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Israel has always been vulnerable, but never alone. Now, for the first time in its existence, it might be heading there. “Israel is in a sort of isolation,” admitted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month. He said the country needed to become a self-reliant “super Sparta”, running “an economy with autarkic characteristics”.
Since Hamas’s killing spree of October 7 2023, Israel has gone its own way, ignoring outside counsel. It has cut life expectancy in Gaza from 75 to just over 40, attacked five countries in a year and alienated some of its oldest allies. Even the American public’s long-term support looks shaky. Could an isolated Israel survive?
Israel’s current behaviour defies its own history. The secular Zionists who founded the state were desperate for allies. Guided by realpolitik, they mostly fought reactive wars. But Israel has become more religious while its allies secularised.
The growing bloc of religious Zionists entered politics and, more recently, the senior ranks of the military. Another group, the ultraorthodox Haredim, whose birth rates are the highest of any demographic in the developed world, already account for 14 per cent of Israelis. Haredim long shunned politics, with the men devoting themselves to studying the Torah, but they too are shifting right.
Many religious ultranationalists, in particular, hope to expel the Palestinians and fulfil God’s supposed plan by creating an expanded “Greater Israel”. Netanyahu encourages this belief. Speaking about the war in Gaza, he has invoked the Amalekites — the people that the Bible tells the Israelites to eliminate.
People who are guided by God don’t care much about what foreigners say. Nor do a broader group of Israelis who dismiss the outside world as irredeemably antisemitic. If the International Association of Genocide Scholars or Human Rights Watch conclude that Israel is committing genocide — well, they just hate Jews, don’t they?
The “no one likes us, we don’t care” logic informs Israeli attacks on Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen and Qatar. Israel’s military tech is the region’s best, says Max Rodenbeck of the International Crisis Group.
But now these states see Israel — and its air-launched ballistic missiles that can strike any nearby capital — as the biggest threat they face. After Israel struck Doha on September 9, trying to kill Hamas’s negotiators, about 50 Muslim countries held an emergency summit in Qatar. Saudi Arabia just signed a mutual-defence pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan. Netanyahu is jeopardising the groundbreaking “Abraham Accords” that he signed with four Arab states in 2020 and 2021. Under George W Bush, the US blundered around the Middle East wreaking havoc too, but it could shrug and go home, whereas Israel lives there.
Committing the most public genocide in history is more than a crime. It’s a strategic error. Historic allies like France, the UK and Canada are trying to take the mildest possible measures against Israel, says Daniel Levy of the US/Middle East Project, but they now feel obliged to recognise Palestine, while even Germany has restricted arms sales to Israel. A sports boycott could hurt — as it did a previous global pariah, apartheid South Africa.
Israel’s biggest risk is losing the US. Donald Trump is nobody’s loyal friend. Though he did protect Israel from Iranian counter-attacks in June with expensive American interceptor missiles, he only belatedly backed Israel’s strikes on Iran, and said he was “very unhappy” about the one on Qatar. If pressed, he might choose his rich Gulf friends over an unmanageable Netanyahu.
One day, Trump may leave behind a US that has never been colder towards Israel, its biggest recipient of foreign aid. The usual attitude shift of Americans during wars (think Vietnam and Iraq) has applied over Gaza: initial gung-ho bipartisan support dissipates amid the apparently endless slaughter of civilians. In a Gallup survey in March, just 46 per cent of Americans said they backed Israel, the lowest proportion since Gallup began tracking this measure 25 years ago.
Israel could end up friendless in an era of brutal wars, nuclear proliferation, faded memories of the Holocaust, cheap drone terrorism by groups like Yemen’s Houthis, but without any “international community” to broker peace deals. Apartheid South Africa eventually collapsed. Meanwhile, hatred of Israel is fuelling antisemitism against diaspora Jews. Israel could become the next Iran: guided by religion, poorer, sanctioned, threatened and alone.
Email Simon at [email protected]
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