‘The Era of Peace Processes Is Over. Now Israel Must Win’

LIMES: What would a definitive victory for Israel consist of in this war?

ROMAN: It depends on which war we mean, whether the one with Iran, the one in Judea and Samaria and in Gaza, the one in Lebanon, the conflict in Syria or the emerging asymmetrical and non-kinetic confrontation with Turkey. Because from my point of view, since October 7 Israel has not fought a single war. Moreover: I don’t even think that the fronts are interconnected. But let’s proceed in order.

First of all, it must be emphasized that, even today, Israel is responding to the attacks of October 7. And this is not just a tactical fact. The strategic importance of this war is that Israel has recovered an operational principle that since 1993, that is, from the Oslo agreements, had been lost, that is, that wars end with a victory, not with a peace process. The result of this victory should be the Pax Israeliana, because conflicts – as Sunzi and von Clausewitz teach – only end when one party recognizes defeat.

Managing wars, as happened between Oslo and 2023, only produces others. To give an example closer to you: Rome did not negotiate the end of the Punic Wars, it closed them. Translated into operational terms: Israel must force its enemies to accept defeat, it must dismantle the political and military infrastructure used to war on it and it must do it according to its own time. Not according to a roadmap dictated by the United States, its opponents or international mediators.

The end result must be a regional order organized around Israeli military supremacy, the political integration of the Abraham agreements and the permanent containment of the revolutionary powers. It is no coincidence that the book I am writing on these topics will be called The Doctrine of Carthage. The point is that during the Oslo era Israel managed the region. It is now a matter of ordering it through a real Israeli Pax. October 7 marked the breaking of an illusion, as demonstrated by the war with Iran.

LIMES: In short, to stem the revolutionary states, Israel must behave like a revolutionary state and remake the region.

ROMAN: In a sense yes, but I would call Israel a counterrevolutionary state. If we look at the actors who remained aligned with the order born after World War II, democracy really worked only for one of them: Israel.

As for the revolutionary movements linked to the various waves of political Islam, Ḥamās had its democratic opportunity in 2006 after the failure of the 2005 disengagement, Egypt in 2011 with the election of the Muslim Brotherhood, also Ennahda (Ḥarakat al-Nahḍa, Rebirth Movement) in Tunisia had its own chance in 2011 and the outcome was the control of a North African country by a movement close to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In cases where the change of regime was promoted from the outside without it being born from the people – I think of Iraq and Libya – we saw the disaster of the Provisional Authority of the coalition led by Paul Bremer in Iraq and the debaathification process. While in Libya the change of regime obtained through the air force has produced the current fracture between ‘Abd al-Ḥamād Muḥammad Dubayba and Ḭalīfa Ḥaftar. Israel has had to respond several times to revolutionary movements, whether it was Nasser, al-Asad, the Ba’ṯ party or the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

For Israel, an acceptable regional order should be without a great Shiite power, that is, an actor like Iran. And then we must prevent the rise of a revolutionary Islamist Turkey. Under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in the last 23 years we have actually witnessed the end of the Kemalist state.

Now we see the Turkish expansionist project unfold: 3 thousand soldiers in Somalia, the exclusive economic zone with Dubai’s Libya, the presence in Cyprus since 1974. And if you want to fully understand the consequences of all this, just ask yourself why the Kurds did not enter Northern Iran on February 28, beyond the fear of the pasdaran. The reason is that a trusted man telegraphed Secretary of State Marco Rubio, saying that if the Kurds had attacked, Turkey would also have invaded.

Israel must therefore manage this regional order and new emerging actors. That’s why there is a four-kilometer demilitarized zone in Lebanon. This is why the Jewish state supplies three Syrian provinces with a Drusian majority. And that is why the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan remain significant, because they create the security space that Israel needs. Jerusalem must therefore manage all this. So far he has done so within an American setting, especially after the end of the Cold War. Now he has to do it on his own terms.

LIMES: Does this also mean having to define, once and for all, the borders of Israel? And what should they be?

ROMAN: In the end, the definitive boundaries will have to be decided between Palestinians and Israelis. Israel cannot establish them unilaterally. If we really want to address the issue of boundaries by distinguishing the different actors, Ḥamās is the first knot. It was weakened and put under pressure, but it was not dismantled.

