Israel Is Overhauling Its Defense Ideology; Will Arab States Finally Support It?

Hussain Abdul-Hussain | Jan 14, 2025

Israel is perhaps the most muscular and influential power in the Middle East today. When Israel changes its defense ideology, as per the Nagel Committee Report released last week, the region must take notice.

Under the new doctrine, Israel will not wait for its enemies to build lethal capabilities but will preemptively deny them the pathway to becoming a threat. Islamist Iran and what is left of its proxies remain the top threat to the Jewish State. Turkey is on its watch list. Moderate Arab countries face similar threats from Iran and Turkey, and have an interest in making common cause with Israel.

“Following the October 7 disaster,” the report reads, Israel must move “from a ‘containment’ and defense concept to a ‘prevention’ and readiness concept, alongside building capabilities for immediate and sometimes even disproportionate response.”

Another key recommendation is for Israel to decrease its reliance on importing arms, and reenergize its defense industry — a capable sector that was scaled back to avoid producing weapons and ammunition deemed not commercially competitive on the global market.

With some European countries and Canada threatening bans on arms sales, and with America holding up some ammunition every now and then to apply pressure, Israel has concluded that — even if it doesn’t have an industrial base of scale — producing arms is an issue of utmost national interest, one connected to the state’s existence, not one that must make economic sense.

Media reports state that the Israeli government has already awarded contracts to local companies to produce heavy bombs in order to reduce reliance on the US.

Less reliance on foreign powers means that Arab governments, which once hoped to use their leverage with world capitals to extract concessions from Israel, will have less ability to influence the policy and behavior of the Jewish State.

But since the moderate Arab capitals have vast overlapping interests with Israel, whether in curbing Iranian troublemaking and restricting uninvited Turkish meddling — and since world capitals will not stir Israeli policy the way that some Arab governments might want to — the best option for these Arabs would be to directly coordinate regional policy with Israel.

It is imperative that moderate Arab states and leaders realize the gravity of October 7 and how it has been changing the region. The event ushered in the third phase in relations between the Arabs and Israel.

In the first phase, between 1948 and 1990, the Arabs believed that they could set their population and economic weight against that of puny Israel and its economy, in order to force the world to make a choice. Israel won that round. The second phase was when most Arabs realized that, in a US-led unipolar world, their best option was a two-state solution. Israel played along. Thirty-three years later, October 7 proclaimed the end of that phase.

Now, in the third phase, starting in 2023, with America believing that the Middle East is not as geo-strategically important as it used to be — and therefore shrinking its footprint in the region while pursuing band-aid crisis-management policies — and with Russia watching its effort in Syria go to naught, and with China becoming preoccupied with its stalling economy, the Middle East is on its own.

Israel, Iran, and Turkey emerge as the successors of the great powers.

From an Arab perspective, of the three regional powers, the least expansive and intrusive is Israel, followed by Turkey, which puts its economy ahead of imperial ambitions and therefore limits its regional adventures. To the Arab people and other Arab states, an always expansive and war-obsessed Islamist Iran is the biggest threat, almost an existential one to most of them.

Against such background, it goes without saying that, of the three regional powers, Israel is the best option for the Arab states. Perhaps waiting for the Palestinians to figure out what they want, or who speaks for them, undermines both Arab and Palestinian interests. Arab states should reach out to Israel right away.

If they don’t, they risk becoming regionally irrelevant, sitting back and watching three powers vie for dominance while they wait to see who will emerge as the next boss. Hedging, at this point, and reaping the rewards of taking the right side, might be much better than waiting for the new regional boss to emerge, and dictate their will.

During World War I, Arab leaders did bet on the winning horse — the Allies. They did not get exactly what they wanted, but their choice proved to be much better than the disaster of flirting with the Nazis that some Palestinians and Iraqis did in World War II.

In the unfolding Middle East race, Israel has demonstrated its prowess. Betting on it looks like the safest choice for the Arab governments that seek stability to grow their economies and secure their futures.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).