By Patrick Kingsley
The contrast between the dexterity of Israel’s latest attacks on Hezbollah and the uncertainty over its long-term strategy in Lebanon is the latest example of a fragility at the heart of Israeli statecraft, according to Israeli public figures and analysts.
To friend and foe alike, Israel appears technologically strong but strategically lost. It is capable of extraordinary acts of espionage as well as powerful expressions of military might but is struggling to tie such efforts to long-term diplomatic and geopolitical goals.
“You see the sophistication of the technological minds of Israel and the total failure of the political leadership to carry out any moves of consequence,” said Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli prime minister.
“They are too preoccupied and obsessed by their fears to do anything on a broader strategic basis,” Olmert said.
Israel’s security services have infiltrated and sabotaged Hezbollah’s communications networks by blowing up pagers and other wireless devices this week, but Israel’s leadership appears uncertain about how to contain the group in the long term. Israel has conducted several clandestine missions and assassinations inside Iran, most recently of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh by infiltrating a guesthouse protected by the Iranian security establishment. At the same time, it has avoided making the political concessions necessary to forge formal alliances with most of Iran’s opponents in the region.
Its commandos have freed several hostages from captivity through complex special operations, even as its politicians have failed to secure a wider deal to rescue more than 100 others still held in the Gaza Strip. And while Israel’s world-leading air force has pounded Gaza, destroying much of the territory’s urban fabric and killing top Hamas commanders like Mohammed Deif, the Israeli government has not issued a detailed and viable plan for Gaza’s postwar future.
The result is a slow and repetitive military campaign in Gaza in which Israeli soldiers are repeatedly capturing and then withdrawing from the same pockets of land, with no mandate to either hold ground or initiate a transfer of power to different Palestinian leadership.
Israel’s campaigns have come at considerable cost. By killing tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza as well as several hundred Lebanese in its strikes on enemy combatants, Israel has prompted international outcry, drawn accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice and tarnished its global standing without conclusively destroying Hamas, let alone Hezbollah.
For some, the scrambled thinking is partly derived from the shock of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The attack was the bloodiest day in Israel’s history and may have left Israel’s leaders seeking short-term wins to atone for their lapses that day, at the expense of long-term planning for Israel’s future. With many Israelis traumatized by the attack, their leaders risk losing popularity and further tarnishing their legacy by promoting contentious compromises to bring Israel’s various wars to a close.
“Tactical successes can be obtained by professionals, but large-scale achievements have to be achieved by leaders,” said Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington. “They must be able to bite their tongue, go against the grain, take unpopular decisions and political risks.”
For Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, Israel’s security must be prioritized at all costs, and Hamas and Hezbollah must be fully defanged — in part to restore the sense of deterrence and invincibility that Israel lost Oct. 7 — before diplomatic compromises can be reached.
But to Netanyahu’s critics, true security cannot be achieved without a diplomatic vision that Israel’s allies and potential allies can accept; they argue that Israel’s successful operations against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran will only have limited effect in the long term if they remain divorced from a coherent national strategy. According to his opponents, Netanyahu has allowed political considerations — principally, his need to prevent the collapse of his fragile coalition government — to supersede strategic decisions that are opposed by his coalition allies.
Netanyahu’s grip on power is dependent on a group of far-right lawmakers who are opposed to the kinds of compromises necessary to reach an endgame in Gaza and Lebanon.
Those lawmakers have threatened to collapse Netanyahu’s coalition if he agrees to a truce in Gaza that leaves Hamas in power. They also oppose plans to hand power to Hamas’ main Palestinian rival, Fatah.
In turn, the standoff in Gaza has led to the extension of the war along the Israel-Lebanon border, where Hezbollah says it will continue fighting until a truce is reached between Israel and Hamas.
Netanyahu’s allies say the attacks this week in Lebanon, coupled with the deployment of more troops to the Lebanon border, show a clear strategic effort to use increased military action to force Hezbollah to compromise.
“Even though these are tactical moves, it’s part of a bigger plan,” said Nadav Shtrauchler, a political strategist and former adviser to Netanyahu. After months of contained conflict along the Israel-Lebanon border, Shtrauchler said, “We’re going to go strong at Hezbollah.”
To others, the moves still feel inconclusive, stopping short of a decisive end to the deadlock through either force or diplomacy. On the one hand, Netanyahu has avoided ordering a ground invasion of Lebanon. On the other, he has rejected a truce in Gaza that could end the Lebanon war through mediation.
“Where is he going? How does he end the war?” asked Rabinovich, the former ambassador. “All these fundamental questions have not been answered, and in some cases not even asked in the public discourse.”
To Olmert, the former prime minister, Israel’s lack of strategy extends far beyond Netanyahu.
The problem is rooted, Olmert said, in a reluctance across Israeli society and its establishment to address or sometimes even acknowledge a conundrum within Israel: the question of Palestinian sovereignty.
“There is no endgame on any issue without the Palestinians,” Olmert said.
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