The countries of the Middle East increasingly see Israel as their new shared threat. Israel’s war in Gaza, its expansionist military policies, and its revisionist posture are reshaping the region in ways that few anticipated. Its September strike on Hamas’s political leaders in Qatar—the seventh country hit by Israel since the October 7, 2023, attacks, in addition to the Palestinian territories—has shaken Gulf states and cast doubt on the credibility of the U.S. security umbrella. In the last two years, Israeli leaders have hailed their evisceration of Hezbollah’s leadership in Lebanon, their repeated strikes on targets in Yemen, and their battering of Iran. But rather than consolidate Israeli power or improve relations with Arab states that have long been wary of Iran and its proxies, these actions are backfiring. States that once regarded Israel as a potential partner, including the Gulf monarchies, now perceive it as a dangerous and unpredictable actor.

This week, U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a new 20-point “peace plan,” celebrating the framework as a major breakthrough and a way to return stability to the region. But its prospects are dim as long as Israel continues to behave aggressively and ignores the legitimate demands and concerns of Palestinians. Although a raft of leaders in the region have welcomed the announcement, the plan seems unlikely to reverse the damage of two years of war. Before the October 2023 attacks, Israel, with strong American backing, had hoped to remake the region to its advantage, casting itself as a partner for Arab governments while sidelining rivals, notably Iran. Now, Israel has only isolated itself, made Arab states reluctant to stomach the reputational and political costs of working with it, and turned former partners into wary adversaries.

Many countries in the region are responding to Israeli aggression by diversifying their security partnerships, investing in their own autonomy, and moving away from normalization with Israel. A welter of projects that sought to bind Israel closer to Arab countries—principally with the help of the United States, but also with Indian and European support—will likely fall by the wayside. That is bad news not just for Israel but also for the United States. Unstinting American support for Israel is undermining Washington’s standing in the region. Where once the threat of Iran could encourage states in the region to hew close to the U.S. line, the specter of a bristling Israel now pushes them away from the United States.

The United States must wake up to the shifts underway in the Middle East. On its own, the recently proposed framework will not repair the ruptured relations between Israel and the broader region. If Washington refuses to rein in Israel and does not search for a just political answer to the Palestinian question, it risks weakening ties with key regional partners and losing influence over the emerging regional order. Failing to address the issue of Palestine and allowing Israel to behave aggressively with impunity will also fuel a new wave of radicalism that will threaten U.S. interests, regional stability, and global security.

For more than two decades, Israel had been able to make common cause with a number of Arab countries. Egypt was the first Arab state to normalize relations with Israel as a result of the 1978 Camp David accords. The peace between the two countries has held for nearly four decades, even though significant connections and exchanges at a deeper societal level have failed to materialize. Until recently, Egypt viewed Turkey as its primary rival in the eastern Mediterranean. Relations between the two countries took a nosedive in 2013 after the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected Islamist president. Turkey strongly supported him and opposed the coup that brought Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to power. As a result, Egypt under Sisi cut bilateral deals with Israel and worked with Israel inside the East Mediterranean Gas Forum, a regional........

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