Israel's Current Path Threatens Its Future

posted on: Aug 26, 2026

By: Ghassan Rubeiz / Arab America Contributing Writer

Israel nowadays treats military force as an inexhaustible resource and diplomacy as an expendable luxury. Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack — which Israel has treated as an open-ended license to escalate — the country has pursued mass killing, blockade, and territorial expansion, all under the banner of protecting Jewish life in the Holy Land. But this growing reliance on war and displacement is not making Israel safer; it is making Israel more exposed.

The pattern has only sharpened in recent months. Israel struck an airbase in Syria’s Idlib province to warn Damascus against hosting a Turkish military presence there. It has been bombing Hezbollah positions and destroying homes in South Lebanon. It has intensified strikes in Gaza in the name of punishing Hamas and its supporters. And in the West Bank, it revived settlement plans last week deep inside Palestinian territory, further isolating East Jerusalem and foreclosing what remains of a viable Palestinian state – for a two-state solution. These actions sit uneasily beside Israel’s alleged official position that it seeks no new territory. In practice, it continues to widen its footprint in occupied Palestinian land, southern Lebanon, and along the Syrian border.

Yet Israel keeps marketing itself as a regional peacemaker, talking up normalization with Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia and hoping to extend the Abraham Accords. In fact, Saudi Arabia appears to be moving in the other direction, shelving Abraham Accords’ talk in favor of a closer security partnership with Turkey and Pakistan, the so-called Mecca Alliance. Arab publics, long skeptical of normalization to begin with, now see Israel’s conduct as proof that integration in the region without justice for Palestinians isn’t possible. Israel’s diplomatic narrative no longer matches its behavior, and the region has noticed.

The strain is visible in Washington too. The Trump administration, for all its pro-Israel posture, is increasingly uneasy with Netanyahu’s endless push toward military confrontation with Iran. American public opinion is shifting, especially among Democrats and younger voters, and some Jewish Americans (particularly the youth) are openly debating how to reconcile their identity with a government whose policies they find morally troubling. That gap between Tel Aviv and Washington is widening just as the U.S. faces its own fiscal strain and growing resistance to foreign entanglements. The US national debt is almost out of control partly due to compulsive wars of choice. Israel’s push for deeper American involvement in a potential war with Iran is straining its relationship with Trump and its alliance with the US. While intact, the alliance is losing the vigor that once gave Israel a free hand.

Inside Israel, the toll is harder to ignore. Nearly 270,000 Israelis have left the country over the past three years, disproportionately young, educated, and affluent. Many cite judicial upheaval, government extremism, and unrelenting regional conflict as reasons for leaving, describing a sense of being trapped in a cycle of uncertainty. The loss of that many skilled professionals threatens Israel’s economy and raises real questions about its long-term stability — and it has fueled a growing alarm, inside Israel itself, that the country’s most capable citizens are voting with their feet.

Israel’s strategy rests on three major assumptions: that Arabs are best controlled through sheer force, that diplomacy with Palestinians is futile, and that regional fragmentation will keep shielding Israel from accountability. Israel can point to a battered Hezbollah, a degraded Hamas, and a punished Iran as evidence the strategy is working. But those tactical gains do not match what Israel has paid in return — a damaged international image, deepening isolation, and a demoralized society. The weakness of Arab leadership and the world’s rising tolerance for the use of force have only reinforced Israel’s assumptions. But Israel’s most basic assumption itself is problematic, and it is not merely a strategic error — treating force as inherently more effective than diplomacy with Arab populations assumes those populations respond to nothing else, which is itself a form of racial grandeur. Military superiority is not a permanent asset: Israel is a small country whose reliance on outside support is shrinking.

As Israel expands its military options across the region, its political options are narrowing. Holding onto land seized in recent conflicts, and continuing policies that amount to ethnic cleansing, will only deepen the costs already visible: rising emigration, eroding American support, hardening Arab distrust, economic vulnerability, and diplomatic isolation. Settlement expansion in the West Bank has grown so pervasive, that a contiguous, sovereign future Palestinian state is no longer feasible. By dismantling, piece by piece, the territorial basis for a separate Palestinian state, Israel has narrowed its own political options down to one conflict-resolution path: some form of binational condominium, in which Israelis and Palestinians share sovereignty and rights over the same land. Other options, such as apartheid, prolonged forced expulsion through ethnic cleansing and “transfer” into Jordan and Sinai would invariably start new wars and keep the region highly unstable. The region is shifting, and the assumption that Israel can indefinitely impose its will by force is becoming untenable.

Israel cannot rely on force forever. Unless it reconsiders its path and embraces a political vision grounded in equality, coexistence, and regional diplomacy, Israel risks undermining the very foundations of its future. Military power may win battles, but only political wisdom secures a nation’s survival — and Israel may be running out of time to choose wisely.

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 has delivered occasional public talks on peace, justice, and interfaith topics. 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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