Swords of Iron War – Principles for Victory

Gregg Roman

On October 7, 2023, Israel was shaken by a devastating attack by Hamas that claimed over 1,200 lives, forcing the ongoing security challenges from threats originating in Gaza. This tragic day highlighted Israel’s vulnerabilities and sparked an urgent reevaluation of its national security strategy. Traditionally characterized by reactive measures—short-term military responses and temporary truces—Israel’s approach in Gaza has often provided immediate but fleeting stability that failed to fundamentally address the cycle of conflict.

In this context, Zvi Hauser’s “Swords of Iron – Principles for Victory” offers a critical shift in perspective, proposing a proactive security governance model designed to address these challenges comprehensively. This policy paper aims to redefine Israel’s defensive posture by transitioning from reactionary tactics to anticipatory and preventive strategies that promise a more secure and stable future.

Israel’s security strategy has often oscillated between direct military action and temporary ceasefires. This reactive posture has not only strained Israel’s military resources but has also placed its civil society under continuous stress. The cyclical nature of this conflict management has allowed threats to regroup and intensify, highlighting the deficiencies in the current approach and underscoring the need for a strategic overhaul.

The discourse surrounding Israel’s security measures is robust among policymakers and experts. Yet, the attack in October 2023 has intensified these discussions, pinpointing critical flaws in existing strategies and underscoring the need for transformative approaches. With his extensive experience in the Israeli security establishment, including roles as cabinet secretary and a Knesset member, Hauser brings valuable insights to this debate. His recommendations are not mere adjustments, but advocate a fundamental shift in how Israel approaches security and peace.

Hauser’s central thesis champions a shift from reactive to proactive security measures. He argues for the establishment of controlled buffer zones, stringent demilitarization linked to international aid, and the dismantling of Hamas’s military infrastructure. Such measures, Hauser argues, will not only more effectively secure Israel’s borders, but also pave the way for sustainable peace by preempting future conflicts and diminishing the incentives for aggression.

1. Controlled Buffer Zones: Hauser advocates for the establishment of buffer zones under strict Israeli military control. These zones would function as security barriers, mitigating the risk of direct attacks and providing strategic depth for military operations, thereby safeguarding civilian areas.
2. Conditional Demilitarization: By tying the demilitarization of Gaza to the provision of international aid, Hauser’s strategy aims to reduce Gaza’s capacity for military aggression. This approach seeks to dismantle military infrastructure while addressing humanitarian needs, thereby ensuring aid contributes directly to peacebuilding.
3. Dismantling of Military Capabilities: Hauser calls for a comprehensive dismantling of Hamas’s military capabilities. He views the complete neutralization of these capabilities as essential for any durable peace and to prevent escalations and foster a more secure environment.

Additionally, Hauser underscores the importance of broadening Israel’s security dialogue to include a wider array of international actors. Engaging global powers and regional stakeholders in a cohesive peace strategy would enhance the legitimacy and effectiveness of Israel’s security measures. This expanded dialogue aims to synchronize international diplomatic efforts with Israel’s security objectives, potentially easing regional tensions and promoting broader cooperation.

Hauser offers a timely and critical contribution to the discourse on Israel’s national security strategy, challenging the status quo with a strategic roadmap designed for lasting peace and stability. By implementing Hauser’s recommendations, Israel could significantly transform its security landscape. For policymakers and a broader audience engaged in modern security challenges, this paper provides essential insights and a compelling case for strategic change, advocating for a shift toward proactive and preventive security governance.

Gregg Roman

Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 was based on hopes that the Palestinians would choose peace, but instead they chose war. In Operations Cast Lead (2008), Pillar of Defense (2012), and Protective Edge (2014), Israel was surprised by Hamas’s adoption of Hezbollah’s strategy of moving the battlefield onto Israeli territory through increasing rocket fire.

After each operation, Israel failed to adopt a strategy to proactively remove the rocket threat. Concerns about Egyptian relations and overestimates of Israeli casualties from a ground operation led Israel to accept a “concept of rounds” – tolerating periodic rocket attacks and focusing only on defense. This fundamentally changed Israel’s long-held principle that the battlefield must remain outside Israeli territory.

Media and political leadership reinforced this concept, instilling a false “victory consciousness” after each round despite the deteriorating reality. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority pursued “lawfare” to restrict Israel’s military options through international legal pressure. Coupled with Hamas’s violence, this formed a pincer movement.

The concept of rounds collapsed catastrophically on October 7, 2023, when a Hamas attack killed 1,200 Israelis. This exposed Israel’s underestimation of Hamas, the failure of intelligence warnings and defenses, and its inability to respond effectively. It damaged Israel’s reputation for deterrence and led regional adversaries to believe defeating Israel may now be possible.

In responding, Israel must insist on four elements in any future Gaza arrangement in order to achieve decisive victory and restore deterrence:

1. Israel must control security in Gaza, including buffer zones, to ensure no more attacks or threats emerge. Loss of territory, not just military defeat, is key to deterring Hamas.
2. Gaza must be demilitarized of heavy weapons. Reconstruction aid should be conditioned on all rockets being removed Gaza. This is a global interest, as the Gaza model could be applied elsewhere.
3. Hamas’s military wing must be eliminated or expelled from Gaza, as occurred with the PLO in Lebanon in 1982. The international community may accept expulsion over a migrant/humanitarian crisis.
4. Expectations for Gaza’s recovery must be lowered, as dysfunction is likely to persist, as seen in other conflict zones. Israel should tolerate this and focus solely on preventing security threats.

During this conflict a northern front also emerged as Hezbollah escalated attacks, exposing Israel’s failure to respond proactively to Hezbollah’s growing capabilities. Any Hezbollah withdrawal will be tactical, not strategic, if rocket threats remain. Israel also failed to preempt Houthi attacks by not pressing the U.S. to designate the group as terrorists.

The emergence of a multi-front war raises doubts about Israel’s long-held imperative to defend itself independently. Rectifying this requires rethinking budget priorities and force structure to adapt to evolving threats. Failing to draw clear lessons and implement changes risks Israel’s long-term security.

