How Israel Failed to Achieve Sustainable Regional Strategic Gains
Israel has lost normalization prospects with Saudi Arabia, alienated post-war Syria, escalated tensions with Turkey, and failed to eliminate its main regional adversaries.
Palestine, PUREWILAYAH.COM - Two years after the outbreak of the Gaza war and its expansion into multiple regional arenas, Israel’s claim of having “changed the Middle East” in its favor is steadily unraveling.
Despite the unprecedented scale of Israeli military operations—from Gaza to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran—the overall outcome of the war points not to a lasting strategic transformation in the balance of power, but rather to localized military achievements accompanied by profound political and regional failure.
This is the conclusion of a study published by the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies on December 8, which argues that Israel’s attempt to turn the war into a gateway for a new form of regional dominance and expanded Arab normalization has backfired.
Instead, Israel has lost prospects for normalization with Saudi Arabia, alienated post-war Syria, entered a rapidly escalating confrontation path with Turkey, and failed to remove its principal adversaries from the regional power equation.
The Balance of Power on the Eve of the War
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first to popularize the notion of “changing the Middle East” following the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7, 2023, presenting the war as an opportunity to redraw the regional balance of power.
As his far-right government launched a war of annihilation against Gaza and expanded operations into Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran, Israel appeared to be pursuing a conflict that went beyond military retaliation toward a broader project of reshaping its strategic environment.
However, the expansion of the theater of operations proved insufficient to cement such a transformation. Wars, no matter how intense, are not measured solely by battlefield outcomes, but by their ability to generate sustainable political gains—something Israel has failed to achieve.
On the eve of October 7, 2023, the Arab-Islamic Mashreq was living under a fragile balance—less a balance of stability than one of managed contradictions. Four major regional powers shared influence: Israel, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Each possessed different instruments of power, and each operated under implicit ceilings designed to prevent descent into all-out confrontation.
Israel enjoyed qualitative military superiority and unconditional Western support, yet remained regionally isolated and burdened by a deep legitimacy crisis. Iran, meanwhile, expanded its influence through a network of non-state allies, capitalizing on Arab power vacuums, but remained constrained by sanctions and economic pressure.
Turkey, over the past two decades, developed a composite power model combining economic strength, military industry, and cultural influence, enabling it to expand politically and militarily without direct confrontation with major powers. Saudi Arabia, for its part, recalibrated its regional posture, favoring de-escalation, dialogue, and the avoidance of costly wars, while preserving its political and religious weight.
This was not a balance of peace, but one of mutual deterrence. The Gaza war shattered this equilibrium at once, opening a new test of each power’s resilience and capacity for repositioning.
Gaza: The Strategic Shock
The Palestinian resistance attack on October 7 delivered an unprecedented blow to Israel’s security doctrine, exposing the fragility of the deterrence system long touted by the Israeli state. The event was not merely a security failure, but a psychological and political earthquake that shook Israeli society and leadership, triggering an exceptionally violent response.
The most dangerous aspect of the shock was not the number of casualties or captives, but the exposure of institutional failure in confronting a coordinated attack carried out by a besieged force within a narrow geographic space.
This revelation deeply eroded Israeli public trust in military and political institutions, pushing the leadership—foremost Netanyahu—toward excessive violence aimed primarily at restoring shattered deterrence, even at the expense of international law and regional stability.
As a result, the war shifted from a military response to an existential project in Israeli discourse, with its objectives expanded beyond Gaza to encompass anyone perceived as part of a “threat axis.” Yet this overreaction, rather than restoring Israeli deterrence, dragged Israel into overlapping wars in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran—exposing the limits of military power when deployed without a clear political horizon, and deepening Israel’s political isolation.
Gaza became the war’s center of gravity and the clearest laboratory of Israel’s failure to translate military force into strategic victory. From the outset, Israel adopted a policy of comprehensive destruction, targeting infrastructure, civilian institutions, and the social base of the resistance in an attempt to break collective will.
Despite the unprecedented devastation that pushed Gaza back decades, Israel failed to achieve decisive victory.
