When Hamas terrorists burst through the Gaza fence at 7:43 a.m. on Oct. 7, 2023, they turned the Middle East upside down. The vaunted Israeli military was unprepared and vulnerable as Hamas stormed through Israeli settlements and military bases, butchering people at will. The Israeli Superman seemed to have lost his cape.

“Where’s the IDF?” frightened Israelis asked as they waited for the Israel Defense Forces to arrive. One of Israel’s top security officials told me the following month that the nation was so traumatized that it couldn’t make good decisions about its security. But Israel had more time to work with, and a stronger national will, than it appeared in those first weeks.

A year later, the shape of the Middle East is indeed different, but not in the way that most observers would have predicted. The military power of Hamas is hobbled, and its remaining fighters hide in an underground lair that increasingly resembles a dungeon. Hezbollah, the most ferocious of Iran’s proxies, is reeling after the decapitation of its leadership. Iran has tried to retaliate, but Israeli defenses stop most of its missiles and drones.

This year has reminded us that warfare is about unspeakable violence. Etched in my memory is a video of a Hamas fighter joyously telephoning his mother in Gaza to boast how many Jews he had killed; I recall, too, a senior Israeli officer blandly insisting to me that the IDF was limiting civilian casualties, even as the world saw images of dead Palestinian children in Gaza, day after day. Israel restored deterrence but amid a field of tens of thousands of dead and several million displaced civilians.

Follow David Ignatius

The power equation in the Middle East has changed over the past year. That’s what the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have told the White House in recent days. Israel is up, Iran is down, and the moderate Arabs, no matter what they say in public, appear to be content. The Arab states have diplomatic ties to Iran, but during this........

© Washington Post