In February 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled what may be his most ambitious foreign policy doctrine yet.
Standing in front of his cabinet ahead of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel, Netanyahu announced a “hexagon of alliances”, a comprehensive network of nations united, in his words, against “radical axes”.
At its core is a triangular relationship between Israel, India and Greece, three nations with deep defense and technology ties and a shared wariness of regional instability.
The vision is magnificent in its scope. Israel would serve as the centerpiece of the framework, with India identified as the most important partner—a rising global power and a crucial strategic actor linking Asia to the Mediterranean region.
Alongside Israel and India, the initiative envisages the participation of Mediterranean states such as Greece and Cyprus, with moderate Arab states, several African powers and some unspecified Asian countries also participating.
Strategic logic
Netanyahu’s hexagon doctrine did not emerge in a vacuum. The alliance proposal emerged amid a new strategic alignment between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, often labeled the “Islamic NATO”, with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia having already signed a Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement in September 2025.
In the face of this emerging bloc, Netanyahu is trying to build a counter-architecture rooted in technological prowess, economic interdependence and shared democratic values.
Netanyahu defined the purpose of the alliance explicitly: to create “an axis of nations that see eye to eye on the reality, the challenges and the goals against the radical axes, both the radical Shiite axis, which we have hit very hard, and the emerging radical Sunni axis.”
This two-front framing is unusual. It positions Israel not simply as a nation defending itself, but as a potential organizing power for a new regional order.
The India-Israel leg of the hexagon has real substance behind it. India is Israel’s largest defense export customer, reflecting strong strategic confidence, and India’s technology ecosystem complements Israel’s innovation strengths, making joint partnerships strategically valuable.
For Modi, whose government has cultivated Israel as a security partner while maintaining older ties with Iran and the Arab world, the visit and its symbolism carried weight, although New Delhi has carefully avoided signing the hexagon as a formal alliance.
The Greece-Israel leg is similarly grounded in recent history. In December 2025, Israel hosted Greece and Cyprus for the latest round of meetings under their trilateral framework, established in 2016.
Although formally focused on energy and connectivity, the grouping has steadily expanded into security and defense cooperation, in part aimed at Turkey. Greece approved the purchase of 36 PULS missile artillery systems from Israel in 2025, worth about 760 million US dollars.
Complications
However, for all its ambitions, the hexagon faces serious structural obstacles.
India’s position is more delicate. Israel’s attempt to position India as a key pillar of the proposed alliance has New Delhi in a quandary.
As India’s West Asia policy gains a firmer footing by deepening military ties with Israel and Mediterranean partners, it risks pitting India against Iran, with which it has traditionally and historically had warm ties.
New Delhi also maintains expanding strategic ties with Saudi Arabia, one of the states that Netanyahu implicitly frames as part of a rival bloc. India’s famous strategic autonomy is not easily reconciled with membership in a clear anti-Axis coalition.
A formal NATO-style pact, analysts argue, is unlikely given diverging national interests and competing geopolitical calculations. While Greece has important defense ties with Israel, it has pursued a cautious rapprochement with Turkey.
Athens cannot afford to antagonize Ankara indefinitely, especially in the context of the NATO membership they both share.
Critics also challenge Netanyahu’s framing of the region as neatly divided between “radical” and “moderate” blocs. Rather than forming a unified “Sunni axis,” several Sunni-majority states have coordinated diplomatically in response to Israel’s regional actions, including joint statements condemning Israeli attacks in Syria and the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s binary framing, critics say, distorts a far more fluid and multipolar regional reality.
What does it reveal?
Whatever the ultimate fate of the hexagon, Netanyahu’s articulation of it is itself revealing. It signals that Israel, after years of military operations across the region, is seeking to reposition itself as a coalition builder rather than a lone actor.
It reflects a belief that the post-Gaza regional order will be defined by competing alliance systems and that Israel must be anchored within one before the architecture can be hardened against it.
Framing Netanyahu as an “axis against axis” project risks deepening regional polarization, giving Israel’s rivals greater incentive to coordinate.
But it also speaks to a real strategic insight: in a fragmented world order, bilateral ties alone may not be enough. Networks matter.
Whether the hexagon crystallizes into a stable alliance or remains an aspirational framework will depend less on Netanyahu’s vision than on the choices of his potential partners, above all India.
New Delhi’s studied ambiguity so far suggests that while the idea is attractive, India intends to shape any deal on its own terms, or not at all.
it ITEM was originally published in Leon Hadar’s Global Zeitgeist and is reprinted with kind permission. Become a subscriber here.
