92nd Street Y Panel Addresses Future of Middle East One Year After October 7th Attacks

“How does this Middle East war end?”

The question, posed by SIPA Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo, was a guiding light throughout the two-hour panel discussion, cosponsored by the Institute of Global Politics, at the 92nd Street Y on October 6th, commemorating one year since the October 7th terrorist attacks. Joining her were Ambassador Dennis Ross, scholar and diplomat who served five US presidents in the Middle East peace process, including negotiating the Oslo II Accord; Nadav Eyal, an IGP-affiliated faculty member at SIPA, renowned Israeli journalist, and winner of Israel’s top prize in journalism; and Jane Harman, IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow and former U.S. Representative (D-CA), who served on the House Select Committees on Intelligence, Armed Services, and Homeland Security.

Ross explained that Israel’s best path forward, now that a hostage deal is off the table, is for Israel to define success, create tangible mechanisms to prevent the illicit flow of arms and fighters between Gaza and Egypt, and declare victory: "Hamas is in complete disarray," he noted.

Eyal was firm, but critical: Hamas can end this war now, but “we lack any coherent strategy for exit.” Turning towards the U.S., he questioned how Israel could end it if the “world’s only superpower” had no strategy for ending the broader crisis in the Middle East. Harman, however, pointed out that the U.S. was limited when the leaderships of Hamas and Israel seemed to want an endless war, and “endless wars only serve to further radicalize populations.”

Addressing Israeli and Iranian escalation, Ross identified the central conundrum: "neither side wants a war, but neither side can afford to look weak."

Looking back on the aftermath of October 7th, the panelists debated whether the attacks represented a failure to respond or a failure to anticipate. Harman emphasized the policy failure, that women intelligence analysts had sent a warning but were ignored. Eyal disagreed, stating that after his many conversations with senior Israeli generals, he was certain that the IDF believed in taking no risks, so it was not a failure to respond so much as a failure of imagination. Israeli intelligence leaders were captivated by the assumption that the leaders of Hamas had prisoner mentalities and would not dare pull off such an attack. “You usually do not assume your adversary will commit suicide,” he noted. Yarhi-Milo weighed in that this common bias among leaders and intelligence officials is called ‘mirror imaging,’ calculating the other side’s behavior based on assumptions over how you would handle a situation or crisis.

According to Eyal, October 7th was a “trauma like no other, challenging the fundamental idea: there is a safe haven for Jews in Israel.”

“No recent victories in Lebanon can erase that pain. It was harder than ever now to move towards a two-state solution, as the notion of living next to fundamentalist nations that want to destroy them is not acceptable to the Israeli public,” he added.

Nevertheless, Ross rebutted, "The alternative to two states is one state, which will be in constant conflict." He looked towards an ending to the war that would transform the region with greater integration. Eyal, too, remains optimistic, “When you decide to be part of the Middle East story, you have to be dedicated to the idea that you force yourself into hope, even in these times.”

Ross and Harman emphasized that a vision for a two-state solution is a necessity for stability in the region. Ross went further, looking towards a reconstituted Lebanon, with a Beirut that could again be the Paris of the Middle East, a partner to Israel. But as Eyal concluded, prediction is almost impossible, because any statements about the “near future in the Middle East mean absolutely nothing.”