Israeli forces recover bodies of killed Israeli residents from a destroyed house in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, amid the fighting between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, on October 10, 2023.
CNN —
It is almost impossible to remember life in Israel before Hamaslaunched itsbrutal October 7 attacks a year ago,killing more than1,200people andkidnappingmore than 250 others. There is little point, because that life is gone for good. And not just because more than 100 hostages are still captive.
The same is true beyond Israel’s borders.
Israel, itsenemies and allies are all harbingers and painfulwitnessesto a remaking of the region’s diplomatic and political architecture on a scale that could rival the upheavals of the Arab-Israeli conflict a half-century ago.
The post-October 7 changes are both inevitable and, in their current chaotic form at least, preventable. The civilian cost is mounting when diplomacy might have saved lives.
A year ago it seemed the political architecture of the region was on the cusp of significant change. Propelled by US incentives, SaudiArabiaand Israel seemed closer than ever to a historic normalization of relations. Diplomacy and the deftskillsneededto stitch such a complex deal together were in the ascendency.
Buttheprospect of approaching peace and prosperity evaporated as Hamas surged through the Gaza border fences at sunrise that Saturday morning. Butchery was afoot.
Irrespective of whetherHamas leaderYahya Sinwarwascalculating he could torpedo normalization and push the Palestinian cause aheadofregional priorities for peace and economic integration,in the short term he succeeded.
I can remember, with gut-churning clarity, the smell of rotting human flesh as weentered Kfar Aza, about 800 yards from the GazaStrip. It was October 10,andMajor General Itai Veruv of the Israel Defense Forces(IDF)was leading the first international press access to see the devastation of Hamas’ attacks.
He stood at the gates, quoting General Eisenhower when he reached the Nazi death camps in World War Two: “The first thing he said was bring the press here to see.”
Over the past year Israel has struggled to keep the world focused on those nation-changing events of that bloody weekend.
For the first time, many Israelis realized their state was no longer the safehavenfor Jews they had always believed it to be.The idea thatwhatever prejudice and persecution they may face around the world, in Israel they had sanctuary,was destroyed.
What emergedthat first week as a scramble to seal the Gaza border and chase downremainingHamas cellsinside Israelsoon manifested as a red mistof revenge and retribution against the attackers, and anyone near them.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unwilling to be a partner in a deal that would resow Middle East relations.
Israeli troops operate on their side of the fence separating Israel from the Gaza Strip on August 29, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the militant group Hamas.
Israelis’ feelings of vulnerability haven’t gone,whilenational rage has been refined into asteelylogic of regional deterrence, manifested by Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He has interwoven his own political survival, in part to escape accusations he failed to stop Hamas’attacks, with bombastic new tactics shredding the old rule book and its red lines that previously prevented regional escalation.
It is being called “escalation for de-escalation,” but as October 7, 2024, arrives, de-escalation, and any form of day after plan from Netanyahu, are absent.
The Jewish state’s relations with US President Joe Biden’s White House,itsmost important ally, are at their lowest ebb in a generation. Nearly 42,000 Palestinians in Gazahave beenkilled, many by US bombs and bullets in Israel’s hands, authorities in Gaza say. IDF killings and arrests of Palestinians, some of them US citizens, in the occupied West Bank are unsustainable for many of Israel’s European allies whom after a year of waiting are beginning to curb arms supplies.
But the pressures on Israel toreinin its survival instincts at a time when it is riven with deeppolitical, religious, and maybe existential divisionsare having little obvious traction.
Israel’s wiliest nearbyadversaryandIranian mega-proxyHezbollah – a blight on Lebanese post-civil war democracy –whichbegan escalatingcross-borderrocketattacks the day afterOctober 7, has undergone a lightening defenestrationover the past few weeks.Its leader Hassan Nasrallah and many of his top commanders have been assassinated in Israeli air strikes,itsforces partially crippled, ahead of Israel’s launch of itsthirdground warin Lebanon in the past half-century.
Hamas’October 7 attacks, if not coordinated in detail with Iran, certainly had its blessing. The theocracy has been the Palestinian terror group’s biggest backer for decades, funneling money, military material and know-how.Iran vows to destroy Israel and chase its biggest ally the United States out of the region.
It uses pro-Palestinian messaging to enflame passions on the ‘Arab street’ in the region, most of whom are Sunni like the Palestinians, and most of whose leaders consider Iran, a Shia theocracy, at best untrustworthy, at worst an adversary. In this way Iran holds off regional rivals.
The past year has revealed the extent of its plans and co-opting of Shia communities to build up pro-Iranian militias. Yemen’s minority Houthisare no longer onlyanti-Saudi stooges for the Shia clerics in Tehran,buthave turned their Iranian-supplied ballistic missiles and dronesonTel Aviv.
Iran has also, aided and fronted by the Houthis, begun blocking Red Sea commercial shipping –more than a thousand miles from Israel–on the pretext of supporting the Gazans.
Tehran’sShia proxies in Iraq have also answereditscalls and begun escalating drone attacks on Israel.
It is a multi-fronted war, escalating faster than would haveever seemed possible a year ago.
Back then rocket sirens in central Israel were not part of daily life. Today parents inside their home shelters in Tel Aviv scan cell phones for messages from their children,serving on the front lines as they too once did.
Each generation here is trained to fight in the defense of the nation; where the country divide isoverhow long to keep that fight going before switching to diplomacy. The reality is, the longer the escalation goes on, the less control the country and its primeminister willhave over the outcome.
Potential regional partners like Saudi Arabia arenowdemanding a steeper and steeper diplomatic off-ramp for Netanyahu.
Thenormalization between Israel and the most powerful Gulfstate that seemed so close before October 7,isfor nowout of reach, Netanyahu unwilling and too toxic to be a partner in the deal.
It was a deal thatwould have given Biden a legacy to be proud of;forSaudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, MBS, the legitimacy and security he craves; and Netanyahu, aninoculation against a millennia of animus.
Saudi Arabia’sprice now is an “irreversible path” to a Palestinian state, which is an anathema to Netanyahu, his extreme nationalist right-wing cabinet, and in the wake ofOctober 7, even further beyond the pale for much of the rest of the country too.
Days before the anniversary,aveteran sage of UAE diplomacy, Anwar Gargash, foreshadowed the influential Gulf state’s direction of travel,saying“the era of militia with sectarian and regional dimensions has cost the Arabs dearly.”
An end to Iran’s proxy powerplays and a path to a Palestinian state. The question ishow to get there from here, particularly as the butcher’s cleaveris ascendant over thediplomat.
For now, in the absence of successfulpeace talks, uncertainty is the new certainty.