As Israel’s defense capabilities collapsed with astonishing speed on October 7, 2023, costing the blood of more than 1,200 murdered Israelis, the nation’s military strategy followed suit. October 7 was clarifying moment when the IDF’s tactical skills and reputation could not make up for the lack of a national strategy, thereby shattering the previous complacency. On that Saturday morning it was revealed that Hamas’s trickery had trumped the IDF. The cost of systemically underestimating Hamas was revealed in all its disgrace, and most predictions of Hamas’s operations were revealed as useless. The IDF could not provide, in real time, the required intelligence warning of Hamas’s intentions despite huge investments in money and resources. During the first 24 hours following the attacks, the IDF’s operational preparedness was woefully inadequate to protect the border or Israeli citizens in their homes and communities.

It turns out that the start-up nation, with the best army in the world, suffered a decade-long strategic fixation. October 7 will go down as the culmination of an Israeli march of folly whose first steps were taken a decade before.

That Saturday sparked the greatest crisis of trust between the IDF and the citizens of Israel since Israel’s rebirth. The common phrases “where was the IDF” and “why is the army not coming?” penetrated beyond the communities surrounding Gaza. The consequences of the IDF’s operational failure to protect, literally, the homes of the citizens in the south damaged the sense of personal security of all Israeli citizens, especially those in communities near the border in the north, east, and south. The main part of the fighting occurred inside the territory of the State of Israel, leaving bodies in its fields and streets and creating a national trauma it is doubtful that even a victory in Gaza will struggle to alleviate. In this context, Israel went backwards for a moment to a hundred years ago when every person lived and felt that only he could guarantee his own safety, that there would be no protective force at his side in times of trouble.

The failures of October 7 were not only manifested in the deaths of some 1,200 Israelis and the loss citizens’ sense of personal security. For the first time in a quarter century, the foundation of Israeli power, resting on the assumption that Israel is the Middle East’s superior military power, suffered a significant blow. The October 7 attack damaged the reputation of Israel’s deterrent capability in the eyes of friend and foe alike. It created the opportunity for regional strategic changes, as more and more people and organizations in the Middle East believe Israel no longer needs to be feared. If in October 1973 the dream that “the Jews could be thrown into the sea” was abandoned, then in October 2023 Hamas made many among the half billion Muslims surrounding the Jewish State of less than ten million believe that with a little luck, Israel can be defeated. This new perception is spreading in the Middle East and is the most dangerous fallout from the events of October 7.

“The day after” Hamas’s attack, Israel fears the collapse of its deterrence in the region. This concern reduces Israel’s flexibility in the ongoing Gaza campaign. If in the past Israel could present limited achievements as victories, this privilege has vanished. The Gaza campaign is being examined with a critical eye by both the citizens of Israel and our friends and enemies in the region. The Israeli leadership must realize that it is no longer possible to be satisfied with a performance that merely creates a feeling of victory among the Israeli public. Rather, Israel must win a clear victory that cannot be doubted and will reverberate not only in Israel, but from Beirut to Tehran.

Two target audiences are sensitive to the outcome of the war in Gaza. First, many Israelis who reside near the Gaza Strip will not return to their homes if they conclude that the events in October 7 constitute another chapter in the failed strategy of rounds. When war causes a demographic change in a defined territory, it spurs a strategic change. Moreover, if in the future Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip are under unified Palestinian management, Palestinians will seek to connect the two regions through a territorial continuum. This potential challenge obliges Israel, at the conclusion of the Gaza campaign, to significantly increase the Jewish population in the land between Judea and Samaria and Gaza, thus creating a clear territorial buffer between the two Palestinian areas. Failure to achieve a clear victory in Gaza may indirectly affect this long-term Israeli interest.

Second, Iran and its proxies are carefully studying the Gaza campaign’s progress. Lack of a clear Israeli victory will confirm their suspicion that the Jewish state is mortally wounded. This would lead to chronic instability resulting in bloodshed on a huge scale across the region. Those who want peace and stability must work for a definite and clear Israeli victory in its Gaza campaign.

Israel’s political class stated the goal of Operation Swords of Iron as “destroying Hamas.” Yet, Israel’s leadership desired, even at the beginning of the war, to set a “vague” goal not necessarily including absolute victory. This lack of clarity could significantly dampen the public’s willingness to pay the war’s ever-increasing price in lives and materiel absent clearly stated and measurable objectives. Progress in a well-defined Israeli victory in Gaza is measured by many goals; the road to it is filled with challenges.

There is, first, uncertainty about the configuration of the ground war. The range of soft power at hand are numerous and need to be explained. They include diplomatic talks between Israel and its allies, Israel’s position in world public opinion, the strength of the Israeli economy as the war continues, and the resilience of Israeli society, including the safety of the hostages and the loss of life. These are in addition to the political instability and ideological disputes in Israeli society and particularly questions related to the day after the war in both Gaza and the PA.

Given the uncertainty of this background, four elements must be included in any future settlement of the Gaza campaign. Over the long term, they make possible a clear Israeli victory and will reinvigorate the elements of deterrence in Gaza as well as in the broader environment.

In brief:

1. The overall responsibility for security in the area should be in Israeli hands so that Israel will have dynamic military freedom of action, free of obstructions, similar to the IDF’s freedom of action in Areas A and B in Judea and Samaria. In addition, Israel will maintain under its control security zones in the Gaza Strip that will form a buffer between the communities and the fence surrounding the Strip and the populated areas within Gaza.
2. The Gaza Strip will be demilitarized of both heavy and light weapons.
3. Optimal conditions for consolidating the control and management capabilities of the territory by non-Hamas parties will be created and maintained. To this end, Israel must eliminate the bulk of the organized fighting force of Hamas or, alternatively, remove from the Strip a significant number of people who are members of the military wing of Hamas.
4. Israel must lower expectations regarding the arrangements that will be made in Gaza in the coming years and make serious assumptions that chaos and backwardness will characterize the Strip, similar to the situation in many regions following the Arab Spring.

In more detail:

1. The overall responsibility for security in the region should be Israel’s; Israel must control security zones in the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s core interest lies in ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel, that terrorists lack the ability to launch rockets at Israel, and that any above-or-underground infiltration threat from Gaza is destroyed. Israel must establish a security arrangement that does not explicitly or implicitly assume that the security of Israeli citizens living close to the Gaza border will be different from that of those who choose to live in Tel Aviv. All other interests relevant to Israel and those in Gaza are dwarfed by the core interest, which is security.