The question of what will happen in Gaza cannot be reduced to the question of who will govern a territory so far administered by the Palestinian armed movement. The real question is what will take the place of Ḥamās as a political reality in the Strip.

The point, however, is that today Israel has the opportunity to destroy Ḥamās as a political and military entity, since it no longer has hostages in its hands. But the Israelis have nothing to gain from the direct management of the territory of Gaza, in which there should not be a single Jewish resident.

I would rather like a model similar to the Emirati one. Creating a new state of Gaza in a governable Arab territory, which would be a rather different reality and disconnected from the West Bank, both demographically and in terms of tribal and family ties. However, if Ḥamās remained standing, the Strip would continue to pose an immediate threat to Israeli national security.

The same reasoning can be extended, at least in part, to the West Bank as well. It is not in Jerusalem’s interest to have other Palestinians living in its sovereign territory.

For twenty years, at least since the Annapolis conference of 2007–2008 with Ehud Olmert and Abu Mazen, there has been an acceptable model, which consists of a Palestinian territory built around the main urban centers of the West Bank: Ṭūlkarm, Rāmallāh, Abū Dīs, Qalqīlya, Nābulus, Gerico and the southern area of the Dead Sea. It would not make sense for Israel to try to expand the settlements in those areas.

However, there are de facto realities. Over half a million Israelis live east of the Green Line, in areas that should become part of the future Jewish state. But who are you negotiating with? With whom can you close a deal? The idea of the two-state solution has been killed by forty years of Palestinian waste.

Israeli sovereignty over Area C is now a reality. The fact that that idea is dead does not mean, however, that there cannot be two states tomorrow. The territorial framework to be imagined for the future is therefore a Palestinian state limited to Palestinian urban centers.

LIMES: Israel should keep the settlers in check, or is it better to support them?

ROMAN: Israel has nothing to gain from having young Jews who live on hills adjacent to Palestinian agricultural fields and set them on fire with the purpose of hurting the people who live there. What is happening in the West Bank is not only aberrant, but also hinders the economic and civil integration of the Palestinian populations.

Israel should be as harsh on the actions of the settlers as it is in protecting Israelis from Islamist terrorism. However, the problem with Jerusalem is that Palestinian society has structured itself politically on the denial of the existence of Israel. Creating a state for the Palestinians would not solve this problem, it would militarize it.

In the West Bank, a clearer separation between Israeli and Arab areas is needed. Living side by side, in friction zones, is not convenient for anyone and fuels the clash. But separating does not mean expelling. It means finding an arrangement that allows the two communities to remain themselves, without imposing population transfers.

I do not believe that ‘final victory’ is a euphemism for permanent employment. Indeed, if you look at the history of the war, in the last 3 thousand years human beings have tried to kill each other for political purposes. So the final victory is exactly what allows us to avoid endless occupation, which is what happens when wars are not concluded.

The Israeli occupation of Lebanon from 1982 to 2000 and that of Gaza from 1967 to 2005 were the product of inconclusive wars. A definitive victory allows for a stable political structure. Wars without success and cease-fires, on the other hand, prevent it.

LIMES: Is Israel entering a post-American phase of its existence?

ROMAN: I wouldn’t talk about a post-American Israel. I see it rather as an evolution of the relationship between the United States and the Jewish state.

Since the 1991 Gulf War, the Middle East has been managed with the idea of a Pax Americana. But let’s look at its results: recurring wars, the nuclearization of Iran, the collapse of state authority in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.

Now it should be replaced with an Israeli Pax. An order organized around Israeli military supremacy and the expansion of the Abraham agreements. The political integration between Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Israel and in the future other actors will lead to the pacification of the region.

At the same time, we need a permanent containment of Iranian and Turkish satellites and, in the future, active management of the Turkish problem, which will be the strategic issue of the next generation. All this also implies a renewed relationship with the European powers, based on shared interests rather than on schemes imposed by Brussels.

LIMES: It seems to me that for you Turkey is the real problem. What do you think of the Hexagon proposed by Netanyahu?

ROMAN: Yes, I believe that Turkey is the real threat, but I am not particularly aligned with Netanyahu’s positions. The point is that the prime minister continues to think about the rebalancing of the Middle Eastern order, especially in military terms, hitting kinetic threats, more than seeking a political change in the region.

