Much of the discussion about Israel’s security focuses on borders, settlements, or ceasefires. Less attention is paid to a more fundamental reality: Israel is surrounded by governments that have failed – or have yet to demonstrate they can function as sovereign states.
To Israel’s north lies Lebanon, a country where the government spent years unable to enforce a monopoly on force within its own territory. While the Lebanese Army wore the national uniform, Hezbollah built an independent army, amassed an enormous missile arsenal, dug tunnels, launched drones, and ultimately dragged the country into war. A sovereign state that cannot control its own territory has surrendered one of the defining responsibilities of statehood.
Next to Lebanon is Syria. More than a decade of civil war shattered the country’s institutions, fractured its territory among competing armed groups and foreign militaries, and left millions displaced. Syria has long stood as one of the clearest examples of state failure in the modern Middle East.
To Israel’s south lies Gaza. Hamas spent years and billions of dollars to build an underground military fortress instead of a functional society. The result was war after war after war. Destruction and death.
In the West Bank, the picture is different but equally troubling. The Palestinian Authority maintains civil institutions in parts of the territory, yet it has never established a monopoly on force or unified governance. Rival armed factions continue to operate, political legitimacy remains deeply contested, and governance has been divided from Gaza for nearly two decades.
“recent poll shows a majority of Palestinians rejecting moderate leadership, despairing of peaceful change and now favouring armed struggle? That tragic deformity in Palestinian political culture is the result of the continued brutality of the occupation.” – James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute at the United Nations Security Council on June 27, 2023
The collapse of governance in the states surrounding Israel has turned the region into one of the world’s greatest concentrations of terrorist groups. This is the strategic reality Israel faces every day.
Its neighbors are not peaceful democracies with settled borders and accountable institutions. They are governments weakened by civil war, dominated by militias, or unable to establish unified authority. Israel is repeatedly asked to take security risks on the assumption that these entities will prevent terrorism and enforce agreements, even though their recent history demonstrates the opposite.
The tragedy is not only Israel’s. The greatest victims of failed governance are the Lebanese, Syrians, and Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) themselves. They deserve governments that build economies instead of militias, schools instead of tunnels, courts instead of armed factions, and national institutions instead of perpetual conflict.
Peace agreements are negotiated between states because states can make commitments and enforce them. Militias cannot. Failed governments cannot. A failed state in waiting cannot.
Until the governments surrounding Israel control their territory, uphold the rule of law, and prioritize their people over perpetual conflict, Israel’s security challenges will remain the consequence of failed governance, not simply hostile neighbors.
First One Through 