In everything related to today’s discussion regarding the postwar period, Israel should insist on the realization of its security without compromise or willingness to take risks. In order to ensure this, Israel must be the sole entity with overall responsibility for security arrangements in the region and must maintain absolute freedom of action in the Gaza Strip and in Areas A and B in Judea and Samaria. Israel’s supreme interest in Gaza is preventing the consolidation of offensive capabilities by adopting a policy of constant friction with the enemy and a disproportionate response to terrorist actions.

Israel must adopt a declared policy of continuous and systematic action against terrorist organizations and military force building, even if it is Sisyphean. Any target that is discovered must be destroyed upon discovery. Israel must abandon the strategy of accumulating “target banks” and attacking them following a serious event. Israel needs to develop capabilities for a zero-tolerance approach to the acquisition of power and war-making capabilities in the Gaza Strip and must operate without political limitations and constraints. Israel should announce this policy before its enemies in Gaza and within the framework of constructive dialogue with its friends. In this context, Israel needs to abandon its misconception over the years that dictated military activity based on assessing the enemy’s intentions and not on the basis of the build-up of the enemy’s capabilities.

Israel must insist that at the end of the war a security zone will be established within the territory of the Strip that will allow the residents of the Gaza Envelope communities to return to their homes and prevent the possibility of another land invasion of Israel. Israel must maintain a tight grip on security zones in Gaza for a period long enough to allow it to gauge the intentions and capabilities of the new forces that will establish control over Gaza. If Gaza turns to peace, then Israel will consider in the future a retreat to the armistice line of 1949. It must be remembered that the unilateral retreat to that line in 2005 assumed it was necessary to ensure stability and end the violence and aggression originating in Gaza.

Leaders believed that, under these conditions, Gaza would flourish. Instead, Gaza armed to the teeth and launched rockets at Israel. Rather than a Singaporean state model, Gaza became a violent Iran-supported Islamist Somalia.

After over a decade of rocket barrages on Israeli communities and civilians, and a surprise ground invasion that claimed some 1,200 victims in one day, Israel must reconsider its unilateral move to withdraw to the border line of 1949, as the withdrawal did establish Israel’s security. The October 7 attacks oblige us to re-evaluate the faulty assumptions of almost twenty years ago. It is now clear, if our citizens are to be protected, the border must be adjusted.

In light of the October 7 attacks, the tenets of international law fully justify the long-term military seizure of areas in Gaza sufficient to prevent a recurrence of aggression and terrorism against Israeli civilians. Furthermore, our commitments to the Palestinians in signed agreements stipulate that the final border with the Gaza Strip will be determined in the final phase of peace negotiations, not before.

Although the creation of buffer zones as mentioned above is intended to ensure security and prevent violence, it may be considered indirectly a substantial deterrent measure, in particular towards those who chose to rape women and murder old people and children near the border. Some may argue that neither killing nor destroying real estate on a large scale will deter those who commit crimes against humanity, but the loss of territory is an effective means of deterrence in the Middle East.

2. Disarming Gaza of heavy and other weapons

Israel’s strategy toward the Gaza Strip should be based on the total demilitarization of Gaza of heavy weapons. Israel must insist on this demilitarization for both moral and security considerations. The demilitarization of Gaza is a necessary condition for the residents of the Gaza Envelope to return to their homes and establish proper living conditions free of threats. It is a necessary condition that will allow the creation of a new balance in the Gaza Strip itself, will allow new forces to grow in Gaza or control it, and is a necessary – though not sufficient – condition for a stable and long-lasting settlement. The demilitarization of Gaza is consistent with and in the spirit of past agreements signed by Israel and the Palestinians. The demilitarization of Gaza will also be a point of reference for future arrangements in other territories.

Israel should have overall responsibility for disarmament. The lesson from the failed international efforts to disarm southern Lebanon in accordance with U.N. Resolution 1701 must be applied in Gaza. Only Israel can guarantee the disarmament of the territory and thereby guarantee relative stability and peace over time.

Israel demanded the demilitarization of Gaza from heavy weapons as early as the end of Operation Protective Edge in September 2014. This was a consensual Israeli position supported by both sides of the political map. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented at the end of the operation that “this is a sharp and clear struggle. ... This is a first and necessary step in the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. This must be part of any solution, and the international community must strongly demand it.” Leaders from the center-left, including Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid, and Yaakov Perry, presented detailed plans that included the demilitarization of Gaza. Even then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, saw demilitarization as a core principle in the regional dynamic for regulating Gaza and, at the end of Operation Protective Edge, said: “Any long-term solution in the Gaza Strip requires the disarmament of Hamas and the other terrorist organizations. We are working with Israel, with our partners in the region, and with other international parties to realize this goal of disarming Gaza.”

However, even though the principle of demilitarization was accepted as a fundamental necessity, Israel never insisted on its implementation. Even during Operation Guardian of the Walls, Israel avoided the issue and abandoned the objective of disarmament. No significant players in Israel truly believed in the prospect of Gaza’s demilitarization. Nor would anyone open a dialogue with the international community on Gaza’s future that held up demilitarization as the cornerstone of a future settlement, either as an operational goal or a moral principle.

Israel must act decisively to disarm the Gaza Strip of rockets as a precondition for Gaza’s rehabilitation in any future arrangement related to the Strip. This should be Israel’s official position towards the international community. Domestically, it must be accepted and agreed upon by all Israeli policymakers; abroad, Israel’s friends and allies must also accept this arrangement.

The principle of demilitarization is recognized in international dialogue and relevant to our region. The international community forced Bashar al-Assad to rid Syria of chemical weapons in exchange for allowing him to retain power. Israel should propose this widely accepted practice to international parties interested in the rehabilitation of Gaza and the future for its residents.

The Israeli leadership adopted Gaza demilitarization as part of its plans for the “day after” the war ends. It requires crushing Hamas by either inflicting massive damage to members of its military wing or removing them from the Strip the way PLO forces were removed from Lebanon in 1982. Heavy weapons remaining in postwar Gaza should exit via truck convoys to the Sinai Peninsula, where they may rust. For every humanitarian aid truck entering Gaza, a truckload of rockets must leave.

The international community’s disregard for threats posed by rockets targeted at the Israeli civilians is immoral and dangerous. Threats faced by Israel precede what can happen elsewhere, whether in the Indo-Pacific region or in Southern Europe, which could be struck by missiles fired from lawless regions of North Africa. As the range of rockets and missiles increases and access to weaponized drone technology spreads, large population centers are threatened by both stateless and state-sponsored terrorists. Gaza’s demilitarization, therefore, is in the long-term interests of the free world beyond Israel.

