THE DAY AFTER THE END OF THE GAZA WAR: NEW OPPORTUNITIES – EHUD YAARI

Ehud Yaari is an Israel-based Lafer international fellow of The Washington Institute. He has been a Middle East commentator for Israel’s Channel Twelve television since 1975 and is former associate editor of Jerusalem Report. Among his numerous awards for journalism are the Israeli Press Editors-in-Chief prize for coverage of the peace process with Egypt, the Sokolov Prize for coverage of the Lebanon War, and the Israel Broadcasting Award for coverage of the Gulf War. Visiting Sydney for the the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) in 2025, Ehud Yaari addressed The Sydney Institute on Wednesday 26 March. In his speech, he spoke of the tectonic shift in Middle East relations as a result of the war in Gaza.

THE DAY AFTER THE END OF THE GAZA WAR: NEW OPPORTUNITIES

EHUD YAARI

As usual, I will not beat around the bush, any bush. We have a tectonic shift in the Middle East. This has to do with the current conflict between Israel and its enemies. But not only with that. For example, the two non-Arab ex-great empires of the region, Turkey and Iran, are now engaged in a ferocious, vicious rivalry all over the region. That’s new.

Those two empires, the Persian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, for the past 250 or more learned to manage their competition with a mixture of cooperation and a dose of friendship. This is no longer the case. It is partly because of the war and the way it is coming to an end. Now, they are in open conflict all over the region, and this is huge. The Arab world, apart from the rich Gulf States, is basically in a process of implosion. This is in different degrees and different forms in different countries.

The main players in the region who remain are the non-Arab players – Iran, Turkey and little Israel with the Iranians and the Turks now engaged in battles through their proxies in Iraq, in Syria, in Lebanon, in the Horn of Africa, Somalia, Sudan and southern Caucasus. And I can go on because it spreads to Afghanistan, Pakistan, the rebellion in Balochistan and more. It’s an all-out confrontation. I don’t believe it will get to a point of taking up arms and going to war, but they are pretty confident fighting each other through proxies. That’s a major change.

Erdogan, the great democrat, did not embark on an open policy of confronting Iranian attempts to establish their predominant hegemony in the region, especially the Levant. In the current war, they now realise that Israel has prevailed over Iran’s Axis of Resistance. this has not improved relations between Turkey and Israel and Turkey is still boycotting any trade with Israel, albeit that all the trade is now going through Greece and Cyprus. So, it doesn’t matter that much, neither to them nor to us. The important point is the way that Israel has managed to prevail. Not yet to end the war, but to prevail.

That has encouraged Turkey to take a new posture. And, as an Israeli, I’m extremely interested in this. To what extent can we aspire to have a semi-rapprochement, or more, with the Turks, as long as Erdogan is in power. It would be a major breakthrough if Turkey, the moderate Arab states led by the Gulf states and Israel could cooperate in different ways to make sure the Iranians don’t bounce back.

This is one part of the tectonic shift and, if anybody is interested in watching it, I truly recommend taking a look at what is happening in the south Caucasus, where the Turks and Israel helped Azerbaijan win the war over Nagorno Karabakh against Armenia, and now the Turks are in the process with our Azeri friends, mediating between us and the Turks. They are trying to get something, I will not go into the details, which is called the Zangezur corridor, which will separate Iran from its close friend Armenia. The Azeris and the Turks are not going to give up on that. If you listen to the language, the official rhetoric of Turkish and Iranian officials, it’s unprecedented. I’ll give you a small example. Turkey has initiated a radio station in Farsi. What a crime! The Iranians officially describe this as an act of war. This is the kind of mutual suspicion that has built up between these two ex-empires.

The other tectonic shift is a direct cause of the war. As I was saying on my last visit here, with all the protests which are still going on, what is important for Israelis is to prevail. Once the world realises that we have managed to prevail, coming out of the massacres of October 7, things will start to change. And no thanks to our government. Thanks to our hundreds of thousands of reservists and a magical Air Force and other tools, we have managed to prevail.

