Is Israel’s overwhelming military superiority enough to create a balance in which Tel Aviv holds the upper hand across the entire Middle East?

The Israeli government behaves as if this were true. It bombs more than six countries daily. It disregards the sovereignty of any of these nations. It commits a recognized genocide in Gaza. It swallows up more land in the West Bank. And what is yet to come promises more atrocities by this blind military machine, as the recent bombing of Doha will certainly not be its last.

We are dealing with an “empire” that lacks the conditions of empire. At the end of the day, Israel remains a geographically and demographically limited state. About nine million citizens cannot sustain an empire. Add to this imbalance the UN human rights classification of what is happening in Gaza. It is an empire stripped of morality, devoid of commitment to its own obligations.

How can an ordinary Israeli citizen bear all the burdens their state lays upon them? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has left his people no chance to breathe. Nine million Israelis must wake up every morning to bomb some country, in addition to other equally heavy tasks. They must always prove themselves superior to more than a quarter of a billion people living around them, across every domain of life.

It is likely that the failure of the most recent mission in Doha stems from this imbalance. Netanyahu decided to bomb Qatar! Even the least intelligent among his circle must have sensed the enormity of this move—not only because Qatar is effectively a U.S. protectorate, but also because of the Abraham Accords, which gifted Netanyahu a parallel path to “peace without land.” In one stroke, Netanyahu slapped his Abrahamic partners in the face without flinching, telling them that striking a Gulf state is entirely justifiable.

Netanyahu is a burden on us, on the world, and on Israel itself. He bequeaths this entity with an inheritance of disconnection from geography and demography (as once proposed by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, his father’s teacher). This disconnection is aided by the massive imbalance of power created by the authoritarian and backward regimes surrounding Israel.

The easy “victory” over Hezbollah in Lebanon was not so much a dazzling military achievement as it was an exposure of the frailty of the system that Iran built in Lebanon.

Two years of fighting in Gaza have produced genocide at the hands of a blind military machine—yet even now it stumbles, unable to achieve decisive victory, waiting instead for the “conditions of deportation” to mature. The thirteen-day war on Iran did not settle that file either. What remains of it is little more than proof that Iran is governed by a cardboard regime—weak and hollow—but one that Israel cannot topple. And here enters Donald Trump, sending back the Israeli planes that had been en route to the Supreme Leader’s headquarters in Tehran. It is even likely that Trump was the one who leaked the secret of the planes headed to Doha, sabotaging the operation.

Israel’s military superiority enables Netanyahu to claim victory over Hezbollah. It may win him admiration among Emirati elites, and it may even fool some naïve Lebanese into thinking someone has finally relieved them of Iran. But a state like Israel is supposed to think beyond wars and beyond Netanyahu. That is exactly what Netanyahu prevents it from doing. Israel’s being today is reflected solely in the instant in which a plane strikes its target—and nothing more. That is what machines and devices do, not what states do.

So what follows after the air raid on Doha? A declaration of victory over Hamas? And then what? The world’s shock over the strikes on Doha stems above all from the question of their purpose and from the costs to be borne by an “empire” of just nine million Israelis.

In Israel today, no one seems to be thinking about the burdens of the “day after victory,” about the weight of the dark reputation left behind by the genocide in Gaza. Astonishingly, no one even asks about the impossibility of peace, even with the most forgiving observers of Israel’s crimes, even with those most impressed by its “efficiency.” Where will the Abraham Accords negotiator put his face after the bombing of Doha? As for “land for peace,” what remains to bargain over is reduced to a few scattered enclaves in the West Bank.

A country of nine million people has asked itself no question other than war. It is exhausting. Any rational Israeli who does not aspire to be a soldier ought to pack his bags.

As for Hamas, whose leaders survived yesterday’s strikes in Doha, it remains our parallel dilemma—just as Netanyahu is Israel’s dilemma. The difference is that the people of Gaza do not have the luxury of packing their bags.