3. The elimination of the bulk of the organized fighting force of Hamas or, alternatively, its expulsion from the Gaza Strip

There is no hope for “day after” stability in Gaza as long as the members Hamas’s military wing remain in the Strip. Neither the dreams of the international community, including the return of the PA to the region, nor Israel’s desires will come true as long organized military forces remain in Gaza because attempts to subjugate heavily armed Gazans will end in bloodshed. Hence, Israel has two choices: continue its Sisyphean warfare against guerrilla forces and kill approximately 40,000 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist fighters; or a expel the remaining military forces.

A methodical attack on Hamas’s organized forces will cause greater harm to Gaza’s uninvolved population. What level of harm is permissible? Given growing international pressure on Israel to curtail actions necessary to neutralize every terrorist in Gaza, mass deportation of Hamas operatives from Gaza analogous to the PLO’s removal from Lebanon offers a possible alternative.

The alternative – the destruction of Hamas’s military forces – means the large scale killing of non-involved people. The IDF today is far more powerful than it was in 1982, when removing PLO personnel prevented an unfolding humanitarian disaster in Lebanon. Similarly, removing the organized military arm of Hamas from Gaza today will prevent an unfolding humanitarian disaster in the Strip.

We must, therefore, examine how Israel may adopt policy, which has the added benefit of allowing Israel to enter a constructive dialogue with its allies.

Hamas’s resolve to continue fighting may crumble when it becomes clear to both the residents of the Gaza Strip and to Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt that Hamas’s military wing has no future in the Strip given the unfolding harm to two million people. With the Lebanese precedent in mind, the international community will prefer the deportation of the military wing rather than see Gaza’s residents immigrate as have the populations of other battle zones in the Middle East. There are countries who will receive Hamas’s military, just as countries took in the millions of refugees from the “Arab Spring,” including hundreds of thousands of fighters.

Israel must make it clear in every international arena that the sooner Hamas withdraws from Gaza, the less collateral damage the population will suffer. Conversely, the longer Hamas fights, the greater the chaos and costs. This move also clears the way for greater American pressure on Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey to lead Hamas out of Gaza. Ending the war without the elimination or removal of all members of Hamas’s military wing from Gaza will encourage Israel’s victory to be misinterpreted, and not just symbolically.

Israeli victory is essential given its humiliation on October 7. Victory is necessary to strengthen regional deterrence and to encourage the Saudis and other nations to pursue a regional strategic alliance with Israel. A clear Israeli victory is also a necessary precondition for residents of the Gaza Envelope to return to their homes.

Any conclusion of the war that does not include the elimination or withdrawal of Hamas’s military force from Gaza will be interpreted as a Hamas victory, however extensive the damage it suffers. It will also block any realistic possibility of forming an alternative force to control Gaza. Survival of Hamas as a military force paves the way for its rehabilitation in Gaza and it resumption of control in the strip, to the chagrin of Israel, the United States, and the Palestinian Authority.

4. Israel must lower expectations regarding the arrangements that will be made in Gaza after the war

Debate about the day after the war in Gaza is disconnected from events in the Middle East over the last decade. Even before the start of the “Arab Spring,” the countries of the Middle East, with the exception of Israel, were not reformed and orderly states or societies with an adequate quality of life. The events of the “Arab Spring” sparked chaos in parts of the Middle East and exacerbated the poverty, hunger, and violence afflicting millions of people. Similar conditions will probably prevail in Gaza in the years to come. Even before Operation Iron Swords, the Strip did not enjoy proper living conditions and social arrangements. Even extensive international efforts to improve the situation in Gaza are unlikely to succeed.

In recent years, the U.S. has tried to help various countries in the region become functioning states, but these attempts have failed. Because where the U.S. failed, Israel is unlikely to succeed, the expectations of the Israeli public and international community must be lowered as to the potential for Gaza’s growth into a fully functioning, normal state. Instead, Israel is destined to face a backward area whose destruction will only intensify its dysfunction and difficulties. There is nothing upon which to rest high expectations regarding the restoration and stabilization of the education system or the restoration of civil infrastructure in Gaza. There will be no difference in the years to come between Gaza and Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Libya, or Yemen. Even there, when Israel is not involved there are no expectations regarding minimal political functionality, as the world operates in only one perspective – maintaining security.

Regarding Gaza’s future, Israel must guarantee one thing: removing from the Strip all security threats to Israel. Other matters should be entrusted to the Gazans, while pursuing a dynamic policy to identify optimal, creative responses to emerging local forces as they arise, and to examine other countries’ proposals to take responsibility for events in Gaza.

During ongoing operations, Israel has faced a northern front, led by Hezbollah, Iran’s affiliate. During the war, Hezbollah fired continuously from Lebanese territory into Israel, attempted terrorist infiltration, and coordinated occasional rocket fire from Syria towards the Golan Heights. For the first time since the temporary evacuation in 1920 of the four settlements in the Finger of the Galilee – Tel Hai, Kfar Giladi, Metula and Hamara following the Battle of Tel Hai – the entire Upper Galilee region was evacuated of Israeli civilians living close to the border due Hezbollah’s continuous activity. The government’s decision regulating the northern border settlements’ evacuation states that “in view of the security reality and the possibility of the campaign developing into the northern sector as well, it is not possible to maintain the safety of the population or ensure the supply of basic products and services for it within a range of 5 km from the northern border except through the organized evacuation of the population.”

Estimates are the Israeli government ordered about 164,000 people from their homes, including residents of the city of Kiryat Shmona and the towns of Metula and Shlomi, making them all refugees. There are estimates that thousands more residents farther from the border left their homes in an uncoordinated manner.

Hezbollah has repeatedly attacked Israel’s northern border, resulting in property damage on an unprecedented scale as well as loss of life. Such actions, in the days before Operation Iron Swords, would have sparked an all-out war. At the time of this writing, however, both sides have chosen not to turn the exchange of gunfire into an all-out confrontation.

Hezbollah’s intense activity in the north has also occupied a substantial percentage of the IDF’s capabilities and leadership. For the first time, questions arose regarding Israel’s ability to fight on multiple fronts. There are questions about Israel’s decision to contain Hezbollah’s growth in Lebanon as the latter violates Security Council Resolution 1701 concerning the demilitarization of the area between Israel’s border with Lebanon and the Litani River and the prohibition of Hezbollah military activity there.

