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The Window of Opportunity for Israeli Security May Be Closing
A mobile artillery unit fires towards Gaza near the border, in Israel, Sept. 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
For a moment, after two years of war, Israel stood atop the Middle East.
In early October, Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and hostage return in accordance with President Trump’s 20-point peace plan.
Recovering from the national gut-punch inflicted by Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, Israel smashed the Iranian-led “ring of resistance” around the Jewish State. There was a new regime in Syria, Hezbollah and Iran had been severely weakened, and the Houthis had also suffered setbacks. Optimists in Jerusalem and Washington hoped the Israelis and Saudis would resume a diplomatic reconciliation, extending Trump’s first-term Abraham Accords.
The war confirmed Israel as America’s “fantastic ally,” according to foreign policy analyst Walter Russell Mead. But, he noted, America also believed it needed to take a more active role in the country. Hence America’s new military monitoring center in Israel.
Unfortunately, what looked like an open window of opportunity for an Israeli-improved Middle East might be closing. Consider this:
Trump’s plan contained two important aims: Disarmament of Hamas, and a post-war Gaza free of the jihadists’ dominance.
However, less than a week after signing the ceasefire, Hamas insisted it would neither disarm nor abandon a leading political role. If so, only the IDF, not Trump’s envisioned international security force, could enforce the edict that Hamas be dismantled.
The US-written United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803, passed on November 18, was intended to advance Washington’s 20-point plan. Yet it contained a poisoned pill not only for Israel, but also its neighbors. The measure says that if demilitarization by non-state groups (Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, etc.) and reforms by the corrupt Palestinian Authority (PA) occur, “conditions may be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
The PA, however, incessantly violates its “peace process” commitments. It continues its “pay-for-slay” subsidies to terrorists and their families, incites murder against civilians, and its mosques, communications media, and schools incessantly spew hatred of Jews and their state. And a majority of Palestinians still support Hamas.
This means that any future state run by the PA or Hamas would still support violence against Jews — thus destabilizing Israel and the entire region.
The 2020 Abraham Accords reportedly proceeded with Saudi Arabia’s tacit blessing. One reason given for the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led slaughter was to derail movement toward mutual Jerusalem-Riyadh recognition. That recognition was ostensibly contingent on a pathway to Palestinian Arab statehood.
After Trump’s recent meeting with Saudi’s Crown Prince, improved US-Saudi ties are to include sales of America’s most advanced fighter plane, the F-35, to Riyadh, and investment in the United States of up to $1 trillion in funds from the Kingdom. Though Washington is committed legally to maintaining Israel’s military qualitative edge, supplying the stealth combat aircraft to Riyadh before the latter recognizes Israel causes concern.
Although Trump still appears to support Netanyahu and Israel, the same can’t be said of all Republicans. And majorities of Democratic senators have voted to withhold key weapons from Israel. Among Republicans, a neo-isolationist, antisemitic minority grows louder. Hence, Netanyahu’s call to expand Israel’s home-grown arms industries.
Internally, there are also matters to resolve.
The Israel Defense Forces, staffed by so many mobilized reservists, needs a break. The economy needs its citizen-soldiers back at work. And the country needs its draft-deferred ultra-Orthodox — nearly 20 percent of the Jewish population — to join both the military manpower pool and civilian workforce. Yet the issue remains domestically explosive.
And the political atmosphere needs to be cleared. Elections are due by next October. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, should not obstruct but rather enable a commission of inquiry into the failures that preceded the October 7 invasion.
With all of these challenges facing Israel, the country might not be as secure as it seems.
Eric Rozenman retired last year as communications consultant for the Washington, D.C.-based Jewish Policy Center. He is author, most recently, of The David Discovery, A Novel of the Near Future.
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UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage
A campus event featuring freed Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov drew the condemnation of UCLA’s student government on Tuesday. In an open letter, the UCLA Students Associated Council said that bringing Tov to speak to students “served to legitimize and normalize” atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.
Shem Tov, 23, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and held hostage in Gaza until his release in a prisoner exchange in February 2025. UCLA hosted him on April 14 for a Yom HaShoah event.
“While we affirm the humanity of all people impacted by violence, we reject the selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence,” the student government letter wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the UCLA administration and UCLA Hillel among others. “Israel is currently continuing to carry out what has been widely identified by human rights advocates as a genocide in Gaza, while also expanding its illegal military campaign into Lebanon.
“In this context, elevating a single narrative, absent of critical political and humanitarian framing, serves to legitimize and normalize these ongoing atrocities.”
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s director emeritus, called the statement “completely ridiculous.”
“You can’t present the narrative of your experience without it being called ‘one sided,’” Seidler-Feller said. “There has to be a counter-story to persecution. Is there a counter-story to killing people?”
