The war against Hamas has not gone as Israel wished, for a variety of reasons, but in fact, Israel has emerged as the Strong Horse of the region. And the old colonial mega-powers, France and Great Britain, are struggling madly for relevance.
The August signing of a 15-year, $35 billion Israel-Egypt natural gas deal tells you what you need to know. Egypt had been signaling (saying outright) that Israel could become an enemy again; now it appears to be linking its energy future to Israel. The participation of certain Gulf States in the negotiation is also a reminder that not a single Abraham Accords country withdrew because of the Israeli-Hamas war – and Saudi Arabia remains a potential partner.
As for the rest of the region, since Oct. 7, 2023 the Israel Defense Forces have destroyed the majority of Hamas tunnels and killed the majority of Hamas leadership. The pagers sabotage and destruction of Hezbollah missiles and launchers in Southern Lebanon, plus the elimination of Hezbollah leadership have led to (at a minimum) the Lebanese government demanding that the Lebanese Armed Forces remove Hezbollah weapons from their south. The decimation of Hezbollah and Iranian military assets in Syria opened the path for the ouster of the Assad regime and the Iranians – which may not be altogether beneficial for the people. Houthi assets have been destroyed in Yemen, including Sanaa airport.
Throw in the humiliation of UNRWA, exposed as an active Hamas partner.
And Iran.
Following President Donald Trump’s ultimatum on Iranian nuclear weapons capability, the IDF attacked air defense capabilities, missile launchers, drone factories, missile factories, nuclear facilities and nuclear scientists. The US Air Force performed precise hits on Iran’s nuclear reactor and enrichment sites. The cooperation and coordination between US and Israeli forces in the region was amazing.
Watching it, King Abdullah II of Jordan announced that Jordan would not support Iran, but it also turned out that Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates actively assisted Israel’s forces. Saudi Arabia and Lebanon are considering the Abraham Accords. Syria opened a conversation with Israel about ending hostilities – which is looking distinctly less viable these days with Syria’s attacks on its Druze population, but remains on the table.
On the other side, Russia condemned the US strikes but took no action to support Iran, and indeed, told Iran that Russia would not support nuclear weapons for Iran. China offered Iran exactly nothing. Africans are watching – the Democratic Republic of Congo-Rwanda agreement presented by President Trump is a signal. It was followed by the Armenia-Azerbaijan agreement.
The three putative empires – Iran, Russia and China – were set back in ways not imagined beforehand. But it turns out that the rise of Israel and the US was also a setback for traditional colonial powers.
The Western Conceit
Boundaries were historically drawn by warfare. Every border in Western and Central Europe and North America was determined by a series of wars and population exchanges. But post-World War I, the belief emerged among the conquerors – primarily colonialist France and Britain in the Middle East – that “countries” were comprised of people who lived within set lines that could be drawn by the colonialists when they left or by the United Nations (UN), which brags that, since its founding in 1945, “80 former colonies have gained their independence.”
Because they could, out-going colonial powers simply told people who ended up within a particular boundary they drew to give their allegiance to “the government” whose powers they set up. But these governments may or may not have represented them, resembled them, shared their goals, or even liked them. Religion matters here as well. Sometimes, enemies ended up within the same boundaries, engendering hideous territorial or religious wars that, to this day, include slavery, starvation, and massacres.
If you’re thinking about Africa here, add Germany, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal to the list of colonial powers. Once colonized Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Chad, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo all have vicious wars and suffering populations. In China, the post-colonial, Communist Party-decreed Great Leap Forward killed between 15 and 50 million people in a few years, and the Cultural Revolution killed another half-million to 2 million people. In this decade, Muslim Uyghurs have been subjected to genocide, and in Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau the US State Department says people face “severe human rights issues.”
And don’t forget the targeting of indigenous people in South America or the Rohingya in Myanmar by ruling classes and castes. Or Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
All places with post-colonial issues.
