Last year was yet another eventful year in the Middle East. Much of what happened stemmed from Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 – and Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza. The targeting of Hamas leaders, including high-ranking ones, has been an Israeli tactic since 1993. The explosion of thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah agents, in September 2024, marks the latest, albeit one of the most technologically advanced, Israeli intelligence operations in the long Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
But there were also genuine surprises in the Middle East in 2024. The three big ones were Israel’s targeted killing of long-time Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister, and the sudden end of the Assad regime in Syria.
A history of surprises
Political scientists don’t make predictions. They focus on likelihoods: How likely something is to happen under particular conditions. “Unexpected” as a descriptor is therefore somewhat misleading, since being likely means that we expect something might happen if the right circumstances converge.
Pundits often talk about the Arab uprisings that began in 2011, for example, as an unforeseen outbreak of protests. But close observers of the region knew that the economic and political conditions in many Arab countries were unstable, that citizens were widely dissatisfied with the regimes, and that efforts to protest autocracy had occurred in the past and people were mobilizing in the few years before the demonstrations. There was no way to know the exact moment the protests would begin, but it was not a surprise to analysts of the region that they did.
Sadat’s surprising 1977 move
This is not to say that scholars are never surprised. Sometimes unanticipated events occur that are astonishing. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in 1977 to speak to the Israeli Knesset was surprising. As the strongest Arab power in the confrontation with Israel, having fought four major wars against it, coming to the Israeli seat of power in a contested city was surprising. In retrospect, that Sadat did something unlikely made sense: He was concerned about the detrimental impact of the conflict on the Egyptian economy, he wanted to distance himself from former President Gamal Abdul Nasser’s style of politics, and he wanted to regain the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had captured in the 1967 war.
The visit changed regional dynamics. President Jimmy Carter oversaw negotiations between Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, which led to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. This essentially ended the fighting between Israel and the Arab countries. But it also emboldened the nationalist right in Israel, because Sadat was willing to give up Arab independence in the West Bank in return for Egyptian territory.
The 1993 Oslo Accords was another surprise. The result of a months-long secret negotiation between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), it resulted in the PLO renouncing terrorism, and the creation of the Palestinian Authority to assume administrative control over parts of the West Bank and Gaza. Even at the time it was clear that the two sides had been incrementally moving to some kind of rapprochement since the First Intifada in 1987, and both Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat were interested in tamping down the conflict for their own reasons.
The big surprises in 2024
What will the most recent Middle East surprises mean for 2025, and beyond? Of the three big surprises of 2024, the Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September might be the most consequential.
Nasrallah had been Hezbollah’s leader since 1992, and had become a powerful force in Lebanese politics and as a proxy for Iran. He had escaped Israeli efforts to kill him before, and many in the region saw him as the face of resistance to perceived Israeli aggression and occupation.
The evidence for whether the killing of leaders of terrorist and militant groups will incapacitate the organization is mixed. At best the evidence is conditional. In this case, Nasrallah’s death will likely weaken Hezbollah, at least in the short term. Nasrallah had been at the head of the organization for so long that his influence permeated all its sections and activities. No-one else will have the same respect and influence. The attack was also part of a broader and intensive use of Israeli force in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas assault. This may convince Israel’s enemies to be more restrained in their violence.
The second major surprise of the year was the ICC’s November arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu. International legal efforts to sanction Israel for the occupation and some of its actions in recent wars against Hamas have intensified in recent years. In 2024 alone, in addition to the ICC’s arrest warrant, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel may have violated the Genocide Convention in its current campaign against Hamas.
Still, the fact that these sanctions were issued was a watershed moment. It is the first time this has happened to the leader of a democracy. The arrest warrant against Netanyahu cracks the implicit and unintended norm against holding Western leaders responsible for their military actions. There won’t be a flood of new arrest warrants, but it does set a precedent.
For Israel, the warrants underscore the perception by many Jewish-Israelis of the international community’s long-standing hostility toward the country. Although Israel is well-integrated into global political and economic networks, international censure does contribute to a growing uneasiness or unhappiness with the settlement enterprise and the continuing occupation of the Palestinians. These moves will also reinforce existing multilateral efforts to continue to impose legal consequences on Israel for its actions.
And the big surprise in Syria
The third main surprise was the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in December, and Bashar al-Assad’s fleeing to Russia. Assad is the son of Hafez al-Assad, who seized power in a coup in 1971. From his father’s death in 2000 to the Arab uprisings in 2011, Assad has maintained a firm grip on the politics of Syria. Even after rebels had seized the major city of Aleppo at the end of November, many believed Assad would manage to hold on to power, at least for a while.
Other Arab rulers had been overthrown in the aftermath of the outbreak of the Arab uprisings, including Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. But the Assad regime had seemed semi-permanent, even as the protests turned into rebellion and the country quickly fell into both a civil war and a regional war as outside powers jockeyed for influence.
It is much too soon to know what will happen to Syria as a result of Assad’s overthrow. A diverse set of opposition groups want a share of governing power, while some ethno-national communities may prefer their own autonomous piece of the country. Whether these groups can work together peacefully will determine if the fall of the Assad regime is a turning point in Syria’s history.
Looking ahead, all three surprises will have effects that carry over into 2025. The long-term consequences could well change some of the contours of Middle Eastern politics.
Brent E. Sasley is a 2024-2025 Good Authority fellow.
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