War or Peace with Israel

The Israeli journalist Seth Mandel poses a hypothetical: if you were an Arab state, would it be better to be at peace, or at war, with Israel? More on his answer to his own question can be found here: “The Wages of Peace with Israel,” by Seth Mandel, Commentary, December 9, 2024:

If you had the opportunity to start a new Middle East state from scratch, would you rather it be at peace with Israel or at war with Israel?

I genuinely wish regional leaders would ask themselves this question once in a while. And the fall of the house of Assad is a great time to do so.

Israel’s offer of peace has been on the table to all comers from the start. If you want peace with the Jewish state, you can have it. Should you take the offer?

If the citizens of your state are of any concern to you, it’s pretty obvious you should take the deal.

Israel borders Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt. In recent weeks and months, we have watched Lebanon continue its long history of abridged sovereignty and political decay. The Iranian/Hezbollah statelet in South Lebanon persists, though in a weakened state. That occupation exists to regularly plunge the country into war with Israel. Before the area was Hezbollah’s playground, it was the mini-state of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which instigated two types of armed conflict: war with Israel and civil war within Lebanon. After Israel ousted the PLO from southern Lebanon in 1982, Syria intervened to ensure there would be no peace with Israel by killing Lebanese politicians who wanted an end to the bloodshed.

Hezbollah has for decades been a state within a state in Lebanon. It has until its recent crippling war with the IDF enforced its will by killing political leaders who are deemed to be anti-Syrian, and thus anti-Hezbollah as well, for Hezbollah and Assad’s Syria were both close collaborators and allies of Iran. Syria served for decades as the conduit through which Hezbollah received weapons from Iran. Among the politicians it has killed are Rafik Hariri, Samir Kassir, George Hawi, Gebrn Tueni, Pierre Amine Gemayel, and Walid Edo.

Its military was always much stronger than the Lebanese National Army, and it prevented the LNA and UNIFIL from enforcing UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which was passed in 2006, and required Hezbollah to remove its forces from southern Lebanon and to pull them north of the Litani River. Hezbollah never did, and only now, because it has been so battered by the IDF, has Hezbollah eagerly accepted a ceasefire with Israel, by which it now agrees that this time it will indeed pull back its weapons and fighters north of the Litani. So far, that ceasefire has been holding, with the IDF engaging occasionally in striking Hezbollah combatants found to be moving men and weapons around between the Litani and Israel’s border with Lebanon.

Syria, meanwhile, has been in the news because a decade-long revolt finally succeeded in ousting Bashar al-Assad, who has only been able to stay in power with the help of Hezbollah terrorists, Iranian generals, and chemical weapons that Assad’s forces used on civilians. Three-quarters of a century into Israel’s existence, such is the reality of life in the neighboring countries that insist on permanent hostility to Israel’s existence.

It is no coincidence that this is not the state of affairs in Jordan or Egypt. Peace with Israel isn’t the only reason for their relative stability. But not being at war with a first-rate military and ally of the Western democracies is a pretty big factor….

Mandel might also have mentioned the benefits to the Arab states that have made peace with Israel by signing onto the Abraham Accords — Morocco, the UAE, and Bahrain — all of which have made business deals with Israeli companies and the Israeli government, especially in the areas of high tech, renewable energy, water desalination, agriculture, and tourism.

No Arab state has benefited from making war against Israel, from 1948 to the present. The costs to Arab states, in men, money, and materiel, when they tried to wipe out Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973, amounted to tens of billions of dollars. But those Arab states that have chosen to make peace with Israel, either through a peace treaty, as Egypt and Jordan have done, or through becoming members of the Abraham Accords and agreeing to normalize ties with the Jewish state, have only benefited.

War or peace? Israel is ready for both. Will the new rulers of Syria choose rightly?

AUTHOR