I would like to take you through the picture as I see it. In Gaza, Hamas is broken. The two top echelons of their military command have been decapitated. They have only two of their senior commanders still alive. They have no chain of command. They are no longer a cohesive military organisation. They have lost their huge arsenal of rockets, anti-tank missiles and they have lost 70-80 per cent, nobody knows exactly how much, of their tunnels. There is fierce infighting amongst the remaining Hamas leadership, certainly among those outside living in Qatar and Istanbul, over succession, over policy and what to do with the hostages. And they cannot reach an agreement.

Just to illustrate, the guy who is now calling the shots, to the extent that somebody is calling the shots, now in Hamas, is the guy who was the main competitor and rival of Yahya Sinwar, the guy who ordered the October 7 attack. His name is Nizar Awadallah. He’s not a well-known figure. He’s important in Hamas. He is now calling the shots. He has objected to the October 7 attack. He has objected to the close alliance of Hamas with Iran, and many other issues. So, there is a major change in the organisation.

Their whole civilian governance in the Gaza Strip has been decapitated too, including in the past two, three weeks, their Prime Minister, the Hamas leader in charge of the civil administration in the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, people realise that there is a change of tune on the part of Hamas, with more and more Hamas leaders saying, “Oh, what a mistake we made on October 7.” Some of them publicly, including the still alive commander of the Gaza Brigade, the biggest brigade of Hamas in Gaza. So, people have begun to demonstrate and post videos on the social media and speak their mind to say “Hamas is responsible for our tragedy”. It should be encouraged, because it will make things easier in the future.

But we are not yet at the day after in Gaza. We still have, I believe, 25-30 hostages alive. We need to get them out. Otherwise, there is no remedy for the Israeli soul. But Hamas knows that these hostages are their ultimate insurance policy. So even if they free some, we are now talking about five to eleven more they will keep as a shield.

We are not yet at the day after because while we have a sort of ceasefire, formally a ceasefire in Gaza, while the Israeli army keeps going after every Hamas fighter they can locate. Every Hamas activity that pops up. And this will continue. Even so, we don’t have to be inside the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip is a very narrow strip. We can do it all from our territory and from the air. But it has to be accepted and realised by the Gazans and everybody around that we are going to be persistent.

What is the aim? The aim is to get Hamas to accept disarmament. This doesn’t seem likely now, but I would propose that we can get there, hopefully. We can offer safe passage to their remaining fighters with arms. Hamas has not sought any further engagement with the Israeli forces for a long time now. Reconstruction of Gaza will take years and billions of dollars. There are different estimates. The minimal one is $50 billion. And, who’s going to pay?

We need to get to that point where people are willing to send funds and contribute battalions to serve as a security police in Gaza. We don’t want to control Gaza even if some Israeli extremists want to settle Gaza again. It’s not going to happen. The UAE is willing to send a battalion. Saudi Arabia might be willing to send a battalion. Egypt and Morocco also. And others. On one condition. That there is no threat that Hamas will shoot at them. Which is why solving this issue of Hamas is crucial to pacifying Gaza.

I’ll give you an example. The very thoughtful, serious American General Fenzel, who’s been in the region for several years now, has developed a very, very serious plan of how to maintain security in Gaza the day after the war has ended. It is based on the idea of recruiting, over a year, 10,000 young Gazans whose families are not too closely linked to Hamas as a local security force. Because unlike what the ABC here may think, for the Gazans, sending troops, if it was at all possible, from the West Bank to Gaza, they would be perceived as an occupation force. The West Bankers. It’s a no, no. And the Americans know it. But how can you start recruiting young Gazans to a local police force, even if it’s under the roof of the Palestinian Authority, unless these guys know they are not going to be executed in the street. So, we need to keep up the pressure. And I believe it will yield results, but not overnight.