The United States was not a major colonial overlord, although it did participate enthusiastically in post-colonial map-making, promoting territorial compromise, constitutions, and elections as essential to a peaceful future. And ignoring the actual people of the region.
America and the UN drew boundaries for an Arab group called “Palestinians” and promised to make it a country. The Jews would get boundaries as well. “Palestine” failed for so many reasons: The “Palestinians” were a segment of “the Arabs,” the larger group that didn’t want to split territory with Jews or, for that matter, a new Arab subgroup. For the emergent Palestine Liberation Organziation (PLO) and its components, governance was secondary to self-aggrandizement and, for some, jihad. Terror and corruption flourished because the “leadership” was largely disconnected from the people who had long before left the space.
But the Western conceit lives as France, the United Kingdom, and Spain – all former colonial powers – aided by Australia, Ireland, Norway, and others today demand that Palestine be a considered a state ruled by people chosen by the outsiders (a “reformed” PA or, perhaps, the remnant of Hamas), without regard to the failure of both to serve their people. The US rejects the proposition – in this administration.
How Did We Get Here?
The 2011 broad uprising of Arab people was tagged “The Arab Spring” to associate it with the 1968 Prague Spring and the sort of romantic and mostly non-violent collapse of the Soviet Union and the freeing of Central Europe twenty-odd years later. But it is not the same, and Western confusion caused enormous upheaval for the Arab people – and an enormous, but different threat than Israel had faced before. On the other hand, it led directly to the Abraham Accords and growing acceptance of Israel in the region.
Unsurprisingly, the Arab Spring splintered in vastly different directions because societies of the Arab Middle East, North Africa and the non-Arab Muslim societies of Turkey and Iran are vastly different and have vastly different requirements for societal control.
Lifting the yoke of the Soviet Union from its western colonies simply restored those countries to their former position as part of “Europe, whole and free,” as the Atlanticists said – correctly. Before Soviet domination, the history, economy, society, religion, and national development of the eastern part of the European continent was essentially the same as the western part – capitalism; mercantilism; journalism; a middle class; the role of women; experience with kings, princes, and parliaments; and the Church all correlated on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Removing the Soviet Union – and the collapse of communism – allowed the eastern half to reattach itself to the western half.
The Yugoslav breakup was a bloody anomaly, but reaffirmed the enduring nature of sub-state ethnic and national identities. The attachment of the Baltic States, Ukraine, and Georgia to the West was an added benefit of Soviet collapse. Today, Russia is attempting to pull its colonies back in – witness Georgia and Ukraine.
It is a mistake to think of the so-called Arab Spring in any such nationalist or capitalist or ideological terms; think tectonic plates. Since 3000 BCE, the broader Middle East has been governed by outside forces, mostly colonial forces based elsewhere. The occupiers have included:
- Egyptians
- Hittites
- Assyrians
- Babylonians
- Persians
- Macedonians
- Romans
- Byzantines
- Sassanids
- The Caliphate
- Seljuks
- Crusaders
- Saladin
- Mongols
- Ottomans
And finally, Europeans, primarily the British and French after WW I.
Some of those colonial empires lasted hundreds of years.
The Arab Spring was the separation or pulling apart of the boundaries and societies stitched together primarily by the British and the French in the post-colonial period in the Middle East and North Africa. One hundred years ago – that’s all.
But it is the last 100 years in a 3,000-year process.
The Bush and Obama administrations both insisted that the people of the region wanted something called “democracy.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called freedom a “yearning in every human heart.” The Obama people wanted to “atone” for what they thought was white – and American – colonialism.
They were wrong.
