My colleague Nathan J. Brown described the Israeli strategy as follows: “A new approach to Israeli security has emerged, one based on domination without a settlement, degrading capabilities without allowing reconstruction, depriving people of their rights to land without offering any political horizon, and resorting to war not as a means of reaching a particular arrangement, but as the arrangement itself.”
This passage is taken from Michael Young’s lengthy article entitled “Israeli Security Is Built on Insecurity in the Middle East.” This description applies, to varying degrees, to what is taking place in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, and other arenas such as Sudan. This reading holds that the Zionist strategy seeks to neutralize the surrounding geographical environment, both near and far, in order to consolidate its presence in occupied Palestine. Such a policy is not inconsistent with the strategic interests of the U.S. administration, which seeks to preserve its regional and global influence and considers the security of the Zionist entity to be one of the pillars of that policy.
Anyone who examines the trajectory of the Zionist project in occupied Palestine objectively, free from emotion and bias, may conclude that the policies pursued in Palestine’s surrounding region amount to the subjugation by force of peoples who reject the logic of Zionist repression and the dispossession of land, history, and destiny.
If we fail to address these developments through a clear strategic vision, we may find ourselves facing pressures and dictates similar to those confronting the Lebanese government today. From this perspective, the Zionist project has no interest in our prosperity or stability. It views our strength as a threat to its sense of supremacy, for the doctrine of superiority is deeply rooted in the Zionist mindset. It deals with us from a position of overwhelming power, seeking neither dialogue, nor peace, nor recognition—only submission and surrender. This is, in this reading, one of the outcomes secured through the wave of normalization, while many more unpleasant surprises may still lie ahead.