Now to the other front, Lebanon and Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s first and second echelons of its military command has been decapitated. The person who is now the chief commander of Hezbollah in Lebanon is someone nobody ever expected to be in that job. Apart from all Israel has done to them, they have suffered two major setbacks, and a third is underway. These are political setbacks. First is the combined pressure by the United States and Saudi Arabia. The French are trying to be partners too, but nobody in the region really takes President Macron very seriously, not even in Lebanon where most people also speak French. In addition, the commander of the Lebanese Army, General Joseph Aoun, a Maronite Christian, has been elected as President of Lebanon, against the wishes and prayers of Hezbollah. They could do nothing to stop it, because they have lost most of their political allies under the Lebanese political spectrum.

The second defeat for Hezbollah is the election of Nawaf Salam, a judge at the ICC in the Hague who had been out of Lebanese politics for two decades or more, as Lebanon’s prime minister. The new government only includes Hezbollah as merely an advisor to two minor ministries. Hezbollah has lost control over the Lebanese government. Both president and prime minister now avow that only the state makes decisions about war or peace. Lebanon has now embarked, with American and Saudi encouragement, on direct negotiations with Israel, beginning with the demarcation of the border line, but it will go beyond this. Hezbollah is not in a position to resist it.

The Israeli army, just as in Gaza, keeps going after any Hezbollah and any attempt to re-establish its presence both south of the Litani River or north of the Litani River. The Lebanese government may protest, but not too loudly and the pressure will continue. Hezbollah is now unable to get Iranian support. They are isolated politically within Lebanon. Let’s see where it leads.

A very significant reason for Hezbollah’s bad shape is what happened in Syria. People really don’t understand what has happened. For the first time in my life – and I’m no spring chicken, as you can tell – there is no Syrian Army. Nothing is left. The day that Mr Jolani (whether he’s an ex-jihadist or still jihadist; an ex-Islamist or still Islamist is debatable) strolled into Damascus unopposed was because the Syrian army had melted away. It was the day that Israel recognised that nobody was in control of Syria. Mr Jolani, now Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa, doesn’t have enough people under arms to control Syria. So, Israel has taken a security belt along its border in the Golan, and furthermore declared that everything south of Damascus, that’s 100 kilometres all the way to the Jordanian border, and our border on the Golan, will be kept demilitarised.

On the border there, you meet the Air Force. So, nobody goes there. Nobody goes there. And the IDF took the peak of Mount Hermon, the highest mountain in the area, from where with good binoculars, no more, you can peep through the windows of the presidential palace in Damascus. In addition, Israel is cultivating very intensively its relationship with the Druze community of southern Syria. That’s 50,000 Druze in 15 or so villages on the slopes of Mount Hermon, very close to our border. And they are asking to be next to Israel. It won’t happen. And 60, 70, kilometres away, half a million Druze on the Druze mountain, Suwayda province are now being supplied by Israel. All their leaders came to visit Israel publicly. Israel has declared that anybody touching the Druze, it’s our business. And the government in Damascus, the new government in Damascus, does not protest too loudly.

The next step should be that we start a dialogue with the new regime in Damascus. Jolani took Syria with 25,000 people. No more. He cannot control it. They don’t have the manpower to do that, but we have to talk to them, and have a lot to talk to them about and agree on. For example, combining efforts to prevent Iranian and Hezbollah attempts to re-establish themselves underground in Syria. They are the ones behind the massacres on the coast. We need to talk about curbing Palestinian military armed factions who used to operate out of Syria. Getting an arrangement by which Druze, if not the Syrian state, are allowed to normalise relations with Israel as well as other communities in the south, non-Druze and Sunnis, who are interested and with whom we have cultivated relations since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war on March 2011 in Daraa, the southern most province. Israel can do a lot to solve Syria’s main economic problem, which is fuel, electricity, power.

The Qataris, whose hand is in every pie, have promised the new leader of Syria that they will provide gas to the country because they don’t really have electricity. What is provided is Israeli gas from our East Med fields, provided to Jordan. Because we provide Jordan, we provide Egypt. Why should it be a donation of the of the Qataris? It can be our contribution. And we will find a solution for the funding. It’s because the gas goes from the East Med fields through Israel to Jordan to Amman and lights up everything there. We can send more through the pipeline for Syria and, with a minor extension, to Lebanon, which has two hours of electricity a day. So, there are many issues on which we can talk, whether we accept that Mr Sharaa is no longer a jihadist or not, talks in which we may be able to build a new relationship with Syria.

