Netanyahu is learning limits of what can be achieved by military power alone

It is hard to remember the Middle East before October 7 2023, so much has changed in the wake of its horrendous events.

Before the attack, the region’s geopolitical tectonic plates were grinding, but an uneasy status quo held sway and observed certain rules.

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But that day unleashed an earthquake, changing everything.

In two years of turmoil since, the region’s rulebook has been torn to pieces.

The first rule: Israel would manage the threat from Hamas but not try to eradicate it. Israel’s policy of dividing and ruling the Palestinians’ rival factions had come back to bite them.

Instead, Israelis insisted in one voice after October 7 no more “mowing the grass”, their euphemism for cutting Hamas down to size, from time to time. This time, the job must be finished.

That would change the way Israelis waged their war in Gaza. Not least in the way they would tolerate many more civilians dying, in the name of defeating their enemy. If the target’s rank was high enough, the deaths of scores of civilians – women and children – would be acceptable.

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The outcome has been an unprecedentedly high civilian death toll.

Israel’s war on Hamas has now killed more than 67,000 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians or combatants.

Its impact will be felt for generations to come, not least no doubt on the potential radicalisation of those who have survived.

And it has seen Israel, a nation conceived in the wake of one genocide, accused of perpetrating another. That stain, justified or not, has implications for Israel’s psyche and own sense of identity.

Israel denies all accusations of genocide. But it has potentially grave repercussions for its future.

Abroad, popular support for Israel has fallen most of all among the young and most of all where it needs it most: America. The rule that supporting Israel will always be a vote-winner in the US is also now in question.

But the rules have changed Israel’s borders and in the way it has chosen to wield its increasingly hegemonic military power even more dramatically.

Israel’s leaders found a new boldness in the wake of October 7, at the same time as technological and tactical advances gave them the tools to pursue it.

The pager operation against Hezbollah that crippled the Shiite Lebanese militia was planned long before October 7. But it reached operational utility just as Israel found the risk appetite to implement it.

It was decisive in the events that led to the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Since 2006 and Israel’s last war with Hezbollah, the rule held that neither would risk provoking another. It would be too devastating for both.

The pager attack disabled Hezbollah’s ability to launch tens of thousands of missiles, after months of attritive attacks on them by Israel.

For as long as Hezbollah held that arsenal of missiles, it was assumed Israel would not risk attacking Iran. With that neutralised, Israel could now take on its ultimate enemies there.

The rules were rewritten in the skies over Iran and Israel in their first direct attacks on each other in April and October last year. Then, in June this year, Israel unleashed a devastating 12-day war on Iran, joined in its closing stages by US warplanes too.

But after reaching that zenith in military supremacy, Israel has since overreached. A failed airstrike on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, provoked the anger of allies, most crucially Donald Trump.

In the prelude to this anniversary, Benjamin Netanyahu is learning the limits of what can be achieved by military power alone. Having invested more in military action than constructive diplomacy, Netanyahu’s Israel is now increasingly isolated.

Israel’s leader finds himself hemmed in by a US president being leant on by Arab allies. Trump will not tolerate Israel annexing the West Bank and wants a deal that offers a “credible pathway” to a future Palestinian state.

Netanyahu needs to show he can still bring the remaining hostages home, that fighting the war this long was justified, and he has a plan for what happens the day after.

And if the war is being drawn to a close, with American mediation and the support of Arab partners and allies, they all have responsibilities too.

To find a better new status quo with far better rules, to make sure the carnage and regionwide turmoil of the last two years can be brought to a close and never repeated.