Discussions about Israel’s role in the Middle East still revolve around threats and responses. However, recent developments suggest that Israel is not only reacting to events, but is increasingly shaping the conditions in which they occur.
This includes both direct interventions affecting the security and cohesion of neighboring states – as seen in its policies over Syria and Iran — and cultivating regional relationships that sustain ongoing tension.
Understanding how these two dynamics interact is key to understanding the region’s current trajectory. They are distinct but interrelated. Together, they expand Israel’s space to maneuver and redefine its regional position.
What is emerging is a more assertive approach to regional order in the Middle East, combining the use of force, selective military interventions, security partnerships and managing the surrounding political conditions.
Weak, fragmented states
This approach is most visible in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and now Iran. Military operations increasingly extend beyond immediate tactical objectives, contributing to the erosion of governance capacity, infrastructure and territorial cohesion.
The objective is not only prevention, but the creation of political environments where state authority remains weak, fragmented and unable to consolidate.
This logic is not always related to imminent threats. It reflects a broader preference for environments in which adversaries – actual or potential – remain separate and limited.
These developments are taking place in a changing international environmentespecially Israel’s current relationship with the United States, which gives greater operational autonomy and lowers the political costs of unilateral action.
Regional fragmentation
A second part of this strategy works at the regional level by maintaining divisions and tensions. This is particularly evident in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Israel’s deepening partnerships with Greece AND Republic of Cyprus are taking place in an alliance: an integrated security framework based on shared technologies, intelligence cooperation, joint exercises and converging strategic interests.
Greece’s purchase of Israeli defense systems — in areas such as air defense, surveillance and drone warfare — makes it easier for their forces to work together and ties Israel more closely to the region’s security system.
This relationship does not only reflect common interests; it actively shapes the strategic environment. Israeli officials have more and more portrayed Turkey as a future challengersuggesting that it will become one great concern after the Iran war.
This means that Israeli cooperation with Greece and Cyprus encourages them to adopt a more assertive stance disputes with Turkey on maritime borders, energy exploration and aerospace.
From one perspective, this is standard defense cooperation between aligned partners. From Turkey’s perspective, however, it looks like one wider efforts by potentially hostile neighbors to surround it.
But these partnerships don’t need open conflict to work. Israel’s goal is not necessarily to fight Turkey, but to position itself in a region where tensions remain constant.
Examples from further afield
This regional approach supports the internal dynamics described above. Weakening states constrains adversaries internally, while regional divisions constrain them externally by preventing lasting alliances.
A similar pattern can be observed in the Horn of Africa. Israel’s recognition of Somaliland as an independent state introduces a new political entity in a strategically sensitive area near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
The waterway separates the Arabian Peninsula from Africa and leads to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.
The move coincides with Turkish influence in Somalia, where the Turks have built close ties and taken a major role in providing military and maritime security.
But Somaliland is a breakaway region, not an internationally recognized state. Israel’s recognition risks creating new tensions along the Somali coast, complicating the maritime space that Turkey is helping to secure.
As in the eastern Mediterranean, the goal is not direct confrontation, but insertion into a complex regional landscape that adds new forces to the mix, diversifies alignments, and complicates the consolidation of rival influence.
Israel’s new security doctrine?
Israel’s security doctrine has deep historical rootsincluding traditions that emphasize strengthstrategic autonomy and coercive ability on negotiated order.
Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, these ideas are further developed, radicalized and put into action.
This is making the international environment inherently unstable and constantly hostile. Peace is not a stable final state, but a temporary and reversible state. As a result, power – including the use of force – is treated not as a means to an end, but as the main and only guarantee of survival.
By weakening states and keeping the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean region divided, Israel is creating a situation where neither countries nor alliances can fully stabilize. With this approach, the Israeli advantage comes from managing or manipulating ongoing tensions – not resolving them.
Spyros A. Sofos is an assistant professor in global humanities, Simon Fraser University
This article was reprinted from Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read on original article.
