Israel is on the cusp of stamping its authority across the Middle East like never before, as it nears a ceasefire-hostage deal with a defeated Hamas and takes steps to cripple Iran’s last effective terrorist proxy, the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Coupled with Israel’s defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon, its cowering of Iran, and its destruction of deposed Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian military force, Israel will end this year as the unrivalled dominant force across a reshaped region.
This has of course come at a terrible human cost triggered by Hamas’s massacre of 1200 Israelis and then by Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
But in just under 15 months, Israel’s growing dominance against every Islamic terror group that once threatened it has revealed Hamas’s attack on Israelis to be a strategic misjudgment for the ages.
Israel is coming closer to what could soon be an unlikely outbreak of peace in the war-torn region. If it can secure a ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza – looking increasingly likely – and also hit the Houthis in Yemen hard enough to persuade them to cease their attacks in
Israel, then Tel Aviv would finally have silenced all those who have attacked it.
Israel’s heavy bombardment this week of Houthi military targets in rebel-held northwest Yemen is a major escalation against the group.
Until now the Houthis – whose catchcry is “death to America, death to Israel, damnation to the Jews” – have so far got off lightly from Israel despite regularly launching missiles and drones at the Jewish state.
But with its other regional enemies now defeated, Israel can attack the Houthis with greater force until they decide that the cost of continuing to attack Israel and disrupt international shipping in the Red Sea is too high.
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has all but flagged this new campaign, saying: “The Houthis are learning … the hard way that anyone who harms Israel will pay a very heavy price.”
If Israel continues its campaign against the Houthis – and given the effectiveness of its campaigns against Hezbollah and Hamas – it will be only a matter of time before the terror group ceases its attacks, delivering a final insult to Iran, which will have seen all of its terror proxies in the region defeated by Israel in just over a year.
The most important breakthrough in the region, a ceasefire-hostage deal with Hamas, could still collapse but there is reason for hope because, critically, Hamas has retreated on some of its earlier demands and clearly wants a deal.
These include agreeing to Israeli troops remaining in some parts of Gaza after the initial ceasefire, and abandoning its demand for a complete halt to the war in exchange for a pause in fighting.
For Hamas, the pressure to reach a deal is growing. Hamas is broken as a coherent fighting force, it no longer has Hezbollah attacking Israel in sympathy, and within weeks Donald Trump will be sworn in with the promise that there will be “all hell to pay” if hostages are not released.
For Israel, the time is also right for a deal. Its attacks on Hamas in Gaza are akin to playing whack-a-mole, in that they no longer deliver any strategic benefit to what is now a low-level rag-tag guerrilla force. These attacks only prolong the conflict and the suffering of the civilian population for no reason.
The aftermath of last year’s October 7 attack has seen Israel emerge as the dominant player in the Middle East and, with its enemies vanquished, the prospect of a more peaceful 2025 now beckons.
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