A core misconception about Israel’s policy since Oct. 7 is that the country has favored military action at the expense of diplomacy. The truth is that it’s Israel’s decisive battlefield victories that have created diplomatic openings that have been out of reach for decades — and would have remained so if Israel hadn’t won.
In Beirut on Monday, Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, said he was “unbelievably satisfied” by the response he got from President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon on U.S. proposals to disarm Hezbollah, reportedly in exchange for critical financial aid after a six-year economic crisis. Aoun’s government is the first in the country’s history to make progress in disarming Hezbollah’s strongholds near the Israeli border — a basic condition for Israel to withdraw from five military outposts it still occupies in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah is not a group that will go quietly — not if it has any other option. But it’s because Israel destroyed it as an effective fighting force last year that it’s now possible for the Lebanese state to again possess the most basic form of sovereignty, a monopoly on the use of force within its borders. And it’s only because of Israel’s victory that there’s a realistic prospect of a peace agreement between Jerusalem and Beirut as part of an expanded Abraham Accords.
There’s a similarly hopeful story in Syria, where last week the Trump administration lifted sanctions on the government of President Ahmed al-Shara. The United States has been a step ahead of Israel in warming to al-Shara, who once led a branch of Al Qaeda and whom some Israeli leaders still see as a closet jihadist. Now there are reports of talks between Jerusalem and Damascus aiming at a de facto peace agreement.
Where that goes remains to be seen. But it’s unlikely that al-Shara’s insurgents could have come to power if Israel hadn’t first destroyed Hezbollah, depriving the regime of Bashar al-Assad of one of its most effective military arms. And neither Jerusalem nor Damascus might have been amenable to talks if Israel hadn’t first destroyed many of Syria’s remaining weapon stockpiles in December, giving al-Shara an incentive to seek a diplomatic outcome and Israel confidence that it wouldn’t face another menace to its north.
Then there’s Gaza. After President Trump’s White House dinner with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Monday, Israeli officials suggested they were close to a deal that would pause the fighting in exchange for Hamas’s release of more hostages. Trump has speculated that an agreement could happen this week.
This is happening not because the Netanyahu government or what remains of the leadership of Hamas has suddenly realized that there’s been far too much devastation and suffering in Gaza. There has been, and it’s in everyone’s interest to see it end. But humanitarian calls, however sincere, or moral hectoring, however loud, have contributed next to nothing to stopping the fighting. Wars don’t end because Greta Thunberg gets on a boat.
What has counted is the calculus of force. On Hamas’s side, its growing diplomatic flexibility is almost entirely a result of its proximity to total defeat. According to the BBC, one Hamas official has privately described a situation in which 95 percent of the leadership is dead and Hamas has lost control of 80 percent of its territory. Many Gazans have turned against Hamas, looting the offices of its security headquarters and increasingly turning to local clans for food and protection. These are the conditions under which Hamas’s remaining members may finally agree to lay down their arms and go into exile, at last creating the possibility for a permanent end to fighting, new governance and badly needed reconstruction.
On Israel’s side, diplomatic flexibility has three authors. The first is the Israeli public’s understandable exhaustion with 21 months of fighting. The second is pressure from Trump to reach a deal — and Netanyahu’s eagerness to please him.
But neither factor would have been sufficient if Israel hadn’t achieved its military success over Iran, crowned, from an Israeli point of view, by America’s participation in the campaign.
At a stroke, Israel humiliated its most formidable adversary (and Hamas’s principal patron), demonstrating not only its capacity but also its courage to take on the mullahs directly and survive their reprisals intact. It advertised its capabilities to Saudi Arabia, which may now be more amenable to joining the Abraham Accords — not out of a softhearted desire for peace but out of a hardheaded interest in cementing military, economic and technological ties with the Jewish state. It created at least the possibility that Iran might choose to forgo its nuclear ambitions out of fear of seeing them destroyed again. And its victory gave Netanyahu the upper hand over his far-right coalition partners, allowing him to sign a deal that probably wouldn’t cause his government to collapse.
Critics of Israeli policy have argued that the cost of its military victories lies in its isolation on the world stage or in the contempt in which it is held by people like Zohran Mamdani and Tucker Carlson. There’s also no doubt that hatred of Israel has done much to contribute to growing antisemitism, although it’s equally true that antisemitism lies at the root of much of the hatred of Israel.
Then again, Israel doesn’t exist to placate the feelings of its detractors and defamers. It exists to protect Jewish life and uphold Jewish dignity in a world too intent on destroying both. If diplomacy now has a chance of succeeding, it’s because in geopolitics, as in life, it pays to be a winner.
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Bret Stephens is an Opinion columnist for The Times, writing about foreign policy, domestic politics and cultural issues. Facebook
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