km buffer with surveillance.
- Refugee camps. ‘Temporary’ camps in Sinai, with aid incentives to Egypt.
- Enforce buffer. Fortify with drones, radar, and defence systems.
- Secure Sinai. Conduct counter-terror operations in buffer zone.
- PR management. Launch a US-Israel campaign to justify the operation.
PS Also destroy Iranian nuclear facilities.
Good , thoughtful piece of review and analysis.
Where you say "immediate issues of relief, reconstruction, governance, and security. ....", I have difficulty separating those from the context in which these things would need to happen. It will all require massive assistance/resources. It's hard to see where all that would come from absent some apparently stable framework of statehood staffed with people who could be trusted to respect all the various agreements and undertakings with external public and private parties that will be necessary to accomplish anything, and with Israel claiming a right to a long-term security presence within the Gaza strip, it is also hard to foresee real progress being made on any of it.