André Chamy offers a comprehensive analysis of the wars in the Middle East. In his view, these conflicts are not a response to the October 7 operation, but rather to a revived “periphery doctrine.” They have run up against the “Axis of Resistance.” Ultimately, despite possessing vastly superior military might, they have suffered political defeat because they overestimated their own power.

The encirclement of Israel, the manufacturing of legitimacy, and the cost to the United States, 2023–2026

October 7, 2023, is commonly portrayed as the starting point of the ensuing regional sequence of events. This chronology is misleading. It mistakes a trigger for a root cause and obscures what was truly at stake: the long-planned breaking of an encirclement strategy - a stranglehold Israel had been acutely aware of for nearly two decades. Three years later, the encirclement system is supposedly dismantled, the political objective remains unachieved, and the power that enabled the operation has emerged measurably weakened.

I. A vice-like grip that was no metaphor

The term used in Tel Aviv to describe the 2006–2023 period is the “ring of fire”: Hezbollah to the north, “pro-Iranian militias” in Syria and Iraq, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to the southwest, and the Houthis to the south. The phrase might seem rhetorical. It is not, and there is a specific point where its impact can be measured.

The port of Eilat - Israel’s only outlet to the Red Sea - lost over 90% of its business starting in November 2023, when Ansar Allah began targeting shipping linked to Israel [1]. Its revenues plummeted from 212 million shekels in 2023 to 42 million in 2024. Port calls dropped from 134 to 64, and then to just 6 during the first five months of 2025. An emergency subsidy of 15 million shekels, granted in June 2025 in recognition of its status as a “national strategic asset,” proved insufficient: the municipality of Eilat froze the port’s accounts due to tax arrears, and the facility closed permanently in July 2025 [2].

A state that loses the use of its southern maritime gateway faces no mere symbolic threat. It faces an amputation. The port director himself had articulated the underlying strategic logic as early as 2024: in the event of a war in the north, with missiles striking Haifa and Ashdod, Eilat would become the sole lifeline for an otherwise besieged country. The ring thus functioned as a system: each segment compensated for the failure of the others.

A clarification is necessary here, as it shapes the rest of the analysis. The Bab el-Mandeb Strait was indeed closed to Israel-linked traffic, and this closure had consequences severe enough to effectively shut down a port. The Strait of Hormuz, by contrast, had long fallen into a different category: threatened on several occasions, yet never blocked. That changed on February 28, 2026. Since the outbreak of the conflict with Iran, traffic there has plummeted from 130–140 ships a day to an average of around fifteen - dropping to as few as six on weekends.

Lloyd’s List Intelligence recorded only 77 transits between February 28 and mid-March, the majority involving “shadow fleet” vessels operating outside standard insurance and tracking networks [3]. The conditional reopening secured in June lasted only a few days. What effectively closes the strait is not a physical blockade - US command maintained that navigation remained possible - but the withdrawal, as early as March 5, of war-risk insurance coverage. This is the exact mechanism that killed Eilat: two chokepoints, one single mechanism. The distinction between a threat and a fait accompli is what separates strategic analysis from mere projection; in this case, Hormuz simply shifted from the former to the latter.

Added to this was a vulnerability of a different nature, often underestimated in Western analyses. The peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994) bind Israel to two state apparatuses, not to two societies. Their validity hinges on the political survival of two regimes whose publics remain overwhelmingly hostile to normalization. Israel therefore lacks pacified borders to the south and east; It has administered borders, which guarantees a completely different level of robustness.

II. An anxiety that is foundational, not merely situational

Israel’s obsession with encirclement did not begin in 2006; it is intrinsic to the State itself. The periphery doctrine formulated under Ben-Gurion was designed precisely to circumvent immediate Arab hostility through a system of alliances with the region’s non-Arab periphery: Kemalist Turkey, Imperial Iran, Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia, and Kurdish and Maronite minorities [4]. It was a geopolitical response to a geographical problem: a tiny territory lacking strategic depth, surrounded by states declared to be enemies.

