Israel’s emerging security doctrine exposes a troubling contradiction: it wants Arab states as diplomatic partners but appears increasingly unwilling to accept them as independent centres of regional power.
A New Doctrine of Regional Dominance
The distinction is important. INSS is an independent think tank, not a government agency, and Hayman explicitly describes his reconstruction of the emerging doctrine as subjective. Yet, he argues that its principles already guide Israeli security decisions. His analysis is therefore not an official declaration of policy, but an informed interpretation of the strategic assumptions increasingly shaping Israeli conduct.
Among the ten principles Hayman identifies, one stands out for its regional implications: the rejection of the independent existence of Arab states. According to his interpretation, the emerging doctrine regards many Arab countries as artificial political constructions, held together by fragile arrangements among competing ethnic and tribal communities. Their fragmentation is consequently not necessarily viewed as a danger. Rather, weakening their cohesion may serve Israeli security interests because fragmented neighbors are easier to manage than powerful, unified states.
This proposition represents something more ambitious than conventional military deterrence. Deterrence seeks to prevent adversaries from attacking. Military superiority seeks to ensure that adversaries cannot prevail. But a strategy that regards neighbouring states’ institutional weakness as advantageous moves beyond both: it makes the regional distribution of political power itself an object of security policy. It means, Israel will also take steps that keep Arab states perpetually in a state of fragmentation.
Hayman identifies other principles that reinforce this interpretation. Peace becomes an instrument rather than a strategic objective. Preventive warfare takes precedence over defensive restraint. Forward military deployments become permanent features of security planning. War itself risks becoming a normal condition rather than an exceptional interruption of peace.
These propositions should not be mistaken for a formally adopted Israeli blueprint. Nevertheless, they provide a framework for interpreting developments that might otherwise appear disconnected.
Consider Syria. Following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government in December 2024, Israeli forces entered the UN-patrolled buffer zone and subsequently established positions deeper inside Syrian territory. Israel also attacked Syrian military infrastructure. A September 2026 Reuters report documented UN concerns about increasingly entrenched Israeli operations. Israel defended its deployments as temporary measures against security threats and denied territorial ambitions.
These competing explanations matter. Israel’s actions can be understood as efforts to prevent immediate threats along an unstable frontier. But their cumulative effect also constrains Syria’s ability to reconstitute sovereign military authority. Security against a potentially hostile neighbour and preservation of that neighbor’s strategic weakness can become mutually reinforcing objectives. The broader question is whether Israel increasingly defines its security not simply through protection from external threats, but through its neighbors’ limited capacity to exercise power independently.
The Abraham Accords Paradox
This interpretation appears difficult to reconcile with the Abraham Accords, the diplomatic normalization agreements signed in September 2020 between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, followed by normalization arrangements involving Morocco and Sudan. The Abraham Accords Declaration presents an ambitious vision of regional cooperation, economic integration, mutual understanding and lasting peace. Its underlying promise is that diplomatic recognition and commercial interdependence can gradually replace confrontation with shared prosperity.
There have been tangible economic results. According to the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, bilateral merchandise trade with Israel reached approximately $3.21 billion in 2025. The two countries have expanded cooperation in technology, investment, tourism and logistics. Normalization is therefore not merely symbolic; it has generated material interests that both governments have reasons to preserve.
Yet economic integration does not necessarily produce political equality. States can trade extensively while maintaining profoundly unequal influence over regional security arrangements.
This is where Hayman’s analysis becomes particularly revealing. If peace is understood primarily as an instrument for advancing Israeli security, normalization need not imply acceptance of an autonomous Arab regional order. It can instead become a mechanism through which Israel consolidates its strategic position without relinquishing military superiority. The resulting distinction is between Arab prosperity and Arab strategic autonomy.
Israel may welcome economically successful Gulf partners, particularly when their investments, markets and diplomatic relationships strengthen regional cooperation. What remains more contentious is whether these partners can independently shape the region’s security architecture, including decisions concerning war, military intervention and relations with Israel’s adversaries.
This does not mean that Israel seeks to destabilize every Arab country fundamentally. Indeed, Israel has strong reasons to favour stability in neighbouring states whose governments maintain cooperative security relationships. But it does not want these states to become centres of resistance against Israel either. Therefore, its strategy comes down to controlled instability in the Arab states. Thus, Abraham Accords can consequently coexist with coercive policies, applied directly or indirectly. Diplomatic cooperation with the UAE does not preclude military operations in Syria or Lebanon. Nor does normalization necessarily require Israel to accept Palestinian statehood.
Indeed, Hayman’s eighth principle suggests that the emerging doctrine increasingly treats the Palestinian question as an enduring Israeli-Arab conflict rather than a national struggle susceptible to political settlement. In this conception, each of the Arab states is an Israeli target. The contradiction is therefore not simply between peace and war. It concerns two competing conceptions of regional order: one based on sovereign states negotiating their interests, and another organized around a dominant military power retaining exceptional freedom of action.
The Limits of Peace Without Sovereignty
The greatest weakness of a regional order built around permanent military superiority is that it can reproduce the insecurity it seeks to eliminate. States deprived of meaningful strategic autonomy do not necessarily become compliant. They may seek alternative security partners, develop asymmetric capabilities or resist arrangements they regard as externally imposed. For the Gulf monarchies, this raises an increasingly consequential question. Economic normalization may deliver substantial benefits, but can it provide meaningful security if the regional order remains dependent on Israel’s unilateral interpretation of threats?
The United States faces a related dilemma. Washington has promoted normalization as a foundation for regional stability. Yet a security doctrine that treats preventive warfare and indefinite military deployments as normal instruments of statecraft could undermine the diplomatic architecture Washington seeks to construct.
The real test of the Abraham Accords, therefore, will not be the volume of trade or the number of diplomatic missions established. It will be whether normalization can evolve into a regional arrangement in which sovereignty, territorial integrity and mutual restraint impose obligations on all participants, including Israel.
Without those constraints, the Middle East may become more economically interconnected while remaining politically unequal and militarily unstable. Israel might secure greater freedom to act, but freedom from regional constraints is not the same as lasting security.
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs
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