I was in Israel on Oct. 7 of last year. I am not Jewish nor Israeli, but I was there in a bomb shelter, night after night, and that mixed experience of fear and defiance has forced me to share in Israeli trauma and trajectory. The United States, Israel, and its Arab allies are stronger today.
But what’s next? Iran seeks to weaken us.
While in Israel, within 90 seconds of a warning siren going off, night or day, we were to run to our nearest shelter. This was war. Yet the true horror was the flow of news that Iran-sponsored Hamas was killing Israelis and Arabs, almost 1,300 dead, many raped and more injured, 251 peaceful people kidnapped.
Israeli army soldiers stand by as a yellow ribbon along with the number 365, signifying the number of days since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks carried out by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip, is projected along with pictures of the victims of the attacks along the old city walls of Jerusalem late on Oct. 6 of this year.
AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images
I was in Tel Aviv for the first-ever global summit of American, Arab, Palestinian, Turkish, Indonesian, and other government leaders, investors, and philanthropists who planned to build bridges, airports, roads, ports to connect the Middle East for greater economic prosperity led by an American think-tank. Hamas stopped the summit. Now, all flights to and from America were cancelled. But flights to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Turkey continued—and several above Saudi air space. This was the cause of Israel’s new strength: pro-American Arab and moderate Muslim allies standing with Israel, in words and deeds.
In his recent book On Leadership, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair writes that politics is part-philosophy, part-performance, and part-practicality. Three years prior to the Oct. 7 attack, a new philosophy of peace with Israel, the Abraham Accords, gave the Middle East a different moral compass. An American-led order where Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others trade and travel, pray and prosper.
That terrible day, the world felt changed. The victories of recent years fell away and Iran and its allies were ascendant. A year later, with the death of the president of Iran, the pager and walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon, the elimination of the top leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas, and Gaza open to new governance, the makings of a new Middle East are within our grasp.
But Iran will not quietly surrender. Last week, it launched 180 ballistic missiles against Israel and vowed to attack U.S. bases across the Middle East. We should expect Hezbollah sleeper cells in Europe and America to try and harm us in our homes. Make no mistake: Israel is the first line of defence for America and our Sunni Arab friends.
Prior to Oct. 7, Russia was consolidating its presence in Syria. China was brokering peace between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Iran was capturing tankers in international waters. China considers the Middle East as West Asia and fertile ground for a growing economic empire.
America has a once-in-a-century opportunity to fortify its allies and, by extension, strengthen American power in West Asia. There are three fronts for this: geo-religious, geo-political and geo-economic. Unlike China, America shares an Abrahamic faith tradition with Israel and its Muslim Arab neighbors. Religion is the oxygen of the Middle East. Many influential Muslims are open to greater normalization of relations with global Judaism and Israel.
For example, headquartered in Mecca, the Muslim World League and its leader, Dr Abdulkarim Al-Issa visited Auschwitz with several other Muslim leaders. Bravely, he met Jewish leaders in the West and hosted them in Saudi Arabia. Separately, the largest Muslim organization in the world, with 95 million members, the Nahdatul Ulama of Indonesia, only this month dispatched its leader, Pak Yahya Staquf, to meet with Jewish influencers in America. He went further and met with Israeli families of hostages taken by Hamas. The decline of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and before them al-Qaeda and ISIS, now allow for a new beginning of U.S. and Israeli relations with Arabs and all Muslims that takes 1.8 billion people and 52 nations away from any Chinese sphere of influence.
Geo-economically, by the year 2030, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Gulf Arab neighbors will be sitting on $7 trillion dollars of sovereign wealth. Gaza will need rebuilding and with American leadership and defense treaties, on or offshore, Gaza can become the next Dubai if moderate Muslim leadership can deliver a deradicalized Palestinian state and thereby bring in Saudi-Israeli economic and political normalization.
This is now within the realm of possibility. The president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, was in America this month to meet presidents Biden, Trump, Bush, and leaders from the business world to pioneer a different Middle East in which Arabs and Israel are part of a prosperous future.
Geopolitically, Chinese security guarantees to Saudi Arabia have not been worth the paper on which they were written. The moderate Arab nations of the Middle East are prepared to tilt towards America as they did during the Cold War, but we must show that their taking reputational risks are rewarded by our military and political defense of them against their (and our) enemies.
Several governments have taken a deeply anti-Israeli turn, demanding that the Abraham Accords be cancelled and ambassadors called back. Instead, courageously, the United Arab Emirates has expanded its embassy in Israel this year. This depth of diplomatic relations has allowed the UAE to lead the region and open field hospitals in Gaza, as well as to bring 3,000 Palestinians to Abu Dhabi for treatment, and deliver several tons of aid to Gaza. These are real results of peace with Israel and a model for other nations.
After Sinwar’s killing or capture, the war in Gaza will end. To prevent China, Russia, and Iran from exploiting Gaza and the Palestinian cause, we must deploy our full range of strengths on the religious, economic and political fronts. More Arab and Muslim allies will come forth for peace with Israel. We cannot lose the next stage of the battle for Western civilization. We owe this to the martyrs of Oct. 7.
Ed Husain is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
