One question that has dominated the discussions related to the war between Iran and Israel is whether the Jewish state will manage to become a regional "hegemon"- that is, whether it will manage to win the hearts and minds of its neighbors and engage with their interests. As Stephen Walt has argued in “Foreign Policy” and others have explained in various ways and forms, however, hegemony cannot be built on military force alone. While it may seem like a comforting thought, the claim that Israel is not a viable hegemon is also valid and convincing, especially in light of the brutality the Israeli army has displayed, and continues to display, in Gaza, darkening the Israeli army and state’s image in the region’s hearts and minds. On top of that, apprehension of the stronger party is very valid (and even necessary), in principle, whenever the balance of power skews so strongly in its favor, though this should not imply a denial of the fact that many among us are slaves to their fixation with power.
Even signing peace and normalization treaties might not be enough to dispel this necessary apprehension. Treaties do not go into effect through magic, and they always have less of an impact than experience and perception. Israel, like any triumphant party, could demand a steep price following its victories- a price determined by power and control that comes at the expense of its hegemony.
Without falling into the fantastical claims made by some figures of the axis of resistance, about the threat that Israeli power poses to Egypt and the rest of the Islamic world, or even to the entire world, the weak countries of the Levant’s already frail sovereignty will certainly become even more frail and defenseless. For example, imagine that- in light of this horrific power imbalance- Lebanon or Syria have a dispute with Israel over a water spring or a small neighborhood in a border village; what kind of negotiating position would the former two countries find themselves in?
Tel Aviv's overwhelming military domination could reinforce everything that perpetuates the weakness of its neighbors’ central authorities. Establishing militias and propping up warlords that are loyal to Israel rather instead of Tehran are not ruled out. Such actions would leave the weaker parties with no choice but to increasingly rely on the United States, the only available- albeit neither fully effective nor guaranteed- treatment option.
Nonetheless, Israel not seeking hegemony- contenting itself with reliance on raw power alone to manage relations and exert influence by perpetuating permanent wars- could have even more far-reaching and dangerous implications. As Stephen Walt writes, a hegemonic power must possess the elements that US President Franklin Roosevelt possessed when he adopted the "Good Neighbor" policy toward Latin America.
The fact is that the behavior of Benjamin Netanyahu and his zealotry allies points in an opposite direction. Their abrasive actions are premised on rigid ideological commitments, whether nationalist or religious, leaving no room for pragmatism. Closing any and every door to a Palestinian state, encouraging settlement in the West Bank, and their obnoxious domineering rhetoric that makes no overtures to the other, not to mention their punitive approach to the new authorities in Lebanon and Syria, all indicate that this is the path they have chosen to go down. Moreover, the mantra of resistance, militants’ traditional response to such situations, has lost its bite, just like the other slogans of this era that is now in its twilight. Nonetheless, we cannot overlook the fact that the nations and states in the Levant are undergoing a phase of accelerating fragmentation that has left our national communities pitted against one another, offering a tempting opening for any foreign actor seeking to cynically exploit this situation.
That is why we find, for example, that with their hands emptied of the promises of salvation whose promotion they had mastered, even the fiercest militants are now betting on an Israeli-Turkish dispute, or perhaps a Russian or Chinese awakening that they have pondered far more than the Russians or Chinese.
This bleak state of affairs we find ourselves in cannot be seen in isolation of the conditions that led us to this point over the past few "Iranian" decades. States and national identities were undermined, institutions were trivialized, and politics, the economy, and values were shaped by militias. Some of the similarities between the Iranian era and the potential Israeli era stem from their shared prioritization of force and "strategy" over politics and social questions, giving everything outside the state primacy over what lies inside the nation-states. The fight against Israel or fight against Iran are left to shape reality and the future in the first instance. With the exception of a narrow circle of ideologues, communal concerns and inter-communal fears have governed the public sentiment. By definition, this situation leaves a fertile environment for militias to wreak havoc and compels us to welcome the imperial invasions as political parties, or rather, as partisans, rather than nations. Compounding our despair, there is no indication that the Levant has, as we were told in boisterous speeches throughout the phase of Iranian power, become more self-reliant during this period. If its inhabitants do not take the initiative and strive to build a reasonable degree of national consensus, the region could well end up continuing along the same path in the emerging era of Israeli power.
