Last week, while on an official visit with the Judea and Samaria Council, the newly appointed chair of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, MK Boaz Bismuth (Likud), declared the importance of applying Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank as being “even more important” than expanding normalization between Israel and additional countries in the region.
However, in reality, the opposite is true. By taking the route of normalization, Israel will realize its long-awaited “total victory” in this war by defeating Iran and Hamas.
For the most part, the organized military structure of Hamas has been dismembered. Iran and its proxies have been significantly weakened, and the US is currently threatening to reimpose the debilitating “snapback” sanctions on Tehran, potentially collapsing its already struggling economy.
Victory through normalization
Instead, normalization will defeat the shared ideology and vision of Iran and Hamas concerning Israel – that it could be defeated through delegitimization, isolation, and collapse from within. Recognition of Israel in both the West and among Arab and Muslim countries will prevent any other rising regional power in the future from applying a similar strategy, even if in a different ideological name.
As a result, normalization will do more to buttress Israeli sovereignty in the long term than what Bismuth believes. Expanding the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia is expected to initiate a domino effect in which a number of Arab and Muslim countries will subsequently normalize relations with Israel as well.
There will hardly be a country left that does not recognize Israel, thereby solidifying the right of a Jewish state to exist in historic Palestine/the Land of Israel. As such, it essentially ends any official historic claims against Israel’s existence and isolates any strategy seeking Israel’s annihilation.
Moreover, the path of normalization is the historic realization of Zionism’s vision of reconstituting Jewish sovereignty in an Arab-majority Middle East.
Although the ideal for the Zionist movement in its early days was a greater Israel vision, its realistic outlook led especially by Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion, coupled with the urgency of quickly establishing the state at that time, led to the understanding that it was better to agree to partition and have a prosperous state in the land – even if not all of it – than risk losing everything by holding the intransigent position of having all of the land.
Historic junction
After October 7, many have said that Israel is in another “1948 moment” and a “second war of independence.” As in 1948, Israel is situated at a historic junction in which it is again under pressure to choose between a greater Israel and partition.
Partition with the reward of normalization will allow it to secure its sovereignty and Jewish statehood for the long term, while annexation will embolden delegitimization efforts against Israel globally, invite more instability and bloodshed, and will potentially rollback Israel’s integration into the region by threatening already existing monumental diplomatic achievements such as Israel’s peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan.
In order to achieve normalization, there is an Israeli concession that has to be made.
Since October 7, all of the regional stakeholders have insisted that an irreversible pathway to Palestinian statehood is needed in order to move forward with normalization. Many of these countries see this as the key to preventing the constant reiteration of large-scale escalations between Israelis and Palestinians that put them in uncomfortable positions in the future.
Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s special adviser and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer admitted in his interview with Dan Senor on his Call Me Back podcast that the Saudis are far keener today than before October 7 to see concrete steps implemented toward Palestinian statehood.
Yet the gain of realizing normalization is far greater than the potential loss. Bismuth and his ilk are doing a disservice to Israel and promoting a strategy that is, ironically, anti-Zionist in its nature in that it will only exacerbate Israel’s current security and diplomatic quagmire instead of strengthening Israel’s sovereignty and status as a Jewish and democratic state in the long term.
The path of normalization is worth it, and it will bring Israel the total victory and the end of the longest war in its history that the country is desperate for.
The writer is director of research and policy at the Economic Cooperation Foundation (ECF) and a PhD candidate in international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.