By Dr. Robert O. Freedman
It has been almost two months since the US-led cease-fire between Israel and Hamas came into effect. The ceasefire involved the exchange of Israeli hostages, living and dead, for incarcerated Palestinian prisoners, some with Israeli blood on their hands, and deceased Palestinians. It also involved a partial Israeli withdrawal in Gaza, the first stage of which left Israel in control of approximately 53% of Gazan territory, and the disarming of Hamas which has yet to occur. The war was the fifth and most serious conflict between Israel and Hamas, after earlier wars in 2008-2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021. It began with a cross-border attack by Hamas into Southern Israel which killed 1,189 Israelis and foreign workers, and wounded 7,500 . Hamas also abducted 251 men, women and children to use as hostages and carried out numerous rapes
of Israeli women, some of whom were murdered afterwards. Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and its replacement by an Islamic State from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.Hamas had three goals in attacking Israel on October 7th, 2023. The first was to short circuit a possible normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The second was to restore the Palestinian issue to international prominence from which had fallen as a result of the 2020 Abraham Accords, which established diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrein without any connection to the Palestinian issue. The third goal was to undermine the authority of the Palestinian Authority which administers most of the West Bank, albeit under Israeli security control.
Hamas may also have hoped that the other members of Iran’s so called “Axis of Resistance” to Israel and the United States—Hezbollah in Lebanon, the pro-Iranian Iraqi militias, the Yemeni Houthis, the pro-Iranian Syrian regime of Bashar Assad and Iran itself—would join in the fighting with the goal of destroying Israel once and for all. While Hamas succeeded in its first two objectives, preventing normalization of Saudi-Israeli relations (Saudi Arabia now states that there will be no normalization until Israel commits to a Palestinian State), and the return of the Palestinian issue to world attention, with even the United States, in its twenty-point peace plan, noting that “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.
However, the costs of the Hamas-initiated war were immense. Not only were tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in Israeli retaliatory air attacks and ground invasion, but there was also massive destruction caused to Gaza’s infrastructure, with an estimated 90% of Gaza’s housing damaged or destroyed. In addition, Iran itself, and much of its “Axis of Resistance” suffered massive blows that may well deter future action on their part against Israel, at least in the immediate future.
To be sure, Israel emerged from the war more isolated internationally than it had been in many years, with only the United States, its primary ally, standing steadfastly behind it (both under President Biden and President Trump), while Europe has been split on Israel, and the Global South, with the notable exception of India, backing Hamas, along with Russia and China.
The leaders of the Arab World were also split. While Qatar backed Hamas, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, who saw Hamas as their enemy, limited their comments to deploring the Israeli retaliatory attacks. South Africa, a leader of the Global South, even brought genocide charges against Israel to the International Court of Justice. Yet the South African action raised a number of questions. First, South Africa’s Ramaphosa government was under serious attack domestically for corruption, and with elections in South Africa looming, the South African government, which had long-standing ties to the Palestinians, may have seen the genocide issue as a useful ploy to divert attention from the corruption allegations. Second, for genocide to be proven, intent must be shown. The intent must be “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”In order to judge the genocide allegation, one must first analyze Hamas and Israeli behavior in the war and then compare what happened in the war to previous cases of genocide, especially the cases of the Armenians in World War One and the Jews in World War II. First, Hamas has its soldiers hiding among Palestinian civilians or in tunnels under houses, hospitals and mosques. Israel, under the right of self-defense, has a legitimate reason to root them out. If Palestinians were killed in the process—and Israel often warned Palestinians to move away from areas where Israel was planning to begin military operations—the moral onus for their deaths was on Hamas, not Israel. Second, in the case of the Armenian genocide in World War I, The Ottoman Turks forced a million Armenians to go on forced marches of hundreds of miles into the Syria desert without food or water, where they were regularly attacked by bandit groups. In World War II, the Nazis murdered six million Jews in extermination camps and slave labor factories. The war in Gaza has no resemblance to these cases of genocide, or to the genocide in Rwanda where Hutu militias murdered more than 500,000 Tutsis. It should also be remembered that during World War II, the US and UK bombarded German cities with the express purpose of killing German civilians so they could not participate in the German war effort. Israeli actions in Gaza can’t be compared to any of these cases, despite cries of genocide on some US college campuses and charges by the anti-Israeli UN Human Rights Council.
