During an Oval Office meeting on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he had nominated President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize and praised him for “forging peace, as we speak, in one country, in one region after the other.” Both US and Israeli officials have been quite open about their hopes that we are now looking at a transformed Middle East. Netanyahu has suggested that the US-Israeli strikes against Iran last month “opens an opportunity for a dramatic expansion of the peace agreements” that Israel has signed with other Arab countries over the years.

But in fact, the weeks since the “12-Day War” ended have been marked by even more war. On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced it had conducted its first ground incursion in months into Lebanon. Israel had already been conducting nearly daily airstrikes targeting Hezbollah in recent weeks, despite a 2024 truce that Israel claims the Iranian-backed proxy group has been violating by keeping armed fighters in southern Lebanon. The IDF has also carried out airstrikes against Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, responding to the group’s ongoing missile and drone attacks against Israel. IDF troops remain in southern Syria and in recent days have carried out raids targeting Iran-backed groups there.

Nor is the Israel-Iran conflict necessarily over. Defense Minister Israel Katz has put forward a plan involving “maintaining Israel’s air superiority, preventing nuclear advancement and missile production, and responding to Iran for supporting terrorist activities against the State of Israel.” In other words, if Israel says there are malign and dangerous activities happening in Iran, there may be more airstrikes.

Then, of course, there’s the ongoing devastation of the war in Gaza, where the death toll has now exceeded 56,000 according to local authorities, and where locals as well as the UN accuse the IDF of killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians trying to reach food distribution centers in recent weeks. Five IDF troops were killed by roadside bombs planted by militants earlier this week.

While there had been hopes that Israel’s military success against Iran, a major backer of Hamas, could make a ceasefire more likely, the chances of an immediate deal with the militant group appear to be waning, despite pressure from Trump to ink one. Even if there were a ceasefire now, Israel appears very unlikely to withdraw its troops from Gaza entirely.

The “new Middle East” that Netanyahu praised Trump for helping to bring about seems to be one in which Israel is continually fighting on multiple fronts........

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