UCLA Hillel executive director Daniel Gold dismissed the criticism in Tuesday’s letter as antisemitic.
“Hillel at UCLA and Students Supporting Israel UCLA would like to apologize…for absolutely nothing,” he wrote in a statement. “Members of UCLA student government have once again shown they are anti-dialogue, anti-learning, anti-truth, anti-student and antisemitic.”
The USAC did not respond to a request for comment.
As college campuses across the country became a hotspot for pro-Palestinian activism following the Oct. 7 attack, UCLA, with an activist history and a large Jewish population, stood out as a major flashpoint. Its student encampment was the site of a riot in April 2024 and eventually cleared by police in riot gear.
The USAC has sided with pro-Palestinian protesters throughout. In a Feb. 2025 letter titled “We Are All SJP,” the USAC, which is democratically elected by the roughly 30,000-member UCLA student body, condemned Chancellor Julio Frenk’s suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine. The letter referred to Israel only as “the Zionist state” or put the country’s name inside quotation marks.
The University of California has since been sued by the Department of Justice, which said that UCLA created a hostile work environment against Jewish and Israeli faculty in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
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Trump extends ceasefire with Iran, even after Iran balks at new round of negotiations
(JTA) — President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he would unilaterally extend the U.S.-Israeli ceasefire with Iran, even though Iran had not agreed to his conditions or even to return to the negotiating table.
Trump announced the decision on Truth Social just hours before the two-week-old deal was set to expire. Citing Iran’s “fractured” leadership, Trump wrote that he had been asked by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to “hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
Vice President JD Vance’s planned trip to Islamabad, where talks were set to take place, was postponed indefinitely after Iran failed to confirm its participation in negotiations.
Trump added that the United States would maintain its naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, despite Iran’s repeated calls for the restrictions to be lifted.
The announcement marked a sharp departure from the president’s statements earlier in the day, telling CNBC that, if a deal was not made before the deadline, “I expect to be bombing.”
In a statement Tuesday, Sharif thanked Trump for his “gracious acceptance” of Pakistan’s request to extend the ceasefire, adding that the country would “continue its earnest efforts for a negotiated settlement of the conflict.”
The announcement adds to uncertain about the war’s future, including for Israelis who lived through six weeks of Iranian bombing, and renews questions about Trump’s commitment to achieving his war goals, which have varied and included blunting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, achieving regime change, and destroying Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles. He said earlier this week that he was asking Iran to limit its nuclear program for 20 years, five years longer than was required by the deal struck by Barack Obama in 2015. Trump exited that deal in 2018.
Last week, Trump announced a different ceasefire, between Israel and Lebanon, on Truth Social, contradicting Israel’s claim that the Iran ceasefire would not apply to its fighting with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed proxy in Lebanon.
Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire extension came during the night in Israel, after Israelis began their celebration of Independence Day. It drew criticism from one of his staunchest pro-Israel supporters, the Zionist Organization of America, whose national president Morton Klein said in a statement that “interminable delay is the standard Islamic Iranian regime negotiating tactic” and that acceding to it represented a victory for Iran. The statement did not mention Trump.
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Alan Dershowitz quits Democratic Party, calling it ‘most anti-Israel party in U.S. history’
(JTA) — Alan Dershowitz, the prominent pro-Israel attorney whose clients have included Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, announced on Monday that he was leaving the Democratic party and registering as a Republican.
Describing himself as a “lifelong Democrat,” Dershowitz wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he had decided to “bite the bullet and register as a Republican,” citing Democratic support for an arms embargo on Israel last week and the Michigan Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
“There is no denying that the hard left, anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party has moved from the fringe to the mainstream,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that “Republicans have their own antisemitic fringe, but for now it remains a fringe.”
The announcement formalized a political evolution for Dershowitz, who defended Trump during his first impeachment and has increasingly broken with Democrats over Israel in recent years.
In 2021, Dershowitz nominated Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Avi Berkowitz, Trump’s top Middle Eastern envoy during his first administration, for the Nobel Peace Prize over their hand in shaping the Abraham Accords.
Dershowitz — who has recently faced scrutiny over his ties to Epstein, and previously denied allegations of sexual misconduct made by one of Epstein’s accusers — panned the Democratic Party as the “most anti-Israel party in U.S. history” in the op-ed.
“I believe that the Democratic Party’s hostility to Israel represents a deeper and more dangerous shift away from the center and toward a radical approach that is bad for America and the free world,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that he intended to “work hard to prevent the Democrats from gaining control of the House and Senate.”
Dershowitz’s comments are in line with Trump’s statements about Jews and the Democratic Party. He has repeatedly expressed amazement at how any Jews could vote for the Democrats considering his own record when it comes to Israel.
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