What will define 5787? Experts predict

No one can rub a crystal ball or flip a tarot card to know what the next Jewish year will bring. But as Jews in Israel prepare to move from 5786 to 5787, ALL ISRAEL NEWS asked several experts which stories they believe could shape the year ahead and how they might play out. 

​From a changing Lebanon and a potentially faltering Iranian regime to the rapidly accelerating artificial intelligence revolution, here is what they had to say.

A chance for a ‘new Lebanon’

​Experts predict that Lebanon, which sits on Israel’s northern border, could look very different by the end of the Hebrew year.

According to Uzi Rabi, head of the Program for Regional Cooperation at the Moshe Dayan Center, multiple attempts are underway to disrupt a political process that increasingly threatens Hezbollah’s veto over Lebanon’s future.

​“The process is a kind of negotiation between Israel and the government of Lebanon, and it is just in the beginning stages,” Rabi explained.

He said more and more Lebanese political voices are coming to the fore and openly challenging Hezbollah’s right to drag the country into another confrontation. Meanwhile, Iran appears increasingly unwilling or unable to come to the aid of its terror proxy.

​“There is a glimpse of hope for the Lebanese people,” he said.

​However, he cautioned that 5787 will likely bring neither peace nor full-scale war, but rather what he termed “controlled friction,” with Hezbollah once again testing the limits and trying to derail diplomacy.

​At the same time, Rabi said the Lebanese Armed Forces have deployed to select “pilot zones” under the U.S.-brokered framework, and so far, the arrangement is holding. That, he said, suggests there is someone on the Lebanese side to work with and raises the possibility that Hezbollah could ultimately be transformed from an armed militia into a political party, if it survives at all.

“Hezbollah is fighting for its life,” Rabi said, “fighting to preserve its veto over Lebanon's future.”

​Sixty years ago, Lebanon was considered the Switzerland of the Middle East. Today, Rabi said, there may be a chance to “create a new Lebanon that will not act as a bastion of instability but the opposite.”

Lt. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Conricus, a senior fellow at FDD, expressed similar sentiments.

​“I am moderately hopeful and optimistic that we can see positive developments in Lebanon this coming year that will benefit the people of Lebanon and Israel,” Conricus said. “By making a few moderate and calculated concessions by Israel and by having relentless military and economic and political pressure on Hezbollah, and of course by weakening the Iranian regime, which is the main supporter of Hezbollah, I'm hopeful that we can see positive change in the region.”

The downfall of the Islamic Republic

Building on that prediction, Conricus said the demise and unraveling of the Islamic Republic of Iran could also take place during the coming Jewish year.

​Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his Hebrew-language Rosh Hashanah message to the country, declared that the Iranian regime’s “end is near.” He said the regime is “weak, it is fighting for its life, it is faltering.”

Conricus said he hopes the transition stage will be “relatively benign and quick,” that there will not be high casualties, and “that justice will be provided to the majority of the Iranian people.”

For more than 50 years, he said, the Iranian people have been oppressed by the Islamic regime, the Basij, the IRGC and the mullahs. In 5787, Conricus predicted that it could finally change.

“I think it [the downfall] is going to happen, and that's going to have a halo effect on all of the Iranians and on the Middle East,” he said.

AI could transform warfare, create new threats

A third story to watch in the coming year is the rapid acceleration of the artificial intelligence revolution and its impact on Israel and the wider world.

According to Prof. Yael Sternhell of Tel Aviv University, the recent OpenAI “Hugging Incident,” in which autonomous AI testing agents broke out of their secure sandbox, is “enormously meaningful” when considering the future of AI.

“We have reached a point with artificial intelligence in which we are beginning to see how it threatens, and I don't see a reason for these accidents to stop,” she told ALL ISRAEL NEWS. “I don’t see any reason why these threats would not become even more severe, and this has implications for Israel, where it is not even really being debated.”

​She said that “once these machines spin out of control” in one part of the world, “they will spin out of control in Israel as well.”

Amir Avivi, founder and former chairman of IDSF, said he feels the same way and believes the AI revolution will be one of the defining stories of 5787.

​“There is an understanding that Israel has to take the lead,” Avivi said, noting that AI is changing the world and that, even though this understanding may exist in Israel, the issue has not been discussed enough.

​“AI is a game changer,” he told All Israel News. “Wars are going to be won by the level of AI. This is completely revolutionizing warfare, and it's also impacting the pace in which intelligence is being processed and then operationally executed.”

But while all of these stories are likely to make headlines in 5787, and the AI revolution extends far beyond Israel, Conricus said he hopes for something different in the coming year: that the story will not always be about Israel.

​“I am amazed by the abnormal, gigantic, fantastic amount of attention that almost everything that happens in Israel gets in international media,” Conricus said. “I hope that the attention focused on Israel would be right-sized and that we get less, that we are moved out from underneath the extremely powerful microscope, the microscope being motivated by antisemitism, fascination, hatred, support, or whatever the motivations are.”

​After years in which Israel has rarely been out of the international headlines, Conricus said perhaps one of the best outcomes for 5787 would be a quieter one.

​“I really hope that we will, for at least a year, get some respite,” he said.