As we approach the one-year anniversary of the Gaza war, a ceasefire remains elusive. Not only does the conflict rage on and continue to claim a horrific toll on the lives of innocent Palestinians, but the spill-over effects of the war threaten to ignite an all-out regional confrontation. A box of matches has been spilled beneath the region’s many powder kegs. 

This is a grim editorial note, written against the backdrop of what seems to be a region-wide breakdown. Escalation continues unabated between Israel and Iranian-backed proxies across the region. An eruption of violence looms ever closer in the occupied West Bank. Perhaps most significantly for the region’s stability, Israel and Iran have crossed the threshold from their decades-long shadow war to direct armed confrontation in the form of reciprocal aerial attacks.

Of these numerous conflict fronts, the one between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah is the most explosive, with the latter continuing to launch regular drone and rocket attacks at military targets in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of Fuad Shukr in July. Israel is now threatening a wide-scale military confrontation to break the dynamic of tit-for-tat retaliation, pushing Hezbollah forces away from the Israel-Lebanon border and allowing the return of Israeli citizens displaced from the north since October 7. Should these ominous trends go unchecked, the situation could devolve into a third Israel-Lebanon war, following previous rounds of conflict in 1982 and 2006.

In parallel, Israeli warplanes continue to target Iranian-backed forces in Syria in order to prevent Iran from consolidating yet another military foothold in a neighbouring state, as part of Iran’s expanding “ring of fire” strategy against Israel. Iran, meanwhile, has said it would not immediately retaliate against Israel, who it blamed for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in late July.

As casualties mount in all of these conflict fronts, each side claims that they do not want an all-out war, which seems to have to deescelated tensions so far. Despite this rhetoric, however, this ongoing limited exchange of fire is an unwieldy and risky lose-lose venture.

This issue of the Cairo Review looks at how tensions have been steadily rising and new forces drawn into the conflict, such as Yemen’s Houthis and Iraqi militia groups—both backed by Iran—threatening to widen the Gaza War into a deadly regional settling of scores.

Sovereign states must comply with international law, a pillar of the global order which seems to have been bombed into irrelevance and dying a slow death in the Gaza rubble. Political scientist Abdalhadi Alijla examines how the erosion of the international rule-based order, regional de-democratization (encouraged by the West), increased regional and global radicalization, rising threat of conflict spill-over, and the strengthening of Iranian ideology in the region paint an alarming future for a crisis-prone region.

Middle East analyst Grace Wermenbol looks at why Israel’s attempts to wipe Hamas off the map have failed so far. In the wake of the killing of Haniyeh in Tehran, she writes that decapitation counter-terrorism strategies have rarely, if ever, succeeded. She explains how, despite significant losses, Hamas remains a formidable actor in Gaza.

Hamas’ chief backer, Iran, surfaces again and again in fiery rhetoric from American and Israeli leaders, but as journalist and media researcher Koroush Zibiari finds, the average Iranian is hoping to avoid a widened war. In fact, he writes, many Iranians believe there’s no logical justification for such an entanglement and they don’t wish to be the collateral damage of Tehran’s or Tel Aviv’s quests for regional supremacy.

This issue also comes on the heels of the 31st Anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords which took the first steps toward ultimately establishing Palestinian statehood. More than thirty years later, a Palestinian state is still out of reach. American University in Cairo Professor of Political Science Sean Lee explains that “even proponents of the two-state solution in the West do not envision a truly sovereign or secure Palestine; instead, these advocates promote a state subjected to Israeli security and political priorities”.

Cairo Review Co-Managing Editors,

Karim Haggag

Firas Al-Atraqchi