Arab States as Targets: The Warning Over Israel’s Emerging Doctrine of Permanent War

Israel’s emerging security doctrine treats the weakness of neighbouring Arab states as a strategic advantage, war as a permanent instrument of government and peace as a temporary arrangement, according to an assessment by a former head of Israeli military intelligence.

The warning has prompted a searching question about the region’s future: what happens when a state comes to regard its neighbours’ stability as an obstacle to its own security?

Discussing the paper on Breaking Points on 15 October, Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute argued that the implications extend well beyond Israel. A Western alliance built around such a doctrine, he warned, would increasingly require Washington to support perpetual conflict rather than pursue regional stability.

The paper’s author, retired major general Tamir Hayman, headed Israel’s military intelligence directorate from 2018 to 2021 and now leads the Institute for National Security Studies. Published on 12 October, his assessment examines a security concept he believes has emerged in practice since the attacks of 7 October 2023.

Hayman is describing and questioning this development. His paper is not an official Israeli declaration, an announcement that diplomatic recognition has been withdrawn from Arab countries, or his own recommendation for how Israel should behave. Its significance lies in his argument that an unwritten doctrine can shape policy without ever being formally adopted or publicly debated.

“He is not coming out and saying this is the doctrine the Israelis should follow,” Parsi said, in a translation of the supplied Arabic interview transcript. “Rather, he argues that this has become the actual doctrine the Israelis are currently following.”

At its centre is a disturbing proposition about the countries surrounding Israel. In the worldview Hayman describes, most Arab states are regarded as loose assemblages of tribes and ethnic communities rather than coherent nations with a legitimate, enduring political existence. Their fragmentation consequently becomes something Israel might encourage.

The qualification matters: the argument concerns a strategic outlook towards most Arab states, not evidence of a formal Israeli proclamation declaring every Arab country illegitimate. But the outlook itself carries profound implications. If neighbouring countries are treated as disposable political constructions, destabilising them becomes easier to justify.

Parsi’s warning is that this turns regional disorder into a policy objective. A strong neighbour capable of deterring Israeli action becomes a problem; a weakened neighbour unable to resist becomes an advantage. Security is pursued through an imbalance that Israel expects to preserve indefinitely.

That is the potential pretext for intervention identified in the discussion: a state need not be attacking Israel for its growing strength to be considered unacceptable. Its capacity to become a future rival may be enough.

Such thinking does not create a legal entitlement to invade. The UN Charter requires states to refrain from threatening or using force against another state’s territorial integrity or political independence, while separately recognising the right of self-defence. A government’s dismissal of a neighbour’s national identity does not remove that framework.

The same logic runs through the paper’s treatment of warfare. One of the principles highlighted by Parsi is “War as a Foundational State”: conflict becomes an enduring condition of national security, while peace is valued chiefly for whatever temporary advantages it provides.

In the interview, Parsi drew a distinction between striking against an imminent danger and launching a preventive war to stop a possible danger developing. His concern was that the latter becomes a normal instrument of government, allowing military action against threats that may be distant or speculative.

The resulting cycle has no obvious endpoint. If victory requires preventing every potential adversary from acquiring meaningful deterrent power, each recovery, military development or shift in regional influence can provide a new rationale for attack.

“They are doubling down on what they are already doing,” Parsi said, arguing that Israel’s security establishment was struggling to imagine a future based on coexistence rather than overwhelming superiority.

The discussion also exposed a tension between this worldview and attempts to build partnerships with Gulf governments. Tactical cooperation with an Arab state can coexist with suspicion of its independent power. On this reading, an agreement is useful for as long as it serves immediate interests, without resolving the deeper question of whether both parties accept lasting limits on their own freedom of action.

For Washington, the most striking contradiction concerns America itself.

According to Parsi’s account of the paper, the emerging doctrine assumes that social and political changes will erode US support and that Israel should prepare for greater self-reliance. American influence is also viewed as a possible challenge to the state’s Jewish national character.

Parsi’s response was that the very relationship some Israeli strategists expect eventually to escape has helped sustain the behaviour now bringing that relationship into question. American protection, he argued, has reduced the pressure on Israel to confront the costs and limits of its policies.