The 1979 revolution upended the central pivot of this arrangement. Iran shifted from the status of a peripheral ally to that of the architect of an encirclement coalition; over four decades, the “Axis of Resistance” doctrine methodically reconstructed the very scenario the periphery doctrine had sought to prevent. A distinctive feature of this reconstruction was that it was sub-state rather than state-based: it relied on armed actors embedded within weak or failed states, making it both less costly for Tehran and far more difficult to address through the conventional means of inter-state deterrence.

This point explains the failure of the Israeli doctrine of “mowing the grass” - periodic, limited military operations intended to degrade adversary capabilities without seeking a political resolution. Applied to Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021, and to Lebanon in 2006, it yielded a net negative result. Each cycle left the adversary somewhat more resilient, and Benjamin Netanyahu himself acknowledged in 2024 that he had abandoned the goal of eradicating Hamas due to a lack of domestic and international legitimacy for a full-scale ground invasion [5]. This admission is crucial: it identifies legitimacy - not military capability - as the limiting factor. Everything that follows stems from this.

III. The exit strategy: normalization as a workaround

Israel’s response to this vice-like grip was never solely military. It was, first and foremost, a project for regional reconfiguration - a project that is public, long-standing, and well-documented.

Its most explicit formulation dates back to the document A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, drafted in 1996 by a group of US neoconservative analysts for the then newly elected Benjamin Netanyahu [6]. The text advocated abandoning the Oslo framework, overthrowing the Iraqi Ba’athist regime, and weakening Syria and Iran as prerequisites for a favourable regional realignment. Ten years later, this was followed by Condoleezza Rice’s phrase regarding the “birth pangs of a new Middle East,” uttered at the height of the 2006 Lebanon War [7]. The concept of regional reconfiguration through force is, therefore, by no means a retrospective inference.

Its 2020s iteration replaced war with economics, without altering the objective. The Abraham Accords (2020) established a principle: normalization with Arab states could be decoupled from the Palestinian issue. The IMEC corridor, announced at the New Delhi G20 summit on September 9, 2023, provided the infrastructure for this: a trade route linking India, the Gulf, Jordan, Israel, and Europe, bypassing both the Suez Canal and Iranian influence.

On September 22, 2023 - fifteen days before the Hamas attack - Netanyahu took the podium at the 78th UN General Assembly and held up two maps [8]. He announced an imminent historic peace deal with Saudi Arabia, asserted that the Palestinians held no veto power over Israeli-Arab relations, and described a “corridor of prosperity” linking Asia to Europe via the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel. On the map of the “New Middle East” that he presents, the West Bank and Gaza appear within Israeli borders [9].

This speech is the central document for any serious analysis of the period. It establishes that the Israeli regional project had been formulated, embraced, and publicly articulated prior to October 7. It also establishes the implications of this project for the actors excluded from it: Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran were, quite literally, left out of the framework.

IV. The Paradox: The Policy That Strengthened the Adversary

There is an aspect of this story that no honest analysis can overlook - and which requires no conspiracy theories: Israel deliberately bolstered Hamas’s role in Gaza for domestic political reasons.

In March 2019, during a meeting of the Likud parliamentary group, Benjamin Netanyahu defended the transfer of Qatari funds to Gaza. He argued that anyone opposed to a Palestinian state should support these transfers, on the grounds that maintaining a separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza prevented the emergence of such a state [10]. The sums involved were substantial: over $1.3 billion in Qatari aid between 2012 and 2021, channelled with Israeli authorization [11]. Avigdor Lieberman, the former Defense Minister, claimed that Netanyahu had sent the head of the Mossad to Doha to request the continuation of these payments [12].

This policy produced three simultaneous effects.

-       It financially strengthened the organization that would go on to lead the October 7 attack.

-       It created an Israeli dependency on Doha - the only credible intermediary with Hamas - a dependency that proved structural during the hostage negotiations.

-       And it fostered, within the Israeli state apparatus itself, a zone of opacity that the so-called “Qatargate” affair brought to light starting in 2025: two aides to the Prime Minister, Yonatan Urich and Eli Feldstein, were arrested on March 31, 2025, on suspicion of having been paid to promote Qatari interests while employed by the Prime Minister’s office; Netanyahu was questioned that same day; and his attempt to dismiss Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar - who was overseeing the investigation - was halted by the Supreme Court [13].

