If a Palestinian state were to be created on the West Bank—regardless of whether it included Gaza—it could pose a serious, even existential threat to the Jewish state, Louis René Beres
argues:

It is . . . incontestable that Arab terror against the Jewish state would not subside following Palestinian statehood. This is because the leaders of any future Palestinian state—one with more formal juridical status than the current UN “nonmember-observer-state” designation—would continue to regard the now-diminished and more vulnerable Israel as “occupied Palestine.” Why would they revise their original concept of “the Zionist enemy,” especially after they had become irrefutably more powerful? . . .

Much concern is being expressed at the possibility of a third intifada. For Israel, the rational remedy for such a prospect is not to encourage its adversaries to transform into a more organized and structured enemy state. Any juridically enhanced state of Palestine could magnify its cumulative adversarial capacity to inflict great harm on Israel. It is possible that such harm, imposed with a margin of collective impunity, could eventually involve weapons of mass destruction [provided by Iran or some other power], including chemical, biological, or even nuclear agents.

Palestine, after achieving statehood, could be in an optimal position to assault Israel’s Dimona reactor. This nuclear facility was attacked in 1991 and again in 2014. Those earlier missile and rocket barrages, which produced no serious damage to the reactor core, originated with Iraqi and Hamas aggressions, respectively.

Regarding the expected intentions of a Palestinian state, there is little mystery to fathom. Palestine could and would provide a ready platform for launching endlessly renewable war and terror attacks against Israel. Significantly, not a single warring Palestinian faction has ever bothered to deny this. On the contrary: aggression has always been openly embraced and cheered as a sacred “national” incantation.

While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.