What’s no longer at question is the role Israel plays in its own border region with Syria. As recent reports have made clear, Israel has been working since at least last year to create a friendly “buffer zone” on the other side of the Golan Heights. A dedicated Israeli military unit acts as a liaison for civilian aid and basic foodstuffs going in, and wounded Syrians — including rebel fighters — coming out to Israeli hospitals. The Wall Street Journal reported in June that rebel commanders even claim they receive cash from Israel, which is used to pay salaries and purchase arms and ammunition. This “Good Neighborhood” policy, as it’s known in Israel, is aimed at persuading the local Syrian population to reject Iranian and Hezbollah entreaties.

From its southern border, Israel has assisted Egypt in its protracted counterinsurgency campaign against Sinai Province, the Islamic State’s local affiliate. Here, too, Israeli officials are circumspect about speaking openly on cooperation — and local media are, as in similar cases, often censored from reporting what they already know. High-level military coordination and intelligence sharing are givens. Yet according to a former senior Israeli official quoted by Bloomberg News, Israeli drones have over the past several years directly attacked militants in the Sinai Peninsula — with Egypt’s consent.

Closer to home, there are intimate security ties between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. With the United States’ support, this coordination has evolved into a pillar of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship and perhaps the most successful facet of the entire peace process. On a daily basis, Israeli and Palestinian officers discuss shared threats “to the stable security situation on both sides,” as a Palestinian security official once told me. At the top of the list is the militant Hamas — a clear terrorist threat for Israel, but also a major internal threat to the Palestinian Authority. Indeed, Israeli intelligence thwarted a Hamas assassination plot in 2014 against President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel has peace and diplomatic agreements with Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, so military ties with them may not come as a complete surprise. Less well known, however, is the increasingly close relationship with the Arab Gulf states, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Such ties are often referenced only obliquely by Israeli government ministers as “shared interests” in the security and intelligence realms against the common Iranian threat. Yet in recent years, reports have surfaced about clandestine meetings between Israeli intelligence chiefs and their Gulf counterparts. Meir Dagan, the former Mossad chief, allegedly traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2010 for secret talks about Iran’s nuclear program. Public encounters with retired Saudi Arabian officials are now commonplace, whether in Washington, Munich or even Jerusalem. Business ties are growing, too, including the sale of Israeli agriculture but also cyber, intelligence and homeland security technology to the Gulf (usually through third parties).

Taken as a whole, Israeli activities in Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, Egypt and the Gulf can no longer be viewed in isolation from one another. Rather, Israel is now involved in the Arab world’s military campaigns — against both Iran and its proxies, as well as against the Islamic State. It remains to be seen whether this is merely a temporary marriage of convenience against common foes or the start of an enduring strategic realignment.