The latest crisis in the Arab-Israeli conflict has brought more death, devastation and desolation — levels that look like they may soon exceed any other violence against Palestinians over the past decade. At some point, there will be a cease-fire, but the conditions for the crisis will remain. Israel may claim victory, but the wider context for Israel remains bleak in the long run. This may not be a popular opinion among Israelis, but the only realistic way for Israelis to thrive in the long term is for them to be integrated into the wider region, beginning with a comprehensive and just peace settlement.

The Gaza conflict has thus far resulted in around 1,400 dead and 8,000 wounded Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military. About three-quarters are civilians, according to the United Nations, and many are children. Fifty-six Israeli soldiers, and three civilians in Israel, have also been killed by Hamas militants to date, according to the Israeli military. The Gaza Strip, occupied by Israel since 1967, was already under siege prior to this latest round of violence, with rapidly deteriorating living conditions, according to the UN. These already dire circumstances for 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza have deteriorated tremendously as a result of the current war. Israeli security is unlikely to be aided by this state of affairs — on the contrary, these policies only increase the likelihood that a new generation of Palestinians in Gaza will make Israel’s insecurity their priority.

Beyond that, nevertheless, is a wider context. The Arab revolts of 2011 gave Israel a window to build bridges with Arab populations and exit its regional isolation. Given the history of the region over the past seven decades, it is unlikely Israelis would be gathered overnight into some kind of Middle Eastern version of the European Union. But a detente of some sort could be built — and then built on top of.

A year into Egypt’s revolution, I had the opportunity to sit in the United Kingdom with a group of analysts from the region, and speculate on what the future might hold. There was a particular session with an Israeli specialist in attendance, and we all discussed what would necessarily have to take place over the next decade, if 2020 was to see the success of the revolutionary moments across the region. While we all agreed that it would be to everyone’s benefit worldwide for the region to become more democratic, we fundamentally disagreed on whether or not that democratization process would have any impact on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The entire region could become democratic, the Israeli participant claimed, without any movement whatsoever on that particular issue.