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,” Mr. 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 Gaza. 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 Muhammad 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 a different Palestinian leadership.
Israel’s campaigns have come at considerable cost. By killing tens of thousands of Gazan civilians 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 now at least, Israel’s choices have also undermined its chance to forge diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia, the most influential Arab country and one that could provide Israel with an extra diplomatic and even military buffer against Iran and Hezbollah. Talks to normalize relations with Riyadh have stumbled amid Israel’s refusal to allow Palestinian sovereignty in Gaza and the West Bank after the war.
For some, the scrambled thinking is partly derived from the shock of Hamas’s 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 on Oct. 7 — before diplomatic compromises can be reached.
But to Mr. 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, Mr. 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.
Mr. 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 Mr. 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’s 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.
Mr. 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 Mr. Netanyahu. After months of contained conflict along the Israel-Lebanon border, Mr. 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, Mr. 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 Mr. Rabinovich, the former ambassador. “All these fundamental questions have not been answered, and in some cases not even asked in the public discourse.”
To Mr. Olmert, the former prime minister, Israel’s lack of strategy extends far beyond Mr. Netanyahu.
The problem is rooted, Mr. 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,” Mr. Olmert said.
Many Israelis now reject the idea of a Palestinian state because they feel a sovereign Palestine, shorn of Israeli supervision, would be more able to mount the kind of attack that Hamas initiated on Oct. 7.
Even centrist and left-leaning leaders mostly see the resumption of peace talks as a non-starter, given that one of the two leading Palestinian factions, Hamas, killed more than one thousand Israeli civilians less than a year ago and the other, Fatah, is weak and discredited among much of the Palestinian population.
Without agreeing to a pathway to a Palestinian state, it will be difficult for Israel to solve most of its other strategic binds, Mr. Olmert said.
For example, it will be harder to plan for a postwar Gaza without showing more flexibility on Palestinian sovereignty, Mr. Olmert said: The only feasible Palestinian alternative to Hamas is the Palestinian Authority, the Fatah-dominated institution that administers parts of the West Bank.
By allowing the Palestinian Authority to govern in both Gaza and the West Bank, Israel would in effect reestablish political contiguity between the two territories, making it easier to form a Palestinian state that spans both places.
Without at least some progress toward Palestinian statehood, it will also be harder for Israel to forge formal ties with Saudi Arabia, since the Saudi leadership has made clear that concessions to the Palestinians are a prerequisite for normalization. And by forging such an alliance, Israel could firm up its standing in the region and make Iran and its Hezbollah proxy warier of antagonizing Israel, since Saudi Arabia also shares Israel’s wariness of Tehran, Mr. Olmert said.
“Hezbollah and Iran won’t suddenly become Zionists, but it will change the balance,” said Mr. Olmert. “It will make life for Israel much easier to deal with such challenges.”
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.
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