By Neophytos Loizides
As a new destructive war unfolds in the Middle East — this time involving the United States, Israel and Iran directly — questions of survival, escalation and moral responsibility are once again at the forefront. The language of “existential threat” is no longer confined to rhetoric. It appears in official speeches, such as those of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in military doctrine and in the anxieties of public opinion.
For Cyprus, the debate is not only about strategy, deterrence or even ethics. The first step is to understand the broader context of the region and how Israelis themselves perceive their historical position. The prevailing impression in our own public discourse following recent events is that policymakers invested heavily in Israel, a country that many in Cyprus still know very little about.
The enduring anxiety about Israel’s survival
In a letter to US President John F. Kennedy in 1963, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, expressed deep concern about the future of the state he founded as a refuge for Jews: “I am not sure that the state will continue to exist for long after my death.”
The passage, cited by Uriel Abulof (p.13) in The Morality and Mortality of Nations, reflects what he describes as the Zionist contradictions and the “persistent anxiety about the end of Israel” — an “existential doubt” that runs across the country’s entire political spectrum (p.139).
Perhaps the most striking formulation comes from the award-winning Israeli writer David Grossman: “What frightens me most is losing my confidence in the existence of Israel.” In October 2023, writing in the Financial Times, he argued that “Israel after the war will be far more right-wing, more militarised and more racist”.
International reactions to Israeli policies may intensify further, as seen recently in the United Kingdom following the electoral success of the Greens in Gorton and Denton.
A deeply divided global landscape, often framed as opposing camps supporting either Palestine or Israel, places both sides before the “moral mirror” of international public opinion. Israeli Jews may today be among the nations most directly exposed to the possibility of annihilation through weapons of mass destruction. Regardless of the outcome of the current war with Iran, those who oppose Israel’s existence continue to pursue that scenario.
For those observing the conflict from outside — whether they side with Israelis or Palestinians — the difficulty lies in the unpredictability of the long-term outcome of this war and the preventive strikes and atrocities that accompany it. Critics of Israel will face their own moral reckoning should an “annihilation scenario” ever unfold, while Israel’s supporters will rightly be held accountable for the deaths and displacement of millions of civilians. These “moral mirrors” are unavoidable and will remain decisive in the future.
Is there a third path?
Societies are capable of transforming complex conflicts, as international experience shows. “Consistency across cases matters if we still care about a rules-based international order,” notes Lebanese academic Marie Joelle-Zahar.
Scholars within Israel itself have proposed alternative scenarios based on comparisons with other societies facing similar dilemmas. One example examined by Abulof is that of the Afrikaners in South Africa, suggesting that even a nation can choose to live as a minority if adequate protection mechanisms are guaranteed within a negotiated settlement.
More recently, Ian Lustick has proposed the idea of a single democratic Israeli-Palestinian state, while Dahlia Scheindlin has suggested a confederation model between Israelis and Palestinians. Such arrangements could potentially offer multiple layers of protection for different communities, an approach that the traditional two-state solution has struggled to achieve under current conditions.
Cyprus could potentially serve as a model for Israel and Palestine — but it could also become a node of further tension. The danger lies in a prolonged and volatile regional environment in which Israel’s existential fears may be mirrored by similar fears and unilateral actions from Turkey.
Our own security architecture
In the main article, I analyse how Israeli political thought is shaped by a persistent sense of existential anxiety and how this perception influences strategic choices. Cyprus, as part of the same geopolitical equation, cannot ignore these interpretations.
For this reason, the issue of the British Bases is not simply a colonial legacy. It is part of the security architecture of a region where states operate under fears of annihilation and preventive escalation.
The imperial logic of fixed military footholds no longer corresponds to present realities. Yet abolishing them outright is not a strategy either. The real dilemma is whether Cyprus will remain a passive platform for regional rivalries or whether it will claim a role in shaping a new security architecture that is both ethically consistent and operationally credible.
This can only be achieved through the resolution of the Cyprus problem, not through the mythology of trilateral alliances.
Parallel negotiations over the framework governing the Bases — with transparency, shared oversight, clearly defined operational limits and alignment with the interests of both communities — could transform a colonial remnant into a mechanism for stabilisation. A proposal along these lines, an “ideal formula”, could also be adapted to the strategic and financial interests of Britain and its taxpayers.
If, as I argue, there is a “third path” for Israelis and Palestinians through institutional innovation and multilayered guarantees, then there must also be one for Cyprus. The real question is not whether we will have security, but what form it will take, under which conditions and for whose benefit.
Professor of International Conflict Analysis