Writing in the Israeli ḥaredi publication Tzarich Iyun, Tamar Katzrir argues that the Jewish state’s most recent election reflects a less divided country than most assume:

Some seven years ago, then-President Reuven Rivlin delivered his famous “speech of tribes,” in which he effectively announced the demise of the grand story of the state of Israel. We are no longer one country with one great story, he claimed, but four distinct tribes, each with its specific narrative. We should come to terms with this reality and find a new common denominator that can bind together the various groups. Rivlin gave this program the somewhat ironic name “Israeli Hope.”

I believe the results of Israel’s recent elections disprove Rivlin’s gloomy forecast and bury his vision of Israel as a “state of all its tribes.” They prove that the Israeli public values a unifying Jewish narrative over the rival tribal narrative. Contrary to predictions, the public’s identification with the enduring Jewish story is actually becoming increasingly consolidated. The Ḥaredim, religious Zionists, the Sephardim, and the secular right, [whose respective parties make up the new coalition], united under the narrative that has always united us: the epic story of the people of Israel. The recent elections reflect the victory of the unified national narrative over the divisive tribal version.

Thus coalesced the current “right-wing bloc” that defined, together with the opposing bloc, the contours of the last elections. Voters had to choose less between individual parties, though this was also part of the choice and more between blocs. The success of the ḥaredi parties needs to be seen in this context: voters were happy to give them their voice in the knowledge that support would go not only to the specific group but also to the wider collective.

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.