Amid the global security crisis in the Middle East, which effectively began on October 7, 2023, following the Iran and Hezbollah-supported Hamas attack on Israel, it’s often heard, at least at demonstrations chanting about “Palestine from the river to the sea,” that a “countdown” has started for the Jewish state, as after 2023 it loses support in the West, even among a large number of Americans. And if Israel lacks allies in the West, the matter of its liquidation will be a question of time.
However, the main falsehood in this statement is the time when the countdown began. In fact, it did not begin on October 7, 2023, but on May 14, 1948, when David Ben-Gurion announced the establishment of the State of Israel. This is because the war of the Arab countries against this new state began on that very day.
Since that time, Israel has lived within this logic—and thus in a security deficit. For a long time, there was an attractive illusion that if peace with the Arab states could be achieved, this would resolve the security deficit problem. Now the new illusion is that security can be obtained by defeating Hamas and destroying the regime in Iran.
But true security is achieved not just through inter-state agreements and force. It is achieved through the will of societies. Israel does not have a peace treaty with any democratic Arab entity. When Egyptians received the opportunity to participate in truly free elections following the collapse of the “eternal” military dictatorship, they voted for a candidate who cooperated with Iran and dreamed of Israel’s downfall, not peace with Israel. When Palestinians in the first free elections after agreements with Israel had the opportunity to form their own government, the majority voted for Hamas.
In this situation, Israel’s security can rely only on the non-guaranteed partnership with the USA because the enthusiasm of Trump can be replaced by the detachment of his successors, and on strength, as any diplomacy appears to be a temporary phenomenon. It is not surprising that the first democratic state in the Middle East increasingly resembles societies by the level of escalation and rejection. This is also the logic of the eternal countdown.
Of course, it would be much better to hope for a “new Middle East,” which Shimon Peres once dreamed of. But for this new Middle East, Israel’s right to exist must appear in the minds of its neighbors, not only on paper documents. In the minds of workers and soldiers, not just kings and military dictators. And the likelihood of this decreases with each new stage of military technology development, as there emerges a hope that in future confrontations, those who have a large demographic and territorial resource will survive. That is, finally, the categories hoped for back in May 1948 will have decisive significance.
The same is relevant for Ukraine. It may seem that the “countdown” for our country started on February 24, 2022—most Ukrainians still believe this. However, in reality, this countdown began on August 24, 1991, on the day of independence proclamation, as Moscow from day one did not perceive this decision as established. The question was only in timing and methods of absorption. At the same time, linking the very idea of liquidating the Ukrainian state with President Putin’s name would be a mistake. The 30th anniversary of the creation of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, agreed upon during President Yeltsin’s time, clearly illustrates the model of coexistence proposed by Moscow back then when war between Russia and Ukraine was considered fantastic.
Thus, both states, which have found themselves at the epicenter of the greatest conflicts since World War II, are doomed to live under the logic of the countdown for the coming decades. This at least needs to be realized. And with the realization of the inevitability of threats will come an awareness of the reformulation of ways to address them. Of course, the best guarantee of Israel’s future is a “new Middle East,” whose inhabitants agree with the possibility of Israel’s existence. And the best guarantee of Ukraine’s future is a democratic Russia that renounces imperial ambitions.
However, if neither option is visible in the near historical perspective and military technology capabilities are improving, we are left only with the logic of the countdown.
Only the possibility to restrain the beast and at the same time (which is equally difficult) not to become a beast oneself.