This affair should be viewed for what it is, rather than for what one might wish it to prove. It does not necessarily demonstrate operational collusion in the preparation of the attack. It demonstrates something more mundane yet more serious: the vulnerability of a decision-making centre to a foreign power that was funding the adversary, and the use of executive powers to obstruct the investigation that revealed this.

There remains the question of blindness. More than a year before the attack, Israeli intelligence possessed an operational document attributed to Hamas that described, in minute detail, the scenario for a massive incursion - known as “Jericho Wall.” It was deemed too ambitious for the organization’s actual capabilities [14]. In early July 2023, an analyst from Unit 8200 submitted a written report detailing intensive Hamas training exercises that matched the document in every respect.

A colonel from the division responsible for the Gaza sector dismissed the warning, deeming the scenario entirely fanciful and insisting that they simply wait. She persisted—in emails reviewed by The New York Times - arguing that this was a full-scale war plan rather than a mere raid on a village, and pointing out that the southern front had already witnessed a scenario fifty years earlier that had seemed equally implausible.

This reference to 1973 was made three months before the actual events. Repeated warnings from female observers assigned to monitor the Gaza border fence - who reported training exercises consistent with this scenario - were dismissed by their superiors. This was what Israelis call the conceptzia - the doctrinal conviction that a Hamas driven by economic interests was a Hamas that had been effectively deterred.

For some, it was not a conspiracy. It was an error of judgment - and it was precisely because it was an error that it was able to happen. This explanation accounts for the actions of the security establishment. However, since September 2026, it has become clear that it does not necessarily account for the actions of the leadership at the very top.

On September 8, 2026, Haaretz published - based on an investigation by Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval - an account of a forty-five-minute phone call between Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) and Netanyahu in late September 2023, about ten days before the attack. During the call, the Emirati president warned Netanyahu that Sinwar was preparing a large-scale operation - one that would cause a bloodbath, destabilize the region, and jeopardize the Abraham Accords.

The chain of communication has been reconstructed: frustrated by the stalling - orchestrated by Netanyahu himself - of indirect negotiations regarding a truce and a prisoner exchange, Sinwar had conveyed word of a “zilzal,” or earthquake, to an intermediary; the intermediary alerted a Palestinian advisor to Bin Zayed, who in turn alerted his president. Netanyahu reportedly responded calmly, stating that Israel had the situation in Gaza under control and that any potential action would likely originate from the West Bank. He informed neither his Defense Minister nor the Chief of Staff, nor the heads of Shin Bet and Mossad - Herzi Halevi and Ronen Bar have confirmed they knew nothing about it. Around the same time, Egyptian Intelligence Chief Abbas Kamel was conveying a message to the same effect to the Prime Minister’s office [15].

This account is disputed, and it must be presented alongside the counter-arguments. The Prime Minister’s office calls it an outright lie and denies the conversation ever took place, while adding that any such information would have passed through intelligence channels - a self-contradictory denial. Netanyahu has threatened the daily newspaper and one of the authors with a defamation lawsuit; the Likud party has demanded a criminal investigation into the journalists. For its part, Abu Dhabi has dismissed the story! Finally, the report appeared just weeks before elections in which Netanyahu’s conduct on October 7 is the central issue, necessitating caution on both fronts: the timing provides a motive for publication, but also a motive for denial [16].

As it stands, this dossier does not establish what is frequently claimed about it. An ignored warning is not an executed plan, and it proves no more than the “Jericho Wall” document or the Nahal Oz alerts did that anyone actually intended for the attack to happen. It demonstrates that the failure was not merely institutional. The conceptzia (entrenched mindset) explains why an agency might have underestimated a document; it does not explain why a head of government, explicitly warned by a foreign head of state, would say nothing about it to his own agencies. This shift in the locus of fault - from the organization to the individual - is the dossier’s true contribution, and it foreshadows what Section IX will describe: the three-year-long obstinacy in blocking the establishment of a State Commission of Inquiry.

