For Israel, it pays to be victorious

A core misconception about Israel's policy since Oct 7 is that the country has favoured military action at the expense of diplomacy.

- Bret Stephens

The truth is that it’s Israel’s decisive battlefield victories that have created diplomatic openings that have been out of reach for decades — and would have remained so if Israel hadn't won.

In Beirut on Monday, Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, said he was “unbelievably satisfied” by the response he got from President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon on US proposals to disarm Hezbollah, reportedly in exchange for critical financial aid after a six-year economic crisis.

Mr Aoun’s government is the first in the country’s history to make progress in disarming Hezbollah’s strongholds near the Israeli border — a basic condition for Israel to withdraw from five military outposts it still occupies in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah is not a group that will go quietly — not if it has any other option. But it's because Israel destroyed it as an effective fighting force last year that it's now possible for the Lebanese state to again possess the most basic form of sovereignty, a monopoly on the use of force within its borders.

And it's only because of Israel’s victory that there’s a realistic prospect of a peace agreement between Jerusalem and Beirut as part of an expanded Abraham Accords.