A new Middle East has arrived

After decades of death and destruction, we have reached a critical moment

The Middle East is a region defined by its paradoxes. While for decades our news headlines have been filled each day by death, destruction, and conflict, at the same time, very little has ever changed.  
The Arab Spring, hoped by many in the West to be the start of a new era of democracy and prosperity for the Arab World, evaporated into civil war, broken promises and fresh autocrats taking charge. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite the optimism of successive generations, remains fundamentally the same now as 75 years ago: a failure of leadership entrenches a tragic and unsustainable status quo.  
And yet, this time last year everything changed.  
On the morning of October 7, we were told news of unspeakable tragedy. In a pogrom reminiscent of the Jewish people’s worst chapters of history, nearly 1,200 civilians were brutally murdered, and over 250 men, women, and children so cruelly abducted.  
Hamas inflicted its savagery entirely indiscriminately. They slaughtered members of the Israeli peace camp, who had dedicated their life to healing divides between Israelis and Palestinians.  
I recently had the privilege of joining the United Jewish Israel Appeal’s mission to Israel and visited the scenes of these atrocities. We left just before a funeral was taking place, since bodies are being brought back to their final resting place. 
In the 12 months since that attack, it seems that every paradigm trumpeted by Western experts has been changed. Unspeakable damage and destruction in Gaza, as Hamas crawls deeper and deeper in its tunnel network. Some 300 drones and missiles launched by Iran directly at Israel, for the first time in history. And now, the totally unprecedented destruction of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran’s “axis of resistance”, once believed to be almost invincible, has been wounded, perhaps mortally.  
The destruction of these agents of evil will reverberate across not just the Middle East, but the entire world. Three decades ago, with Iranian direction, Hezbollah carried out the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history, killing 85 people in a Jewish community centre. The FBI has confirmed that Iran hacked Trump’s presidential campaign in advance of next month’s elections.  
Yet while this is happening, our leaders seem to be stuck in the status quo of a generation ago. Western calls for a two-state solution seem to be wrapped in a misguided messianism, as Yossi Klein-Halevi, a stalwart of the Israeli left, has argued. Much of our political class insists on reliving the Oslo dream and the optimism of the post-Cold War era, entirely ignorant of the facts on the ground. 
The power vacuum in Lebanon left by the elimination of Hezbollah’s senior leadership must be grasped by the Lebanese government and its own army, rather than by proxies of Iran’s theocratic regime. Gaza must be rebuilt and allowed to fulfil its potential, free from the clutches of Hamas’ brutal terror.  
And Israel must be assisted in rebuilding ties with its Sunni neighbours which have become so strained by the war with Hamas. Normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia would be the final straw for Islamist messianism. The Middle East would be fundamentally reshaped.
We need bold, decisive and brave leadership across the world. If this moment is seized, it can be the beginning of a new reality of peace and progress. The memory of those killed on October 7 demands that their murder was not in vain. For the first time in decades, everything has changed, and the world must seize this moment.  
Claudia Mendoza is CEO of the Jewish Leadership Council