The Arab Spring turned ugly. It removed the government of Hosni Mubarak (with American help) and created the terror of a Muslim Brotherhood state that was itself ousted in 2013. Libya (under American military assault) crashed in 2011 and the wars since then have killed thousands, wrecked industry, fueled the migrant crisis and provided weapons for ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria. And, of course, in Syria, the promise of the Spring encouraged the uprising that led to civil war (in which the US supported and armed militias it did not understand) that killed more than 600,000 people, displaced more than half of the pre-war Syrian population of 22 million, and included the use of poison gas. Much of this was funded by Iran’s largesse (which was partially American largesse). Syria is now “governed” by an ISIS-adjacent militia.
On the Other Hand
In response to Western colonial failures in the latter half of the 20th century, regional actors began to reconsider empires as a mechanism for control. Two putative, violent empires emerged.
The putative Shiite Empire centered in Iran, and
The putative Sunni Empire – which has two branches
The non-Arab neo-Ottoman Empire centered in Turkey
And mostly-but-not-completely Arab ISIS, which has lost its land base but is moving through Africa
Both use the old empire-building scheme of using relatively few of their own troops working with a large series of proxies and mercenaries to create instability across huge swaths of territory.
With only a few actual soldiers or weapons, Iran created what we know as the “Shiite Crescent” anchored by the radical Shiite supremacists in Iran and ending at the Mediterranean Sea. It provided Tehran not only with closer access to Israel but also spread across the northern borders of two key Sunni adversaries – pro-American Jordan, and Iran’s most important enemy, Saudi Arabia, guardian of Mecca and Medina. It further split Sunni Turkey (a historic foe) from the other Sunni Middle East states.
The Crescent was, for Iran, a single battlefront and the Islamic Republic spent decades successfully undermining and wrecking each subsidiary member.
Israel put an end to it after Oct. 7, decimating Hamas, Hezbollah, and the remains of the Syrian Assad regime, and vastly curtailing Iran’s nuclear blackmail threat.
Under the Crescent
The underside encircled the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia in the Gulf of Aden with a base in Yemen and a Houthi proxy at the bottom of the Red Sea, disrupting seaborne traffic for Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, and reducing shipping (and revenue) from the Suez Canal for Egypt.
And Africa: Iran incubated Sunni jihadists in the poor, corrupt, and vulnerable states of the second tier – Sudan, Chad, Niger, and Mali. The result was waves of migrants headed north. The North African countries – Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria – were all in the NATO Mediterranean Dialogue group that helped control safety and security in the sea until the Obama administration toppled the Libyan government in 2011. Libya, no longer a member of the Dialogue, became the hole in the dam through which hundreds of thousands of African and Middle Eastern migrants reached Europe.
ISIS lost its territorial base in the Middle East, but remains active and murderous in Africa, where Turkey is also working to establish itself as a military power, particularly in Libya. This goes along with Turkish aspirations in Syria and Iraq, as well as its open ties with Hamas and Hezbollah.
Rebellion Against Empires
At some point, for some governments, the allure of war and the ideological principle of throwing the Jews into the sea paled in comparison with figuring out how to stay in power and determine the role of the people under their systems of rule. Technology, water, and the fight against radical ideology – both Shiite and Sunni – were other priorities, and Arab states began to see Israel as a potential partner in their pursuit.
It was not about what we call “democracy” or democratic revolution – it was and remains about survival for the people and about survival for the regimes. The smaller Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan didn’t want to be like Syria, if they had a choice.
They did have a choice. The Abraham Accords.
The Empire Replied
The Hamas orgy of murder and destruction in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was designed to prevent Israel and Saudi Arabia from reaching an agreement. Hamas leadership assumed everyone would help – specifically, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran. Hezbollah did, for a minute, and the Houthis did. But Israel sequentially decimated their leadership and their capabilities.
And the colonial has-beens, France and the UK, and their minions, from Ireland to Australia to Canada, are embarrassed and angry with Israel’s success. Turkey a once-and-hoped-for-future colonial power, remains problematic.
It will take time, bombs, and clever diplomacy for the results to be fully cemented. But for now, precision bombs and clever diplomacy are working for the good guys for the first time in a long time.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.