The last point I’ll make is about Iran. The Iranians have suffered a defeat. The Axis of Resistance was broken, not shattered. Broken. They have lost their proxies. They have, for at least 40 years, had a policy, a strategy, of what they call “forward defence”. They would defend Iran from Lebanon with Hezbollah from Syria with the Assad army, etc. That is gone, it no longer exists. On top of that, when they attacked Israel with missiles and were repelled, the response of the Israeli Air Force was to demolish, if I knew a stronger word I would use it, demolish Iran’s air defences.

Iran is now, at this point that we are talking, deprived of air defences, and the Russians are not rushing to help. There is a huge debate going on in Iran, much of it behind closed doors, but some of it in the very lively Farsi media, which within confines, is a pleasure to read. In the Iranian parliament, the debates within the confines are very interesting. And they just impeached two ministers. The debate going on in Iran is the following: Are we going to stick to the strategy that has failed and send a lot of good money that we don’t have – they are basically bankrupt –after that bad money we have lost on Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, etc. Or are we going to seek a different course of action? Probably a nuclear deal with the United States and the European E3. Germany, UK, France. Accepting restrictions stronger than the 2015 JCPOA under nuclear activity.

It’s a huge debate, mostly behind closed doors. And it’s undecided. We don’t see them putting a major effort into resurrecting Hezbollah or Hamas or Islamic Jihad, or, you know, Syrian pro-Assad forces in Syria a little, yes, but they will have to make a decision. Where are they going? Where are they heading? And with a president like Trump, whatever anybody thinks about him, they don’t know, whether at one point there will be a green light to Israel to attack, which the Israeli Air Force has proven they can. Or even the Americans, see what they do with the Houthis in Yemen now. They moved from what, under Biden, was called active defence, to an offensive mode. This is the big question mark hanging now over the region. What will be the decision of the Iranians?

Israel is undergoing trauma – it’s the war, it’s the hostages, it’s the terrible massacres and mutilation, etc, of October 7, and the intelligence fiasco. In Israel, we have a major battle. It’s as if the government of Israel, under Mr. Netanyahu, stands against the State of Israel. That’s what it is to many of us, a majority of us. He has turned his party, the Likud, which used to be historically, a liberal right-wing, decent party under Prime Minister like Begin, who made peace with Egypt, into a fan club for himself and his family.

Netanyahu is emptying the civil service of good professionals, appointing loads of what we call votes contractors, who can get people elected in the Likud primaries before elections. They are getting appointed to really important companies, like defence companies, those who produce the Iron Dome and the Arrow and now the laser dome. Many countries are queuing up. He’s sacking the head of the Security Service. He’s sacking the attorney general. In Israel, it’s different. It’s not like Australia where Dreyfus is the Minister of Justice and Attorney General. No, in Israel, it’s separate. The Attorney General is the independent guardian of the law. Her role is to tell the government what is legal and what not. It will all end up at the Supreme Court.

But Bibi’s people, and he himself, are already saying they will not respect the ruling of the Supreme Court. His justice minister is saying he doesn’t recognise the new head of the Supreme Court because it was not his choice. So, huge opportunities are opening up, huge strategic opportunities while we are immersed, not just with the hostages but with this struggle to maintain Israel as it was and prevent what I call the Orbanisation of Israel – a system like Victor Orban has initiated in Hungary. This is why hundreds of thousands of people are taking to the streets, and it can turn into a very, very ugly confrontation between the Bibi fans and all the others.

I’ll conclude by saying that it would be very helpful if the international community could get the Palestinian Authority to get their act together. What the Americans call a revitalised Palestinian Authority. Right it’s corrupt, dysfunctional and inactive. They tried to impose law and order in a small refugee camp in the northern West Bank. Their two best battalions couldn’t do it. The Israeli army had to go in because there were armed bands there, funded by the Iranians, with weapons smuggled from Jordan. But if a Palestinian address can be created within a reasonable period, that would help get all these other processes I was referring to into motion.