过去，以色列大选有时会给候选人提供机会，阐述他们对近东和中东的愿景，以及以色列可能在其中扮演的角色。2023年10月7日哈马斯在加沙地带周边发动大屠杀造成的创伤，使这一问题成为该地区其他国家的核心关切。
n the past, Israeli elections sometimes offered candidates an opportunity to share their visions for the Near and Middle East and the role Israel might play there. This question became central for other countries in the region after the trauma caused by the massacres of October 7, 2023, carried out by Hamas around Gaza.
当时，以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡表示，他希望根据以色列的利益“重绘”中东版图。过去三年随之而来的战争，赋予了这一雄心实质内容，旨在建立一个前所未有的“希伯来和平”，其基础是无与伦比的火力，并得到美国坚定不移的军事支持作为支撑。
At that time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated he wanted to "redraw" the Middle East according to Israel's interests. The wars that followed over the past three years gave substance to this ambition to establish an unprecedented "Pax Hebraica," based on unmatched firepower and bolstered by unwavering US military support.
当然，在未能产生明确赢家的10月27日大选中，两位主要候选人内塔尼亚胡和加迪·艾森科特之间存在显著差异，二人的个性截然相反。然而，这些差异仅关乎以色列公民。
There were, of course, notable differences between the two main candidates in the October 27 elections that failed to produce a clear winner: Netanyahu and Gadi Eisenkot, whose personalities are diametrically opposed. However, these differences concerned only Israeli citizens.
无论是对导致10月7日成为可能的安全失误设立调查委员会的合法性、征兵制——自1948年以来，极端正统派犹太教徒一直豁免征兵，当时他们仅占新建国公民的一小部分少数——还是对民主的分权原则的尊重，这些争议都未涉及以色列在该地区扮演的超大角色。
Whether it was the legitimacy of a commission of inquiry into the security lapses that made October 7 possible, conscription – which ultra-Orthodox religious Jews have been exempt from since 1948, when they represented only a small minority of the newly founded state's citizens – or the respect for the democratic principle of separation of powers, these disputes did not address the outsized role Israel plays in the region.
战略纵深的追寻 然而，内塔尼亚胡表达的雄心将潜在的裂痕暴露出来。当该地区面临另一种霸权驱动时，即由伊朗政权建立、延伸至地中海并得到也门胡塞武装加入的“抵抗轴心”，以色列和阿拉伯国家能够视彼此为拥有共同敌人，或至少是共同对手。2020年唐纳德·特朗普首个总统任期（2017-2021年）期间谈判达成的《亚伯拉罕协议》，便是这种趋同的戏剧性体现。
Quest for strategic depth Yet the ambitions expressed by Netanyahu brought latent fractures to the surface. When the region was subject to another hegemonic drive, embodied by the "axis of resistance" established by the Iranian regime extending to the Mediterranean and joined by the Houthi rebels of Yemen, Israel and Arab countries could see themselves as sharing an enemy, or at least a common rival. The Abraham Accords of 2020, negotiated during Donald Trump's first presidential term (2017-2021), were a dramatic manifestation of this convergence.
这种趋同因两大选择而荡然无存：一是让先发制人的战争比以往任何时候都更成为以色列政策的常态；二是与尚未与以色列签署和平条约的两个国家——黎巴嫩和叙利亚——追求战略纵深，这一当务之急不顾对这两国造成何种后果。
This convergence was swept away both by choices that made preemptive war more than ever a constant of Israeli policy and by the pursuit of strategic depth with the two countries with which Israel has not signed peace treaties – Lebanon and Syria – an imperative embraced whatever the consequences for those two states.