It is Israel, not Gaza that needs stabilization |
By Sardar Khan Niazi
For months, Western leaders have framed the war in Gaza around a singular objective: stabilizing the enclave. Conferences are held, day-after plans debated, and donor countries asked to pledge billions for reconstruction. Gaza is treated as the perennial crisis needing external management — a place whose future must be engineered from the outside, preferably through security arrangements palatable to Israel. Yet this framing ignores an increasingly obvious truth: it is Israel, not Gaza that is in urgent need of stabilization. It is a state losing its internal compass. Israel today is governed by the most far-right coalition in its history — a bloc that, even within Israeli society, is viewed as an existential threat to democratic norms. Senior ministers openly advocate permanent occupation of Gaza, mass population transfers, and the rejection of any Palestinian political horizon. The cabinet is paralyzed by ideological divisions, while the prime minister, politically weakened and facing corruption trials, survives by appeasing extremist partners. This is not the posture of a stable state. It is the behavior of one drifting into ideological militancy, unmoored from accountability. For decades, Israel’s claim to exceptional security competence formed a key pillar of its international legitimacy. A security doctrine that had imploded later this doctrine collapsed on October 7. The country has since oscillated between maximalist war aims and the absence of any credible post-war plan. The leadership insists on total victory in Gaza even as military officials concede that such an outcome is unattainable. The resulting cycle — overwhelming force, followed by renewed insurgency, followed by more force — demonstrates not strategic clarity but strategic exhaustion. It is a diplomatic Isolation, not triumph. Israel’s standing abroad is equally shaky. Traditional allies have issued unprecedented criticisms of its conduct in Gaza; human rights organizations have accused it of violations that carry serious legal implications. Tel Aviv’s........