The New Middle East Is an All-Too-Familiar Nightmare
The attack on Israel has plunged the region into crisis, and there’s little hope of normalcy.
A Palestinian sits on the rubble of a destroyed home following a military strike at a refugee camp in the southern part of the Gaza Strip on Oct. 15.
Photographer: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
Rockets rain on Israel; Gaza is bombarded. Anger erupts on Middle Eastern streets, and there’s squirming in the Gulf Arab capitals.
The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel—which killed more than a thousand Israelis, with some 200 more snatched as hostages—has already upended the region. Israel has responded by pummeling the impoverished Gaza Strip, killing thousands of Palestinians, while Hezbollah has attacked from Lebanon. Meanwhile the promising diplomatic overtures between Israel and Saudi Arabia are as good as frozen. What was supposed to be a “new” Middle East—one that ended old enmities between Israel and the Arab world in the pursuit of stability—is now looking like something else that’s horribly familiar. And things may only get worse, perhaps much more so.