As far as Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” is concerned, there is no question but that it suffered a major blow. According to one estimate, the 24 operating Hamas battalions at the start of the war have been reduced to isolated bands of guerrilla fighters and its top leaders have been decimated. Similarly, the top leadership of Hezbollah was destroyed, and it was forced to agree to a ceasefire with Israel in November 2024 while Hamas was still fighting. Perhaps the biggest blow to Iran came in December 2024 when the pro-Iranian Syrian regime of Bashar Assad was ousted and replaced by the bitterly anti-Iranian regime of Ahmed al-Sharaa. Iran, too, suffered some serious blows. After being directly involved in combat with Israel with attacks in April and October 2024 which Iran initiated, it suffered major strikes by both Israel and the United States in June
2025 which seriously damaged Iran’s nuclear production facilities, although the full extent of the damage is not yet known. As far as the pro-Iranian Iraqi militias are concerned, their main goal is to get the US forces out of Iraq, and they basically stayed out of the Israel-Hamas war. Only the Yemeni Houthis kept up the fight against Israel, periodically firing missiles against the Jewish State and harassing maritime traffic around the Strait of Bab el-Mandab. However, the Houthis also suffered heavy blows, both from Israel and from the United States.It is clear that after two years of the Israel-Hamas war, a new Middle East may be emerging. The weakening of Iran has strengthened the positions of America’s Gulf allies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The ouster of the pro-Iranian regime of Bashar Assad opens up the possibility of Syria’s full reintegration into the Arab world while at the same time not only depriving Iran of its main Arab ally, but also cutting its supply line to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Yet there are problems on the horizon that might impact the future of the Middle East. First, in Gaza, while Israel has so far withdrawn from about half of Gaza, it appears that Hamas, which was supposed to disarm as part of the US peace agreement, has shown no intention of doing so and there is no outside force—other than Israel—with both the will and the capability of making Hamas disarm. Indeed, even outside states like Indonesia, which had initially promised a sizeable police force for Gaza, has stepped back from its pledge. Under these circumstances, two separate Gazas may emerge, one controlled by Israel, which would serve as a buffer against a future Hamas attack, and the remainder of Gaza controlled by Hamas. Given this situation, it is difficult to imagine any outside country, whether from Europe or the Arab World, investing to rebuild Gaza given the ever present danger of the resumption of a full-scale Israel-Hamas war. Indeed, there are already clashes between Israel and Hamas despite the ceasefire.
A second problem lies in Lebanon. While according to the Israeli-Lebanese ceasefire agreement, Hezbollah was to disarm south of the Litany River in the area close to Israel, and elsewhere in Lebanon as well, the new Lebanese government has, so far at least, not shown either the will or capability of forcing Hezbollah’s disarmament. Under the circumstances, it may only be a matter of time before Hezbollah rebuilds its position in Lebanon—Iran, despite its numerous domestic problems, including a major water shortage, is already trying to smuggle money to Hezbollah—and a new confrontation with Israel takes place.
The third problem lies in Syria. Al-Sharaa’s vision for his country is a highly centralized state, a vision which puts him in conflict with Syria’s most important minorities, the Kurds, the Druze and the Alawites who want to maximize their autonomy. Indeed, clashes have already taken place between government forces and both the Alawites and the Druze, while the Kurds are resisting integration into the Syrian army. Unless some sort of federal arrangement is worked out, Syria may be in conflict for a number of years to come, and to make things worse, Syria is also facing attacks from Israel, both to strengthen the Israeli buffer zone next to the Golan Heights and to help Syrian minorities such as the Druze.
Meanwhile, in Israel, elections must be held by October 2026, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption and is trying to get a presidential pardon, appears to want to keep his fractious coalition together as long as possible. One key issue is the question of required military service for ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) males who currently get exemptions to study in Jewish religious schools. As the Israel-Hamas war showed, their military service is badly needed to shore up the
Israeli army with tens of thousands of additional soldiers. Yet the leaders of the ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, who together control 18 seats in the Israeli parliament (Knesset) are adamant about having their young men study rather than serve in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and if they pull out of the coalition, Netanyahu’s government falls and new elections are immediately called. For this reason, Netanyahu is currently pushing a military exemption law for the ultra-Orthodox, an action which angers not only the Israeli political opposition, but also members of his own Likud party.A second challenge to Netanyahu comes from the far-right parties in his coalition, Jewish Power led by Itamar Ben Gvir and Religious Zionism led by Bezalel Smotrich who together control 14 parliamentary seats—enough to make Netanyahu’s government coalition fall were they to pull out. Frustrated by their inability to convince Netanyahu to annex Gaza—something vetoed by US President Donald Trump—they seem to have doubled down on their efforts to harass Palestinians living in the West Bank, for which Smotrich has legal responsibility according to the coalition agreement. Palestinians have been harassed during their olive harvests, and Israeli settlers have attacked Arab towns in what could only be called pogroms. All these actions increase support for Hamas in the West Bank, and this in turn induces crackdowns by the IDF. It appears that only a new Israeli Government, one formed after elections are called, can end the settler abuse. Whether
such a government can be formed before a major explosion takes place on the West Bank, remains to be seen.In sum, the two-year Israel-Hamas war did indeed change the Middle East, but lingering problems may well precipitate more changes in the future
Dr. Robert O. Freedman teaches political science at Johns Hopkins University.
December 5, 2025