In the aftermath of Yahya Sinwar’s death, it’s easy to get distracted by both the incessant deluge of new events and the erroneous but common assumption that “ending the war” is now about getting the remaining hostages back.
In the interest, precisely, of not being thus distracted, I want to keep this brief and start not with a summary from the last 24 hours, absorbing though its details may be, but with a direct statement of priorities for the immediate future.
The summary is this. Israel’s priority must be winning the war, meaning not having to fight this war again, or spend any more time trying to tend an inherently unstable situation like the one in which Hamas rides along inviolate, on the constant invocation of an “Oslo” framework end-state that quite obviously is never going anywhere.
Winning the war must also mean that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah functions as a forward outpost of Iran snuggled under Israel’s armpit. The terror organizations must be neutralized for that purpose. It’s possible to rid Gaza of Hamas, and therefore that’s what must be done. It isn’t necessarily possible to entirely rid Lebanon of Hezbollah, because there’s a nominally separate government there that has to be dealt with. It may see its interests as continuing to involve Hezbollah.
That last proposition may in turn be a convenient narrative rather than reality. I.e., reality is that no “separate” government of Lebanon has meaningful existence; Hamas dominates that government as it does the No Man’s Land of southern Lebanon.
But if military elimination of the government of Lebanon isn’t an option, that constrains Israel as surely in reality as if the formally recognized government of Lebanon were really independent of Hezbollah. Having to continue dealing with a Lebanon structured for the appearance of a separate, independent government means there might as well be one.
That set of facts means Israel can’t address Gaza/Hamas and Lebanon/Hezbollah the same way. But it doesn’t mean Israel is required to settle for a return to the status quo ante in either location.
Israel isn’t required to, and Israel should not. Recurring storms of thousands of rockets being launched into Israel from just outside its borders since at least 2008, and the frequent need to mount military operations to delay the next storm and/or something worse, clearly indicate the old status quo has not been a stable or desirable one. After the grotesque atrocities of 10/7 in 2023, Israel has the right and obligation to define self-defense as eliminating predatory, ungoverned terrorist groups – and the political situation that favors them – on its borders. Israel is justified in cutting the cord with a canon of political expectations (i.e., the long-dead Oslo narrative) that has proved conclusively it cannot deliver a better outcome than that.
So Israel has to win, not just look for an excuse to “settle.” To invoke the framework of motives and methods laid out by Basil H. Liddell-Hart in his 1954 book Strategy, Israel has to seek a “better peace.”
The essential condition of that better peace is captured in the very useful French term renversement – for Iran and Iran’s allies and proxies in the Middle East. We don’t have a single-word English term that means exactly the same thing. We might speak in English of a “reversal” for the Iran club, but in our language that doesn’t really convey the comprehensive and game-changing nature of a renversement. The magnitude of the latter is the purpose of arranging it. It’s not merely that the enemy sees incentives for rethinking his condition and his plans. It’s that he is faced with no other choice, and literally has no option to avoid such a rethinking.
That’s what Israel needs to focus on.
There’s a lot of complaining that Israel hasn’t submitted to the U.S., or the EU or UN or someone, a 50-slide PowerPoint explanation of what Israel would then do to reorder everything, once the power of Iran’s proxy network is broken. But there’s a simultaneous drumbeat signaling that that won’t be up to Israel anyway. It never has been, and it would be foolish of Israel to think it would be in this case.
It would be ten times as foolish for Israel to actually outline such a detailed plan in advance, and draw fire down on the plan and any current combat objectives that seem to prepare for or support it. The behavior of Western governments to date makes clear that that would be the worst move Israel could make. Don’t point red arrows to your goals and thereby paint bull’s eyes on them.
Rather, Israel should be doing what Israel is already doing. The IDF is altering the facts on the ground so that the factors are no longer in place to restore the highly dysfunctional status quo ante, no matter who buys his way into the settlement process that will inevitably follow.
Israel has to present that inevitable consortium with a fait accompli of conditions. That’s the essential task – not presenting settlement talkers with an Israeli plan to draw fire from every political sniper perch on the planet.
Netanyahu signals every time he opens his mouth that the above policy is what he’s following. Win the war. That means the arrangements after it will necessarily be new, and shaped by the conditions Israel has brought out of the period of combat.
I urge readers not to be distracted by the incessant refrain coming from Washington, Brussels, and the media that the end-state we’re all striving for is a mere “end” to the fighting, to be sought regardless of what condition it leaves everything in. No. That’s not responsible, desirable, accountable, useful, or moral. The reason to have fought this war is to bring from it a better peace: for Israel, of course, which suffered the ghastly 10/7 raid with its demonic viciousness, but also for the region as a whole.
Neutralizing the terror groups and Iran’s string-pulling connection with them is an essential aspect of doing that. As I have also argued, Israel should have a high priority of key setbacks for Iran; namely, degrading as much as possible the inventory and supporting infrastructure of missiles, drones, and rockets with which Iran has now launched two barrages at Israel of indefensible magnitude. We are apt to forget, in the daily renewal of noise, that such barrages of hundreds of projectiles at a time have no conventional military purpose. At most, in a military sense, their intent would be to wear down the target nation’s defenses. But even that merely serves an ultimate purpose of holding the population at unacceptable risk.
Killing missiles isn’t a permanent solution to anything. But doing it would alter Iran’s own defense reality, and for a useful period of time while other goals were achieved.
Israel may have additional priorities for setting back the capacities of Iran’s regime. They need to be balanced out, and only Israeli strategists can do that. What Israel should not do is let itself be distracted, and have its priorities and policy discretion preempted, by fresh provocations every whipstitch. (And don’t worry. I see Syria and Iraq. I know. They need addressing too. I’m not going to extend this just to bog the point of principle down with all the particulars.)
I think the Netanyahu government is doing a pretty good job of avoiding distraction and preemption. The public doesn’t help with a search for tit-for-tat retaliation and instant solutions. Today’s media write as if such developments are desirable and expected. But they’re not. Making combat worthwhile is always a matter of staying a course and keeping your own priorities to the fore: not letting the enemy gain the initiative and drive you into an endless cycle of reaction.
So, yes, I know that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s home was targeted in the last 48 hours, and that the U.S. government seemingly suffered an intelligence “leak” involving details about sensitive Israeli operations. This parade of new, infuriating developments and betrayals and inconveniences won’t stop, any more than the Biden administration and the EU and the UN will stop demanding a “ceasefire,” and settlement talks in which they prop up a zombie Hamas that would otherwise have no hope of being there, and a “two-state solution” that every kindergartner on earth knows is a crock of lies.
None of it will stop. Israel has to win anyway.
{Reposted from the author’s site}