According to the study, despite the heavy losses inflicted on Hamas, Israel did not succeed in eliminating it as a viable military or political force, nor did it establish full territorial control or end its capacity to reorganize. Most critically, displacement—whether explicit or implicit—failed, as Palestinians remained in Gaza despite the humanitarian catastrophe, continuing to obstruct any Israeli vision of final resolution.
Perhaps most damaging to Israel was the international impact of the war. Scenes of mass destruction and killing accelerated the erosion of Israel’s moral legitimacy, pushing its leaders—unprecedentedly—toward international legal accountability and reshaping Western public opinion in ways not easily reversed.
Lebanon and Yemen: Weakening Without Elimination
In Lebanon, the war produced results more complex than simple victory or defeat. While Israel succeeded in delivering painful blows to Hezbollah, assassinating senior figures and inflicting widespread destruction on its support base, it failed to dismantle the organization or break its social and political structure.
The study emphasizes that Lebanon’s sectarian balance makes any attempt to disarm Hezbollah by force a guaranteed recipe for civil war. Israel may have altered field realities south of the Litani River, but it gained no permanent strategic guarantees.
Hezbollah retained its constituency and reconstruction capacity, while the Lebanese state remained unable to impose full sovereignty—turning the conflict into a cycle of mutual attrition rather than resolution.
In Yemen, Israeli strikes failed to deter the Houthis, who emerged from the confrontation with enhanced symbolic and regional standing by exerting control over shipping routes in the Bab al-Mandab—earning additional legitimacy in Arab and Islamic public opinion.
Syria: An Open Front
The collapse of the Assad government presented Israel with a rare opportunity to stabilize its northern front at minimal cost. However, Israel pursued the opposite path, relying on raw force and distrust of any Arab political transformation.
Repeated incursions and airstrikes against the new Syrian military reconstituted Syria as a conflict front rather than a state seeking reconstruction. This approach forfeited a free strategic gain, pushed Damascus to redefine Israel as a direct threat, and opened the door to confrontation with Turkey, which views Syrian stability as a core national security interest.
Iran: Tactical Damage, Strategic Resilience
Confrontation with Iran marked the apex of Israel’s gamble—and exposed its limits. Israeli and U.S.-backed strikes damaged Iranian infrastructure but failed to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program or accumulated expertise.
The study notes that while the strikes revealed Iranian vulnerabilities, they accelerated Tehran’s reconstruction efforts and deepened its alignment with Russia and China. Strategically, Israel failed to neutralize the Iranian nuclear challenge, instead redefining the conflict as a prolonged, cyclical confrontation rather than a decisive one.
Saudi Arabia: Deferred Normalization
Before October 7, Saudi Arabia was the crown jewel of U.S.-Israeli normalization efforts. The Gaza war upended this trajectory. The bloodshed made normalization politically and morally untenable, while shifting regional dynamics reduced Saudi incentives altogether.
Riyadh reaffirmed its longstanding position: no normalization without a genuine path to a Palestinian state. After the war, this condition hardened into an explicit red line—irreconcilable with Netanyahu’s political project.
Turkey: From Tension to Rivalry
Turkey emerged as one of the most consequential variables. Ankara’s open political support for Palestinians, hosting of Hamas figures, and mass public mobilization against Israel pushed relations into a gray zone between rivalry and hostility.
Israel’s post-war actions in Syria further alarmed Turkey, transforming a theoretical confrontation into an actively planned security scenario. In effect, Israel added a major regional power to its list of adversaries—a clear strategic failure.
Reproducing the Region
The study concludes that Israel, despite its capacity for destruction, failed to convert military force into lasting political gains. It neither eliminated resistance forces nor expanded its circle of allies. Instead, it alienated Saudi Arabia, antagonized post-war Syria, and pushed Turkey and Iran toward recalibrated positions that constrain Israeli ambitions.
Rather than “changing the Middle East,” the war reproduced the region as a more hostile environment for Israel—less amenable to political integration and more resistant to Israeli dominance—leaving the Israeli state facing an unresolved strategic dilemma. (PW)