Strategic stars are aligning for Israel

At the Herzliya security conference last week, one paradox kept surfacing: while regular, low-level terrorism and rocket attacks maintain visceral distrust of the Palestinians and boost the security hawks; today the overall security environment is more positive than it has been since the run-up to the Camp David talks in 2000.

Now appears to be the optimum moment for talks

While nobody is pretending that last year's deal between Iran and the West will stop the Islamic Republic from eventual nuclear breakout, the consensus, at least for now, is that the imminent threat of an Iranian atomic attack is no longer present. Herzi Halevi, Chief of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, instead stressed that the current danger lay in the "legitimising" effect of the agreement on the fundamentalist regime.

IDF Syria-watchers are also bringing better news from the northern front. Although the Geneva talks failed to cajole the multitude of warring factions into any sort of agreement, a natural balance of power appears to be emerging: the groups that hold southern Syria - from Daesh to the Free Syria Army and Bashar al Assad's Hizbollah-backed forces - have settled into "cantons", with no single army emerging as dominant.

This means that neither of Israel's two biggest fears over Syria are transpiring: an all-out victory of the global jihadists, or a triumph of the radical axis - Hizbollah and Iranian forces, supported by Russian firepower. Although Hizbollah continues to build up its huge missile stocks in south Lebanon, the Shia army, degraded by its Syria campaign, has no current interest in using any of them against Israel. For now, the dark forces to the north are cancelling each other out.

The Palestinian attacks, meanwhile, have become largely detached from organised terror networks and, as such, are not considered a high-level, national threat.

Not only are today's security risks lower but, over the past few weeks, a series "peace dividends" that could result from deals with the Arab world have moved into focus. The mantra repeated at Herzliya, including by members of Yozmim, a lobby group that has done much of the government's preparatory groundwork for its talks with the Sunni states, was that Israel stands to make a range of economic, civil society gains from such agreements.

The director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold, said that in one meeting with a Sunni Arab counterpart, he noticed a strange look on the face of his interlocutor. "I asked him what the problem was. He said there was no problem, it was just that the seven bullet points on his agenda were almost exactly the same as mine, and he was shocked."

Israel's reconciliation talks with Turkey, which appeared to be moving towards a successful conclusion this week, promise a giant new market for the Jewish state's billions of cubic metres of gas that are buried in the Levant Basin.

Now appears to be an optimum moment for Israel to start taking risks and entering into open talks with Arab states and therefore - arguably - the Palestinians.

The problem, of course, is that after years of failed peace talks, few ordinary Israelis can get excited about such openings.

Ofer Shelah, an Yesh Atid MK and a former paratrooper, said: "That is why we need to stress the economic dividend that could arise from a deal with the Sunni states.

"The advantage of an agreement along the lines of the Arab Peace Initiative is that we'll get something concrete back.

"We are the strong side. You can't be obsessed with threats. We have a strong military, a strong economy and a highly resilient society."