Opinion-There is no purely military solution to Israel’s security woes

Washington Post-Oct10th2024

Israel is beating Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. But what is the endgame?

Little more than a year ago, on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel suffered arguably the second-biggest intelligence and military failure in its history (after the 1973 Yom Kippur War). Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people and kidnapping at least 25o more. Israel had never looked weaker or more vulnerable.

A year later, the impression of Israel-as-victim has been replaced by that of Israel-as-conqueror. The Israel Defense Forces continue their attacks in Gaza, which have not only decimated Hamas (Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants) but also inflicted heavy casualties on Palestinian civilians. Then, last week, Israel launched a ground operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon. This was preceded by a series of brilliant intelligence coups: a covert operation that blew up Hezbollah’s pagers and walkie-talkies, followed by airstrikes that have eliminated many of Hezbollah’s senior cadres, including its top leader, Hasan Nasrallah.

With the help of the United States and friendly Arab countries, Israel has twice repelled massive Iranian missile strikes — on April 13 and Oct. 1 — without suffering any major damage. Now Israel is contemplating, in consultation with the Biden administration, how it will strike back against Iran.

Iran has clearly overestimated its military power in a faceoff with Israel, and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah are paying a heavy price. So, too, are the civilians of Gaza and Lebanon, who have been dragged into a war they did not ask for. The “ring of fire” that Tehran had been trying to erect around Israel no longer seems as menacing as it once did.

A year ago, nothing appeared to be going Israel’s way. Now, everything seems to be. But there is a real danger that Israel will overreach — perhaps it has already done so — and, in the process, discover the limitations of even its vaunted military might.

I am concerned by the hubris now being heard from many hard-liners inside and outside of Israel who are urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seize the moment to reshape the entire region. “Israel has now its greatest opportunity in 50 years, to change the face of the Middle East,” former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett recently wrote on social media. “We must act *now* to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, its central energy facilities, and to fatally cripple this terrorist regime.”

There is chatter that Israel could impose a new order on the Middle East — and even save Western civilization itself. Netanyahu has suggested that regime change in Iran could come “a lot sooner than people think,” allowing the Persian and Jewish people to “finally be at peace.”

We have heard such talk about the Middle East before — and it did not work out well. In 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon ordered an Israeli invasion of Lebanon, in response to Palestine Liberation Organization attacks from southern Lebanon, with the goal of creating a pro-Israel, Christian-dominated government in Beirut. The result was an 18-year military quagmire, with Israeli forces battling the shadowy terrorists of Hezbollah. Likewise, in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq with grandiose visions of imposing a pro-Western, democratic order on the Middle East in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The result was another open-ended military engagement that turned into a quagmire, with ostensible liberators turning into dreaded occupiers.