The future will likely reveal the truth about what happened and its origins.

V. Manufacturing Legitimacy

If legitimacy was the limiting factor, then what occurred in the weeks following October 7 amounts to the generation of a strategic resource. This process unfolded on two levels: domestically, the suspension of a political crisis that had threatened the government for nine months; and internationally, the alignment of Western capitals with Israel’s characterization of events and the ensuing response. Three documented observations shed light on the mechanisms involved, though they do not all point in the same direction.

The first concerns the casualty figures, and it contradicts a widely held claim. On November 10, 2023, Israel revised its own death toll downward - from 1,400 to approximately 1,200 - after identifying bodies initially counted among the victims as those of Hamas fighters [17]. An independent tally by Agence France-Presse in February 2024 put the death toll at 1,163 [18]. The figure was thus revised downward by the very state that would have had the greatest interest in inflating it, and the victims have been identified by name. The manipulation does not lie here; any analysis that dwells on this point wastes both time and credibility.

The second point concerns atrocities, and here the discrepancy is real. Certain allegations widely circulated in the early weeks were never substantiated - the claim that forty infants had been beheaded, which was relayed as far as the US presidency before being quietly dropped, is the clearest example. The New York Times investigation into the systematic nature of sexual violence faced documented challenges - including from within its own newsroom - regarding its methodology and choice of sources.

The report submitted in March 2024 by Pramila Patten, United Nations Special Representative, concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence was committed, without establishing that it was ordered or systematic [19]. The distinction is significant, and it emerged only after the initial claims had already made their political impact. A correction never carries the same weight as an initial assertion - a structural asymmetry of the media landscape - and one need not posit a conspiracy to observe that this dynamic benefited one side.

The third point is the most serious, and it took nine months to come to light. In July 2024, Haaretz published an investigation based on documents and testimonies from soldiers and officers establishing that the so-called “Hannibal Directive” - a protocol officially rescinded in 2016 that authorized the use of any means necessary to prevent a soldier’s capture, even at the risk of their life - had been implemented on October 7 by senior officers of the Gaza Division [20]. It was applied at the Erez border crossing, at the Re’im base (where the division’s headquarters were located), and at the Nahal Oz outpost.

The order issued by Southern Command was unambiguous: no vehicle was to return to Gaza - even though a source within that same command acknowledged that everyone knew such vehicles might be carrying abducted civilians or soldiers. At 9:33 p.m., a new order directed that the entire border zone be sealed off using tanks, with authorization to open fire without restriction on anyone approaching the area. Fourteen hostages were being held in Pessi Cohen’s home in Kibbutz Be’eri when the army attacked the position; thirteen of them were killed.

The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry confirmed the use of the directive in several locations and - limiting itself to cases it could verify - recorded the deaths of at most fourteen civilians [21]. This is the only figure provided by an investigative body, and it does not constitute a comprehensive tally. The total number of Israelis killed by Israeli fire that day is unknown, and will remain so. No systematic autopsies were performed.

The records underpinning the national count - those of the Israeli Social Security system, cross-referenced with data from the army, police, and Shin Bet - do not allow for a distinction between victims of Hamas and those killed by Israeli fire during the retaking of the communities, an operation involving the use of tank shells and rockets on inhabited areas [22].  Where the army did investigate, it encountered the same lack of evidence: regarding Pessi Cohen’s house, it estimates that most of the hostages were killed by their captors, while conceding that verification is impossible, as the bodies were burned and samples were not preserved.

It is this uncertainty that must be stated, not a specific figure. Another form of this inflation deserves mention, as it keeps resurfacing: the claim that Apache helicopters targeted participants at the Nova festival. This claim relies on an anonymous police source - yet the Israeli police subsequently clarified that their investigation focused solely on police activity and provided no information regarding damage caused by air operations! [23]

For the facts, as they stand, speak for themselves. An army killed hostages and civilians from its own side, and this information was made public neither by the army, nor by the government, nor by any commission of inquiry, but by a daily newspaper - nine months later. The issue is not one of arithmetic but of institutions: it is the same lack of accountability that would be seen, over the course of three years, in the refusal to establish a state commission of inquiry.