Israeli passivity in the face of Hezbollah’s activity on Israel’s northern border endangers Israel. Only the outbreak of the Operation and activity on the northern front moved Israel’s leadership to face this danger and act to reduce it. History will judge negatively that civilian and military leaders refused to act, over many years, to improve strategic conditions in Lebanon, particularly in the years that Hezbollah was mired in Syria.

Hezbollah’s withdrawal beyond the Litani will not remove the danger. Although Hamas’s success in raiding the surrounding communities created the perception in the Israeli public that the essential strategic problem on the northern border consists of raids on the northern communities by the Radwan forces, the removal of Radwan forces from the zero line of the border will be a tactical rather than a strategic achievement. The most significant threat from the north – the ability to fire rockets and missiles from Lebanon – will not be reduced even with a tactical withdrawal of Hezbollah beyond the Litani.

The operation in Gaza led for the first time to the opening of additional active fronts. Thus, for the first time in its history, Israel faced attacks from Yemen, where the organization “Ansar Allah,” better known under the name “Houthi rebels,” operates. It is a social, religious, political, and military organization that developed in the 1980s and 90s. The primary motivations for its growth and increasing religious core (Zayid Shia) were internal changes in Yemen along with the increase of Shia fanaticism following the revolution in Iran.

The “Arab Spring” that broke out in 2011 strengthened the Houthis, and by the end of 2014 they took control of Yemen’s capital Sana’a. Since then, the organization has steadily strengthened its military strength and the scope of its activities. The breadth of its military capacity and its interest in regional issues are growing.

The Houthis’ ideology is hostile towards Israel and the West, as evinced by a slogan popular among its members (albeit coined by Iranians), “Death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam.” Iran is behind the organization, assists it financially and militarily, provides weapons, and trains its members. The Houthis have cruise missiles and Iranian UAV fleets for gathering intelligence and striking naval targets.

Its dangerous ideology, operational capabilities, and attachment to Iran, along with other actions aimed at destabilizing the region and impairing trade in the Arabian and Red Seas led the Trump administration to declare the Houthis a terrorist organization.

In a statement from January 2021, the then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explained that “the organization, acting on behalf of Iran and under its direction, carries out acts of terrorism against the countries of the region, and works to create a situation of imbalance in the Red Sea and Arab arena.” Its declaration as a terrorist organization was canceled by the Biden administration about a month later (February 16, 2021) due to the difficult humanitarian situation in Yemen and the American pursuit of dialogue to resolve the conflict in the country.

The Houthis’ directed their terrorism mainly against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates until Israel’s response to October 7, after which they attacked Israel from Yemen for the first time. The Houthis also tried to impose a blockade by infringing the freedom of navigation in the Bab al Mandab straits and effectively closing the shipping lanes to Israel. As a result, maritime traffic that was directed to the port of Eilat was halted, reducing the port’s business over a long period significantly. In the past, actions of this kind constituted a “casus belli.” In the current war, however, the Houthi arena is a secondary issue.

In light of the Houthis’ repeated violations of freedom of navigation and flagrant violations of international law, the U.S. formed a coalition to restore free navigation imposed and deter the Houthis from offensive actions such as launching missiles and UAVs.

Israel did not see fit to include the Houthis in the list of terrorist organizations, even though their hostility was known before the war. Regarding the Houthis, Israel was not sure how to stand alongside its allies in the region, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and was forced to take a stand and act only after suffering attacks from the Houthis. Before the Houthis attacked Israel, it avoided pro-active steps against them, even choosing not to ask the U.S. to declare the Houthis a terrorist organization.

The development of a multi-front campaign raises a strategic question about Israel’s capability for self-defense. The ability to defend itself has been the cornerstone of Israeli security since the Yom Kippur War in 1968. Israel’s leadership recognized this as a core concept and Israel’s macroeconomic decisions derived from it. In the last decade, Israel has invested over NIS 750 billion in financing and expanding its ability to produce military materiel of sufficient quantity and quality to attain and sustain self-defense, independent of other countries. For this level of national protection, Israeli society has foregone many investments in infrastructure, education, and welfare. Operation Iron Swords and the development for the first time of a multi-front campaign as a derivative of a military operation in the Gaza Strip casts doubt on Israel’s operational ability to meet the core mission that Israel set for itself in recent years: to “defend itself with its own forces,” independent of its allies.

Israel’s assessment, established over the years, of the unlikelihood that several military fronts would open simultaneously led it to be unprepared for today’s multi-front war. Both political and military leadership over the last decade must undergo a profound soul-searching regarding its geostrategic short-sightedness.

We must quickly resolve this doubt, even at the cost of changing priorities and significantly increasing the security budget as well as restructuring and adapting the IDF to meet tomorrow’s challenges.

In September 2005, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in its entirety. Israelis expected that this ended Israel’s domination of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Some went further with their flights of imagination, joining in Yasir Arafat’s vision of the Gaza Strip as a “Singapore of the Middle East.” In this view, international aid and support, a long coastline, and progressive ambitions would set the Palestinians in Gaza on course toward a prosperous, independent future leading to comprehensive peace throughout the region.

After having weighed the options, the Israeli leadership at the time decided on a complete withdrawal to the Armistice Line that had been agreed in 1950 (known as the “Green Line”). The main factor in the decision to withdraw to this line was the desire to bring about the “end of the conflict and end of all claims” from the territorial standpoint in Gaza. Thus, the Palestinians would have no grounds to stand on for continuing hostilities against Israel from the Gaza border. The withdrawal even included evacuation of the “northern perimeter” - the northern area of the Gaza Strip, adjoining the border with Israel, which had been the site of three settlements (Nisanit, Elei-Sinai, and Dugit). The area had effectively served as a security buffer zone for the city of Ashkelon and the surrounding communities. It had been free of any Arab settlements and therefore there was ostensibly no real reason to withdraw from it. Such a withdrawal could only be justified if one applied the rationale of pre-empting any future Palestinian territorial claims. Moreover, Israel took the step of unilateral withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip even when, according to its international obligations within the framework of agreements with the Palestinians (Oslo I and Oslo II), it was not obligated to do so. The discussion on the route of the final border between Israel and the Gaza Strip was supposed to take place in the last phase of the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Until then Israel was allowed to hold parts of the Gaza Strip that were not included in the withdrawal defined in these initial arrangements (“Gaza-Jericho first”). As mentioned, Israel preferred to withdraw fully and unilaterally in the hope that this step would bring quiet, stability, and peace.