Israel should invest more in supporting the Iranian opposition, inside and outside the country. It should move more assertively in Syria and give Lebanese President Joseph ‘Awn a concrete chance, also showing more flexibility towards the demands of Sunnis, Drusi and Lebanese Christians.

As for Turkey, only now is Netanyahu translating into operational terms the rhetoric used in the past against Erdoğan and, in perspective, against Hakan Fidan. The Israeli prime minister must make it clear that Erdoğan’s Turkey is no longer a reliable ally on the operational level of NATO, framing it for what it is: a neo-Ottoman revisionist power, which uses membership in the Atlantic Alliance as a shield, while carrying out an autonomous strategic agenda in the eastern Mediterranean, threatening Cyprus, Greece and, to some extent, also Italy.

A reading that will also convince the Arab countries, given that in the Levant the Turks threaten Lebanese sovereignty and occupy northern Syria. Damascus is now a satellite of Ankara. Turks are also present in the Caucasus and North Africa. Let’s not forget that Ḥamās and his political leadership live in Istanbul.

But the real question that Israel must ask itself concerns Turkey’s nuclear trajectory. Erdoğan publicly stated that no nation should be denied possession of atomic weapons. It should also be considered that, although the relationship between Turkey and Iran is competitive, the two countries converge in the same direction.

Both Middle Eastern powers oppose an Israeli-led order. However, with Tehran on its knees, it is Ankara that inherits the role of the main regional revisionist power. Netanyahu must make this reality public and not limit himself to evoking it in meetings with the US State Department or with Brussels.

LIMES: How should Israel move with the United States on the Turkish dossier?

ROMAN: The Jewish state must show the US that Turkey is damaging American interests in the region. There is no need to ask directly to take a stand against Ankara. It means using the 3+1 format initiated by Mike Pompeo, then expanded by Jake Sullivan and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has made his own, to highlight American interests in the Eastern Mediterranean with regard to energy, logistics, alliances and military presence. To which today is also added a religious dimension, linked to the new desire of Americans to protect Christian minorities.

LIMES: Isn’t there a risk that, at some point, Washington will choose to side with Ankara?

ROMAN: This is a long-term strategic game. Today the relationship between the United States and Turkey remains largely linked to the personal dynamic between Trump and Erdoğan. Israel must think about a ten-year horizon, already thinking about 2036.

Once the tycoon’s mandate is over, this special relationship will also end, because there is no real structural proximity between Ankara and the American political system. For example, during Joe Biden’s presidency, Turkey’s return to the F-35 program was considered a kind of political anathema. And, in perspective, Hakan Fidan is not courting any Democratic senator, nor is he trying to bring Turkish business delegations to American states to democratic leadership.

For Israel, therefore, the point is not to force Trump to choose which side to be on, but to make sure that the Turkish actions speak for themselves. However, Jerusalem must block any possible Turkish deployment in Gaza and build an anti-Ankara coalition that does not depend on Washington. A coalition that could include Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, India, Armenia, France and Italy.

Instead of focusing everything on the White House, Israel should work with Congress on structural dossiers and, above all, maintain operational autonomy until the Turkish nuclear issue imposes the issue. Meanwhile, the Jewish state has many other pressure tools to use, without coming to a direct clash with Washington.

LIMES: Do you agree with Israeli Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, when he says that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) risk giving in under the weight of too many open fronts?

ROMAN: I believe that the IDF risk what in Hebrew is called ayefut (dreass) and adishut, or the lowering of the guard caused by the lack of soldiers. One of the most serious risks facing Israel is that the exclusion of religious and ethnic minorities from military service will end up weakening the army.

National cohesion is needed, and to build it every component of the Israeli state must participate in the common effort. This means having more people enlist. It is an issue that concerns the ultra-Orthodox but also some sectors of the radical left, as well as the Israeli Arabs who do not want to carry out any form of national service.

If these categories do not want to join the army, they should at least do civil service. This is the meaning of Zamir’s words. The IDF need new staff and the current enlistment and recruitment system does not seem to me to be able to guarantee them.

(Translated by Michelangelo Genone)

Published originally on June 4, 2026 in The Solitude of Israel.