In any case, all these elements helped bolster the official narrative used to justify the atrocities committed since that fateful date of October 7.

Notes

[1] « Hurt by Houthi blockade, debt-ridden Eilat port seeks aid to help it stay afloat », Sharon Wrobel, The Times of Israel, July 17, 2025. «???”? ??? ????: “?????? ?-50 ?????? ???, ?????? ??????? ?????? ??? ?????”», ?? ???, Ynet, 21 juillet 2024.

[2] Chiffres de recettes, d’escales et de la saisie municipale repris de la couverture de presse israélienne de juillet 2025. La fermeture définitive intervient fin juillet 2025.

[3] Données Kpler reprises par Reuters, septembre 2026, pour la moyenne des transits ; Lloyd’s List Intelligence pour le décompte du mois de mars 2026. Sur la paralysie du détroit, le cessez-le-feu d’avril et la réouverture conditionnelle de juin, voir la note de situation du Centre d’études stratégiques de la Marine, juillet 2026. Le commandement central états-unien a contesté la qualification de fermeture, en relevant le maintien de passages isolés.

[4] Sur la doctrine périphérique et son renversement après 1979, voir Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, Trita Parsi, Yale University Press (2007).

[5] Entretien de Benjamin Netanyahou : «Exclusive: Netanyahu at War», Eric Cortellessa, Time Magazine, August 8, 2024.

[6] “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”, by Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, Voltaire Network, 1 July 1996.

[7] «Special Briefing on Travel to the Middle East and Europe», Condoleezza Rice, Department of State, July 21, 2006.

[8] «Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Address to the UN General Assembly», Prime Minister Office, September 26, 2023.

[9] «Israel-Saudi Arabia: Netanyahu promotes normalisation with new map erasing Palestine», Middle East Eye, September 22, 2023.

[10] «Netanyahu: Money to Hamas part of strategy to keep Palestinians divided», Lahav Harkov, The Jerusalem Post, March 12, 2019. Une formulation plus abrupte de ces propos circule largement, attribuée à une réunion du groupe Likoud de mars 2019 et rapportée par Haaretz ; sa chaîne de sourçage a été contestée, notamment quant à l’identité du témoin cité. La version rapportée par le Jerusalem Post à la date des faits est indépendante de cette controverse. Cette affaire a été largement discutée dans le livre de l’ancien ministre de la Justice, contre le vent. ???? ????, ??? ????, ?????? ?????, 2020.

[11] Estimation de 1,3 milliard de dollars pour la période 2012-2021, reprise de la presse israélienne et internationale. Les montants exacts n’ont jamais fait l’objet d’une communication officielle israélienne. Le financement du Hamas par Benyamin Netanyahou est le thème de [???? ????? ????????: ?????? ??????, ????? ?????? -?????????? ??????? ?? ?????>https://www.pardes.co.il/?id=showbook&catnum=978-965-541-471-4] (La route vers le 7 octobre : Benjamin Netanyahou, la fabrication du conflit sans fin et la dégradation morale d’Israël), de Adam Raz, éditions Pardès (2024).

[12] Déclaration d’Avigdor Lieberman rapportée par «Liberman: Netanyahu sent Mossad head, general to Qatar, ‘begged’ it to pay Hamas», The Times of Israel, February 22, 2020. Lieberman est un adversaire politique direct de Netanyahou ; ses déclarations doivent être pondérées en conséquence, mais elles n’ont pas été démenties sur les faits. Étudespolitiques

[13] Sur l’affaire dite du « Qatargate » : voir «“Qatargate” : Tout ce qu’il faut savoir sur l’affaire qui ébranle Netanyahu», Dany Moudallal, L’Orient-Le Jour, 2 avril 2025, et The Times of Israel, juillet 2026, pour l’état de la procédure.

[14] Le document « Mur de Jéricho » a été révélé par «Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago», Ronen Bergman & Adam Goldman, New York Times, November 30, 2023. Les courriels de l’analyste de l’unité 8200 et la réponse du colonel de la division de Gaza proviennent de la même enquête.

