Israel Continues to Normalize the Abnormal

posted on: Jul 23, 2025

By: Ghassan Rubeiz / Arab America Contributing Writer

In the modern Middle East, the relentless pursuit of legitimacy by illegitimate means has become Israel’s defining contradiction. What emerges is a state desperately seeking to normalize the fundamentally abnormal through a carefully orchestrated campaign of deception, manipulation, and coercion. The problem has deep roots. Israeli leadership has never seriously believed in exchanging land for peace. The Abraham Accords are business transactions, dressed up as diplomatic breakthroughs. And the war on Hamas has revealed itself to be a war on the Palestinians themselves.

For decades, Israel maintained the pretense of wanting to settle its conflict with the Arab world through negotiated peace, ostensibly to share the land with the Palestinian people. But as Palestinian political leadership was systematically prevented from maturing, and as Arab states continued to weaken politically through mismanagement of resources, fratricidal wars, and state collapse- in Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Libya-, Israel built an atomic arsenal for “deterrence,” strengthened its economy, its military and international standing. Step by step, Israel felt emboldened to abandon the peace process while continuing to deny its expansionist policies.

Hamas’ brutal October 7th attacks finally gave Israel the opportunity to openly reject the Palestinians’ right to relative safety on their land, much less to a sovereign state. In less than two years, Israel has used the pretext of retaliation to kill and injure a substantial number of Gaza’s people, and it has rendered the enclave uninhabitable. By making Gaza unsuitable for human life, it has prepared for the next phase: population transfer across borders to the Arab world or any country willing to receive Gazans as refugees.

Israel has also accelerated its displacement and uprooting of Palestinians in the West Bank. New Israeli settlements are proliferating, and formal annexation looms. Israel is now actively seeking to build a coalition of states and even militias in the region that feel vulnerable or victimized. Two oil-rich Arab Gulf states and one North African country have already normalized relations with Israel. Now Israel is attempting to entice Syria and Lebanon to follow suit, though these troubled Arab countries remain hesitant, if not completely uninterested. Israel is also trying to establish “protective” relations with the Kurds and Druze in northeastern and southern Syria, respectively. Israel is also meddling with the delicate process of Hezbollah’s gradual demilitarization and political integration into wider Lebanese society, in hopes that a militia-free Lebanon might normalize relations with Tel Aviv.

Israel’s success has come at a high moral cost, though many Jewish people, especially the younger generation and the diaspora, reject and denounce what is being done in their name. But given Israel’s history, expecting a ceasefire in Gaza anytime soon is unrealistic. Even if a ceasefire does emerge under pressure from Washington or Israeli protesters, it will likely amount to a mere exchange of prisoners. Until Israel’s fundamental approach changes, the pursuit of legitimacy by illegitimate means will continue to define its relationship with its neighbors, leaving the region trapped in a bitter cycle of hatred and violence.

Ghassan Rubeiz is the former Middle East Secretary of the World Council of Churches. Earlier, he taught psychology and social work in his country of birth, Lebanon, and later in the United States, where he currently lives. He has contributed to political commentary for the past twenty years and delivered occasional public talks on peace, justice, and interfaith subjects. You can reach him at rubeizg@gmail.com

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab America. The reproduction of this article is permissible with proper credit to Arab America and the author.

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