The completion of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza generated hope among some that a “Singapore of the Middle East” would be established in Gaza. Many people of goodwill in the world and in Israel imagined the Gaza greenhouses exporting vegetables and flowers to Europe and how Gaza could be turned into a Middle Eastern granary.

The reality was very different. Gazans were not impressed by Israel’s complete withdrawal and chose war over peace.

The two years after the unilateral withdrawal (2006-2007) constituted a strategic turning point: the democratic victory of Hamas in the first (and last) elections to the Palestinian Legislative Authority, receiving 74 seats out of 132, led to a year and a half of violent clashes between Hamas and Fatah that ended in Fatah’s defeat in Gaza, the throwing of Fatah members from rooftops, and Hamas’s violent takeover of the Strip. Since then, Gaza has become a kind of Somali-Iranian mutation under the control of Hamas. Instead of a granary, Gaza became a Middle Eastern missile factory.

In December 2008, about a year and a half after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, Operation Cast Lead began. In 22 days of fighting, Hamas launched over 2,000 rockets at Israel. For the first time, these rockets reached beyond the range of Ashkelon and Sderot, towards the cities of Beer Sheva, Kiryat Gat, Ashdod, and Yavneh. In doing so, Hamas in Gaza implemented for the first time the Hezbollah strategy, which it learned during the Second Lebanon War, and its essence was moving the front towards the Israeli interior. Hamas has made rocket fire the dominant element in its fight against Israel. Since Cast Lead, Hamas has been shooting from within Gazan civilian populations towards Israeli civilian populations on a large scale. It seems that the Israeli civilian population living in the urban environment around the Gaza Strip is the only population in the world that has routinely faced rocket fire for many years.

Israel, which was surprised by Hamas’s full adoption of Hezbollah’s strategy, was supposed to adopt a new strategy that would respond to the threat from Hamas and prepare for significant action in Gaza that would remove the threat. Israel was supposed to act at the first opportunity after Operation Cast Lead in a strategy whose purpose was to return the battlefield to enemy territory and re-stabilize the concept of Israeli national defense. This concept was designed after the War of Independence and its essence is that the Israeli civilian population is not part of the battle and the events of the war will not take place within Israeli territory.

About four years after Operation Cast Lead, in November 2012, another significant round took place called Operation Pillar of Defense. During the operation, in eight days approximately 1,500 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip at the communities in the south and, for the first-time, rockets were launched at the central cities of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. This presented Israel with the opportunity to change the equation vis-a-vis Hamas and act decisively to remove the threat of rockets. However, Israel chose not to take such steps thanks to a reasonable fear that an aggressive action in Gaza could lead to the severing of relations between Israel and Egypt and the collapse of the peace agreement. Egypt was then led by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi, and Israel preferred to reach a ceasefire agreement with Hamas after eight days and postpone the treatment of the root cause in Gaza.

Following the kidnapping and murder of three young Israelis from Gush Etzion and with rockets fired from Gaza into Israeli territory in July 2014, Operation Protective Edge began. This was the optimal Israeli opportunity to bring about a strategic change and return to the starting point in which the civilian Israeli population would be placed outside the conflict zone. Israel should have acted aggressively in the Strip and used rockets and missiles to defuse it. Over the course of 51 days, Hamas fired some 4,600 rockets into Israeli territory, including missiles and PGMs that reached Haifa’s suburbs. For the first time, Hamas shut down the arrival of foreign airlines at Ben Gurion Airport for 48 hours and cut Israel off from much of the world.

Israel employed mainly air power and conducted limited ground maneuvers in Gaza until these actions threatened Israel’s leadership more than the residents of Gaza. In the face of the demand for a massive ground operation, with the goal of neutralizing rockets in Gaza, the cabinet (according to media reports) discussed the possibility that at least 500 Israeli military deaths were expected in such an operation. Political and military leaders decided once again not to disarm Gaza. Instead, they adopted the “concept of rounds” which, without public debate, replaced Israel’s strategy of avoiding battles on Israeli territory. The new approach included Israeli acquiescence to allowing Hamas’s military strength to grow. Israel proved willing to hand Hamas the right to choose the timing of the “next round,” while Israel focused only on defense that left civilians in the line of fire.

Israel’s new security concept was mainly based on the good results of the Iron Dome defense system to intercept rockets. The fact that the massive firing of rockets by Hamas did not achieve significant casualties led the political and security leadership to adopt a concept that favors a situation in which the civilian population lives a normal life under repeated rocket terror threats that inflict psychological harm and not bodily harm over military involvement that claims human life.

Iron Dome was supposed to serve as a safety net for an extensive operation by the IDF to eliminate the threat of rockets from Gaza. Instead, it became the cornerstone of national security, making it difficult to adjust to changing threats. The political and military echelons declared that the deployment of the Iron Dome eliminated all threats, as it intercepted over 95 percent of its targets. Children of Sderot and the Gaza Strip would have to accept terrorism as a part of daily life.

By overestimating its own capability and underestimating Hamas’s, Israel came to believe that Hamas could not launch a surprise attack. The concept of security was reformulated: in the face of Hamas’s growth, the IDF created a “bank of targets for the next round” in lieu of a proactive and systematic approach to every emerging target. To deal with the threat posed by rockets, Israel deployed the Iron Dome. Alongside it, it developed a defensive combat theory based on significantly subsidizing the construction of bomb shelters in houses, offices, and on the streets. Residents adapted to a “normal” life under rocket fire that became routine during emergencies. Faced with the threats of a ground or underground invasion by the military wing of Hamas, the IDF’s solution was an above-ground fence and an underground wall. The underground wall was a response to Hamas’s network of tunnels, while a tall fence with sensing and warning systems was to prevent an above-ground invasion. The multi-layered defense in Gaza not only caused Israel to abandon any idea of an offensive initiative, but also diverted billions of shekels from budgets that were intended for other means of warfare and other infrastructure improvements in Israel’s economy.