[15] «Revealed: Netanyahu Received an Explicit Warning Days Before Oct. 7. He Didn’t Brief Israel’s Security Chiefs», Shlomi Eldarand Ruth Yuval, Haaretz, September 8, 2026, rapporte le livre de Shlomi Eldar et Ruth Yuval, ?????? – 843 ???? ?? ????? (Enlevé : 843 jours d’abandon), le titre est parfois rendu par Kidnapped dans la presse anglophone. Les auteurs disent s’appuyer sur des entretiens avec plusieurs dizaines de sources, dont trois responsables étrangers de haut rang informés du contenu de l’entretien et un conseiller palestinien de Mohammed ben Zayed ayant eu une connaissance directe de celui-ci. Sollicité par le journal, le président émirati n’a pas répondu.

[16] Communiqué du cabinet du Premier ministre israélien, 8 septembre 2026. Sur les menaces de poursuites, la demande d’enquête pénale formulée par le Likoud et les réactions de l’opposition, voir la couverture du Times of Israel, d’Israel Hayom et du Guardian, 8-9 septembre 2026. Le scrutin israélien est fixé au 27 octobre 2026. Sur l’avertissement égyptien, antérieurement documenté, voir les déclarations d’Abbas Kamel et la couverture d’octobre 2023.

[17] Révision du bilan israélien annoncée le 10 novembre 2023 par le porte-parole du ministère des Affaires étrangères. «Israël revoit le bilan des morts du 7 octobre à la baisse», The Times of Israel, Novembre 11, 2023.

[18] «Israël: l’attaque du 7 octobre a fait 1163 morts, selon un nouveau bilan», AFP, 11 février 2024.

[19] «Mission report. Official visit of the Office of the SRSG-SVC to Israel and the occupied West Bank. 29 January – 14 February 2024 », Office of the special representative of the secretary general on sexual violence in conflicts (Rapport de mission de Pramila Patten, représentante spéciale du Secrétaire général des Nations unies chargée de la question des violences sexuelles en période de conflit). Sur la controverse relative à l’enquête «Israel Expresses Regret for ‘Unintended Harm’ to Civilians in Gaza Airstrike», Aaron Boxerman, Isabel Kershner & Thomas Fuller, New York Times, December 28, 2023, voir notamment les mises en cause de «“Between the Hammer and the Anvil”. The Story Behind the New York Times October 7 Exposé», Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim & Daniel Boguslaw, The Intercept, February 28, 2024.

[20] «IDF Ordered Hannibal Directive on October 7 to Prevent Hamas Taking Soldiers Captive», Yaniv Kubovich, Haaretz, July 7, 2024. L’armée israélienne a confirmé l’application de la procédure à Erez, Re’im et Nahal Oz ; une source de haut rang citée par le quotidien indique ne pas savoir de quel échelon provenaient les ordres.

[21] «Rapport de la Commission d’enquête internationale indépendante sur le Territoire palestinien occupé et Israël», 12 juin 2025.

[22] Décompte établi par l’AFP à partir des données de la Sécurité sociale israélienne (Bitouah Leoumi), de l’armée, de la police, du Shin Bet et des services du Premier ministre. L’agence précise que ces données ne permettent pas de distinguer les victimes du Hamas de celles des forces israéliennes. Sur la reconnaissance par l’armée d’un nombre « immense et complexe » d’incidents de tir fratricide, voir Ynet, avril 2024.

[23] «Israeli Security Establishment: Hamas Likely Didn’t Have Advance Knowledge of Nova Festival», Josh Breiner, Haaretz, November 18, 2023, citant une source policière anonyme. Mise au point ultérieure de la police israélienne, reprise notamment dans «Israeli girl’s death brings army’s ‘Hannibal Protocol’ back into focus», Dawn, November 27, 2023. Les 364 morts mentionnés dans le même article — chiffre porté à 378 par l’enquête interne de Tsahal présentée aux familles en avril 2025 — sont le total des victimes du site, toutes causes confondues.

(To be concluded…)

Courtesy Voltairenet; Translation Roger Lagassé

https://www.voltairenet.org/article224950.html