Hamas’s inhuman October 7, 2023 attacks on Israeli civilians led to an Israeli recalibration and response. For the first time in its history, Israel positioned itself as the champion of the region’s minorities and as the valued ally of the region’s nationalists. It didn’t take long for Druze, Kurds, and (more tentatively) Christians to rethink their own futures in light of the Israeli offer—or the Somalilanders to seize it with gusto. Meanwhile, the UAE and Bahrain—and further afield, Azerbaijan, Morrocco, Kazakhstan, and certain Sudanese factions—saw it as an opportunity to promote a deradicalized Sunni Islam, shorn of the need for empires and the bloodshed they always engender.
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