The expectation of declining support might have encouraged a reassessment: how could Israel secure a durable place in the region without depending on an outside power to underwrite its dominance? Instead, he suggested, the response was to intensify the existing approach.

His argument is not that an eventual rupture with Washington is inevitable. It is that the prospect of losing American support is being interpreted through a framework that still prioritises military superiority over political accommodation.

Parsi argued that an actual change in US policy could force a different calculation. An end to the supply of weapons and defensive support used to sustain and expand military campaigns, he said, would oblige Israel to reckon with constraints it has been able to avoid.

That makes American backing an active policy choice, with consequences for how far the doctrine can be pursued.

The interview’s discussion of Iran illustrated the immediate danger Parsi sees. He warned that Donald Trump might seek a way out of an unsuccessful confrontation by escalating it, including attacks on critical infrastructure, seizures of islands or ground operations against nuclear facilities.

These were Parsi’s assessments of possible choices and political incentives, not confirmation that such operations had been ordered. His broader concern was that an American president seeking a decisive success could be drawn further into a conflict that Israeli leaders hoped would weaken a major regional rival.

“Trump is looking at it only from the perspective of how he can get out of this predicament by getting deeper into it,” he said.

The question of democracy was equally central to the discussion.

Parsi highlighted Hayman’s description of a hierarchy in which the state’s Jewish identity takes precedence over its democratic system. The concern is about the political consequences of that hierarchy: what happens when equal rights or democratic restraints conflict with a government’s preferred definition of national identity?

In the interview, Parsi contrasted this with an earlier argument associated with the Israeli centre-left: that continued occupation would eventually force Israel to choose between democracy and permanent domination over Palestinians.

What had once been presented as a warning, he argued, was increasingly being accepted as a direction of travel. Maintaining the state’s preferred national character could take priority even when that meant entrenching unequal political rights.

That claim strikes at one of the most familiar justifications for Western support: the assertion that the alliance rests on shared democratic values.

“Please do not come and say that the basis of this alliance is shared values and democracy with the United States,” Parsi said.

Hayman’s intervention also complicates the idea that Israel’s direction can be explained entirely through Benjamin Netanyahu.

Asked whether a change of political leadership would alter the underlying trajectory, Parsi expressed scepticism. He argued that parts of Washington wanted to attribute the crisis to one leader so that an earlier, more comfortable relationship could be restored.

In his account, this would allow American politicians to preserve established alliances and donor relationships without confronting deeper structures of occupation, military dominance and US support.

“Netanyahu will be the scapegoat,” he said. “It will not work, because ultimately we are dealing with a deep structural problem in Israel.”

This is Parsi’s political assessment, rather than proof that every Israeli government would pursue identical policies. Hayman’s publication itself shows that the direction of Israeli strategy is contested within its security establishment.

But the distinction between changing a leader and changing a doctrine remains crucial. A successor can modify tactics, rhetoric or diplomatic presentation while leaving the underlying assumptions intact.

The deepest warning in the discussion is therefore about the destination of security policy. If peace has no lasting value, neighbouring states are treated as obstacles and military dominance must constantly be renewed, there is little room for a settlement that all sides can expect to endure.

For Palestinians and others across the region, the danger is a future in which their insecurity becomes part of the mechanism through which Israel seeks its own security. For Washington, it is the possibility of remaining committed to a military partnership whose strategic destination it has never honestly debated.

Hayman’s paper invites that debate from inside Israel’s security establishment. Parsi’s challenge is directed at the governments supporting it: whether they will impose limits on a doctrine of permanent confrontation, or continue supplying the means to put it into practice.

Sources and translation note

1. Breaking Points, “Israel Declares ALL ARAB STATES ILLEGITIMATE: Pretext For INVASION”, 15 October 2026. Interview with Trita Parsi; programme details and Arabic transcript supplied by the reader.
2. Tamir Hayman, The “New” National Security Concept: Conceptualization and Questions for Discussion, Institute for National Security Studies, 12 October 2026.
3. Trita Parsi, “Israel’s New – and Terrifying – Security Doctrine”, 13 October 2026.
4. INSS author profile and publication listing for Tamir Hayman.
5. Opening and concluding passages of Hayman’s paper, reproduced by the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine, 13 October 2026.
6. United Nations Charter, Articles 2 and 51.