Should the integrated defense system of the Iron Dome, defensive fences, and shelters prove insufficient, Israel’s leadership, together with the heads of the security forces, formulated a plan for the mass evacuation of citizens from the border areas, meekly called “temporary evacuation.” In practice, it was a policy for an orderly evacuation of historically unprecedented proportions under which a mass evacuation of the population would be a routine procedure during wartime. It was adopted absent a detailed public discussion on a practice that turns residents into refugees in their own country. The topic is extremely sensitive in Zionist discourse since the evacuation of Tel Hai in 1920.

The evacuation of the towns on the northern border for many months with the beginning of Operation Swords of Iron demonstrates the tactic of “temporary evacuation.” It is doubtful whether any questions of Zionist values were asked while making this operative decision. There is no doubt that the Israeli leadership decided to evacuate the northern communities because of the obvious tactical benefits of this step, but it ignored the strategic costs of creating an empty buffer zone within Israeli sovereign territory. Such significant damage to the way of life in the northern communities may lead to a long-term depopulation of area that would cement Hezbollah’s strategic achievement.

This situation arises from an arrogant conviction that Israel’s intelligence services provide foolproof protection against a surprise attack, and that even if such an attack should occur, it will be a mere tactical blow after which Israel will respond with force. The tactical solutions of educating citizens for a “normal” life under the threat of missiles, coupled with the Iron Dome, a fence, sheltering, and evacuating communities in extreme cases, became the IDF’s only answer to attacks from Gaza. Virtuoso tactical capabilities were used to hide the absence of a suitable national strategy. Missing was a strategy to negate Hamas’s capabilities in advance rather than simply anticipating its intentions and defending against them.

Israel erred by not ending Operation Protective Edge with the disarmament of Gaza as a condition for the restoration of the Strip. Instead, it became a “dead letter” in the government’s announcement at operation’s conclusion. Long-range rockets should have been removed from the Gaza Strip. Instead, Israel tried to contain Hamas as it grew and strengthened. In doing so, Israel allowed Hamas to become ever more dangerous.

This change in perception at the conclusion of Protective Edge not only weakened Israel’s sovereignty and endangered its citizens, but also diluted Israel’s position as a regional power. The attacks of October 7, 2023, demonstrated the cumulative effect of undermining Israel’s reputation as a dangerous foe.

During May 2021, on Jerusalem Day, Israel had a last chance to a disarm Gaza of rockets and missiles as part of Operation Guardian of the Walls. Over 12 days, approximately 4,400 rockets, missiles, and mortar shells were fired at Israel, which responded with an air campaign, but decided against a ground operation. Hamas’s central tunneling infrastructures (“the Metro”) were bombed with the intent to turn them into “death traps” for hundreds of terrorists. In practice, according to media sources, “the deception partially worked: only a few dozen operatives entered the ‘Hamas Metro,’ the IDF’s strategic operation that had been planned for years ... short of partial success: many tunnels were destroyed, but hundreds of Hamas fighters did not enter the tunnels.”

Operation Guardian of the Walls was the last opportunity to act against Gaza, and without igniting additional fronts, including the north that would distract the IDF’s attention and engage its forces. The Israelis believed at the time was that there was little chance, even in the future, that Hezbollah and the Shia axis would come to the aid of the Sunni Hamas, so that there would still be opportunities to deal with Gaza without launching a multi-arena campaign. The Operation Swords of Iron war that broke out about 30 months after Guardian of the Walls exposed the flaws in Israel’s view.

Operation Guardian of the Walls was a tangible example of failure of the “concept of the rounds.” Israel failed to achieve either tactical or strategic goals. The ratio between Hamas rocket fire and IDF lethality was lower than previous conflicts. Although Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi claimed lethality was a core element of the IDF’s power, according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, in Guardian of the Walls the IDF killed about 120 terrorists over 12 days. Yet the number of rockets fired were comparable to those used during the 51 days of Operation Protective Edge, when the IDF eliminated over 1,000 terrorists. Israel lost a key deception tool in a future war against Hamas with the bombing of the terror tunnels. Most of all, Israel reconciled with Hamas’s strategic achievements at the end of the fighting, which consist of four core components: the continuation of Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip, Hamas’s replacement of the Palestinian Authority as the “defender of Jerusalem,” Israeli consent to the growth of Hamas’s rocket force in Gaza, and a partial restoration of the Strip.

The Palestinian united front, although it split in 2007 into the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria and the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, did not disintegrate entirely and still seeks to undermine Israeli power and limit its activities in Gaza. Hamas took upon itself to lead through violent, offensive, and continuous initiatives between the Israeli operations, including via rockets, incendiary balloons, sniper fire, and demonstrations at Gaza Strip’s fence. The Palestinian Authority took the lead on the field of international law.

For over a decade, the Palestinians have implemented an orchestrated pincer movement to flank Israel. While Hamas attacks Israeli civilians in flagrant violation of international law, the Palestinian Authority works to restrict the IDF’s defensive activity against these attacks while making every effort to reduce the IDF’s operational flexibility to protect civilians. This maximizes the IDF’s risk-taking when responding to Hamas attacks and delegitimizes Israel internationally for defending its citizens.

The Palestinian Authority realized the benefits of opening a legal front against Israel immediately following Operation Cast Lead. It began the long and complex process of suing Israel in international tribunals. The PA intended to influence Israel more effectively than did Hamas, regarding both Gaza and the Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria. While those Israeli settlements present a complex issue with no helpful precedents in other parts of the world, the PA saw the IDF’s operations in Gaza as a convenient target due to the many precedents of violations of international law during wars occurring around the world.

The Palestinian Authority’s legal activity against Israel began around the Richard Goldstone report that investigated the IDF’s activities in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead at the end of 2008. Since then, the PA has worked in every way to establish an independent status that would enable legal proceedings to be initiated against Israel and to create a deterrent effect no less effective than violence. In 2009, the PA sought, in the name of the state of Palestine, to provide the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague with the authority to prosecute Israelis for Israel’s activities in Gaza. In April 2012, the court’s prosecutor determined that the conditions for recognizing the state of Palestine were not ripe. The Authority did not give up its efforts, and Israel did not see fit at this time to take significant action against the Authority for these steps. In November 2012, the United Nations General Assembly recognized Palestine as an observer state. After about two years, the Palestinian Authority joined as a “member state” to the Rome Convention and submitted a complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague as an unprecedented strategic step. The complaint alleged violations of the basic principles of the Rome Convention committed by Israel starting in June 2014, including during operation Protective Edge in Gaza.

