On October 9, Moscow and Cairo announced that their navies are planning joint exercises in the Black Sea—a move clearly aimed at Turkey, which has a bitter enemy in Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and has increasingly run afoul of Vladimir Putin in Syria, the Caucasus, and Libya. Jerusalem’s interests lie with the pro-Israel Sisi against Turkey’s pro-Hamas Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but the situation is hardly straightforward. Jonathan Spyer explains:

In Israel, the rivalries between regional powers are generally understood to offer a certain advantage to Jerusalem, in that the power diplomatically closer to Israel (in this case Egypt) is likely to feel the need to cleave more closely to its allies in the face of a shared threat. The establishment of the East Mediterranean Gas Forum and its recent formalization as an international organization exemplify this process.

The efforts of Moscow to assert itself as a power in the eastern Mediterranean should sound a cautionary note, however. . . . Russia is strategically aligned in the Levant with Iran, Israel’s most implacable enemy. Russian weapons (via Iran and Syria) make up the bulk of the formidable arsenal assembled in the service of Iranian goals by Lebanese Hizballah. Russia is also a rival of Israel in the matter of gas exports to Europe. All this means that Russian efforts to leverage regional power rivalries to increase its own presence and influence are not a net positive for Jerusalem. From the Israeli point of view, while there is no enmity, the less Russia, the better.

The Russian entry into the picture, as elsewhere, is made possible by the absence of another major power. The EU can issue declarations, but it has no united force to deploy. The power that is absent in the eastern Mediterranean, and indeed whose absence makes possible both the Turkish aggression and the Russian attempt to “mediate,” is the United States.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.