In May 2015, the chief prosecutor of the court at the time, Pato Bensoda, began a preliminary examination that ended in December 2019, when the prosecutor announced that a full investigation should be held into the issue. In doing so, she defined three key issues: war crimes allegedly committed during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, war crimes allegedly committed by IDF forces during the “Marches of Return” (attempts to breach the Gaza fence into Israel) in 2018; and crimes allegedly committed by Israel regarding construction in Judea and Samaria.

The announcement by the prosecutor of the ICC Tribunal of an investigation against Israel brought the two-stage Palestinian pincer movement to an historic achievement. In the first phase, Hamas fired rockets and missiles from Gaza at urban areas and civilians in Israel. In response, Israel launched offensive military activity against Hamas. In the second stage, the Palestinian Authority instigated the opening of an investigation against Israel for its defensive actions and affected Israel’s ability to make strategic decisions and to tactically manage the battle. The PA’s achievement in The Hague created a chilling effect on the Israeli leadership’s ability to take action in Gaza. The court’s investigation led Israel to restraint in its use of force, which in turn led Israel to increase its risks on the battlefield. This decreased Israel’s willingness to make bold decisions on offensive operations for fear costing the lives of more soldiers.

The chilling effect of the PA’s achievements in the field of international law is evident in Israel’s activity in Operation Guardian of the Walls, an operation in which the lethality of Israel’s action was substantially eroded. The bottom line is that although the PA was apparently not involved on the Gaza front in a violent way, it remained, over the years, a kind of “hidden hand” in shaping the image of the war in the Gaza Strip.

Based on the observation of General Carl von Clausewitz that “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means,” it can be said that the Palestinian Authority tried to establish a national strategy according to which the “international delegitimization strategy of Israel led by the PA is nothing but the continuation of Hamas terror against Israel by other means.”

A hidden component of Israel’s strategic failure in the Gaza Strip is the weakening of its response to the determined, orderly, and effective action of the PA to restrict Israel’s actions in Gaza. Israel has never seen the PA’s activity at the Criminal Court as a priority and has not made this issue a core element of its relations with the Authority. Israel has not taken any effective restraining action against Palestinian aggression in the field of international law. The only active step against the Palestinians was a temporary freeze of about half a billion shekels from the Palestinians’ tax money in 2015 in response to the Palestinian accession to the International Criminal Court and the appeal for state recognition at the U.N. Security Council. These funds were later thawed. The Israeli political leadership made sure to turn a blind eye to this flagrant violation of the agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel and avoided making this matter a central issue in either direct or indirect talks with the Authority. Furthermore, Israel has never itself resorted to international law and the various tribunals against activities that violate international law by either Hamas or the PA. Here, too, Israel has remained on the defensive, never proactively addressing the potential threats, which it mostly ignored, all while underestimating the PA’s steps and overestimating its own ability to win in the arena of international law.

Even during Operation Swords of Iron, the PA took active steps against Israel on the international level. In the midst of the fighting, it encouraged South Africa to file a lawsuit against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague (ICJ), claiming Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza. The court did not accept South Africa’s request to issue an interim order to stop the fighting in Gaza, but for the first time and in an unprecedented manner, it issued orders against Israel pertaining to its activities in the Gaza Strip. This cast a pall over Israel’s defensive activity and tainted it with the suspicion of committing genocide. Thus far it has succeeded.

The “concept of rounds, born from the IDF’s unwillingness to deal with the rocket threat proactively, became the leading strategy of the State of Israel from 2009 to 2023.

The IDF’s preference for focusing on strategic defense supplemented by ad hoc tactical attacks was warmly embraced by the Israeli political leadership from both right and left. The political leadership should have challenged the IDF and raised questions about the weaknesses of the strategy of rounds. The political echelon should have understood the implications of focusing on defense while renouncing proactive action, including a preemptive strike, and the meaning of including the Israeli population in the Gaza Envelope under the threat of rocket terrorism as routine over many years. Israel instead assented to the claim that aggressive action in Gaza would cost the lives of thousands of soldiers and, as a result, formulated national priorities devoid of skepticism and based on an intolerance for the loss of soldiers, even at the cost of turning a blind eye to the fate of communities suffering from repeated rocket attacks. In the words of David Ben-Gurion, Israeli political leaders tried to identify what the people want and failed to set goals as to what the people need.

The political judgement regarding the lack of planning to carry out a substantial ground maneuver in Gaza was also based on overestimations by the military of the extent of casualties expected from this maneuver. The prevailing thesis in Israeli politics and media was that a full-scale maneuver in Gaza would result in thousands of Israeli deaths. Some will say that this thesis is fueled by the assessments of the military as presented periodically to political leaders. There is no doubt that the refusal to plan for a ground operation was bolstered by the multitude of retired defense forces officials who over the years denied the possibility of such a maneuver. Additionally, the vast majority of military reporters who were fed by ostensibly knowledgeable sources in the security forces strengthened arguments against planning a ground operation. A key issue to consider is the gap between the estimates regarding the price of a ground operation as presented to political leaders and the actual results. It will be insightful to assess the scope and significance of the effects of the overestimations regarding projected Israeli fatalities on decision-making procedures at the political level.

Israel’s political leadership and media cooperated in an atmosphere of mutual trust. Yet, the resulting ethos resulted in the lack of planning for proactive measures to remove the threat of rockets to Israeli citizens. The IDF also supported this concept both directly and indirectly. Directly, by not presenting to the political echelon an alternative; and indirectly, by long-term briefings to military reporters and senior reserve officers who appeared frequently on media channels and assured Israelis that a purely defensive policy, buttressed by the offensive ethos, could be interpreted as a definite victory. In words that have become commonplace in television studios for many years: “Hamas is deterred, restrained, and weakened” – even though it was in fact growing stronger over time – and the concept of rounds is the way to guarantee Israelis’ safety.

Israeli media’s coverage of Israel’s strategic situation in Gaza from 2009-2023 will not be remembered as its finest hour. Flaws characteristic of Arab media in the Middle East surfaced in Israel’s media at the end of each round. The media worked to instill a consciousness of victory among Israel’s citizens rather than reflect the reality, especially when it was bleak.