On October 7, 2023, the Gaza-based Palestinian jihadist group, Hamas, and its allied groups in Gaza invaded southern Israel, overwhelming high-tech sensors and lightly manned bases, killing 1,200 and abducting more than 250, mostly civilians, and committing atrocities against the population. This brutal attack triggered heavy Israeli retaliation against Hamas in Gaza that has continued to this day and remains inconclusive. Iran-backed terrorist organizations elsewhere, namely Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and various militias in Iraq and Syria, declared their solidarity with Hamas and began attacking Israel too. Hezbollah tied up a large portion of Israel’s forces on the country’s northern border with rocket and missile strikes as well as the threat of an October 7-style attack that forced the displacement of more than 65,000 Israeli residents. The Houthis have launched long-range missiles and drones from Yemen and attacked merchant vessels in the Red Sea, which they claimed were linked to Israel. Militias in Iraq have fired projectiles at U.S. bases and toward Israel. Iran, which sponsors all these organizations, has itself fired ballistic missiles and drones at Israel in two large attacks that occurred in April and October 2024.
This turn of events has upended security dynamics in the region and called into question Israel’s assumptions about its strategic situation. In its view of the new security environment, Israel will likely seek to redouble its defense capabilities, enlarging the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), reducing its reliance on the United States and advanced technology, and viewing with suspicion new negotiations with Palestinian actors. At the same time, its military achievements have considerably weakened Iran and its allies, opening new opportunities to strike Iran directly and to promote normalization between Israel and Arab and Muslim states.
Shattered Illusions of Deterrence
The Hamas attack has shattered the prevalent notion in Israel that Hamas and Hezbollah are “deterred.” For years, since the 2006 Lebanon War and Hamas’s 2007 takeover of the Gaza Strip, Israel has pursued a strategy of deterrence to dissuade the terrorist groups from conducting major attacks. Israel would keep its adversaries weak and at bay with periodic strikes and raids coupled with threats to signal resolve. In Gaza, Israel has executed numerous airstrikes and several limited ground incursions (in 2008-2009, 2012, and 2014) to contain Hamas, a strategy that has become known as “mowing the grass.” At the same time, Israel hoped that supporting economic development in Gaza, such as by authorizing Israeli work permits[1] for more than 18,000 Gazans, would help reduce support for militancy and prompt Hamas toward more peaceful governance.
Hamas’s attack tore this strategy to shreds. The atrocities Hamas inflicted and its persistent threats to commit further attacks in the future have crushed any notion of coexistence with the group and driven Israel to embark on a long military campaign to remove Hamas from power and recover the hostages held in Gaza. For its part, Hezbollah kept up missile and rocket strikes on Israel’s northern border and amassed a large force there, causing Israel to evacuate the civilian communities near the border for fear of an October 7-style attack from the north.
The Loss of Iran’s Ace in Lebanon
On November 27, 2024, Israel reached a ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah in which the latter would retreat north of the Litani River and hand over southern Lebanon to the Lebanese Armed Forces. Israel’s military operations in Lebanon exacted a heavy toll on Hezbollah, including the killing of its charismatic leader[2] Hassan Nasrallah and numerous other senior figures, as well as a spectacular intelligence operation that resulted in the detonation of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies shortly before the ground incursion. Despite stating that it would stop fighting only after Israel withdraws from Gaza, Hezbollah evidently agreed to the ceasefire under heavy military pressure.
Yet another Israeli invasion of Lebanon long seemed out of the question to Israel’s defense establishment. Hezbollah had built up a stockpile of 150,000 rockets and missiles and, per the CIA World Factbook, a militia of 50,000 fighters, a significantly more formidable threat than Hamas. A large salvo of just a fraction of these weapons could cause serious damage to Israeli population centers. Hezbollah and its patron Iran used this threat to deter Israel from taking major action in Lebanon or against Iran and its military and nuclear facilities. However, Israel completed its incursion into Lebanon without the feared rocket salvo occurring, and the IDF estimated that it destroyed about 80% of Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal. Thus, Hezbollah sued for a ceasefire while Iran’s greatest deterrent against Israel disappeared.
Renewed Questions on U.S. Reliability
Since October 2023, the United States has continued to strongly support Israel through defense aid. One paper estimates the United States committed at least $22.76 billion to Israel’s defense in the first year of the war, a fraction of the estimated $225.2 billion provided between 1951 and 2022. Indeed, U.S. military aid has become an integral aspect of IDF planning and force structure, comprising as much as 15%[3] of Israel’s defense spending.
Although U.S. aid has been a significant boon for Israel’s defense, the United States has sometimes used it to influence Israeli policy, including during the recent fighting. For example, in 1975, the administration of Gerald Ford halted arms shipments to Israel during its “reassessment” of U.S.-Israel relations and pushed to broker a peace agreement between the Jewish state and Egypt. The Ronald Reagan administration delayed F-16 aircraft shipments to Israel in 1981 amid Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights and bombing of the Osirak Iraqi nuclear reactor. In May 2024, the administration of Joe Biden threatened to withhold arms shipments to Israel and paused the delivery of certain munitions (though current president Donald Trump has resumed them) to discourage Israel from extending its ground offensive into Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip. Israel did ultimately enter Rafah, but this move may have delayed the action. Fear that the United States might leverage military aid again in future crises has renewed calls[4] to reduce Israeli reliance on this aid.
Israeli Security in a New Era
Israel now inhabits a new security environment that will demand strategic recalibration. First, if deterrence cannot achieve Israeli security goals and the United States is seen as less reliable, then the Jewish state will need to invest more in its capabilities. Gone are the days of defense budget cuts and military downsizing; the IDF will likely grow larger as Israel seeks to not only dissuade its foes from attacking but also prepare to preempt adversaries and fight on more than one front, possibly in longer wars than in the past. In addition, Israeli strategists might put less faith in the notion that advanced technology can substitute for manpower, learning from the disastrous failure of Israel’s array of sensors around Gaza to alert the IDF of Hamas’s actions in time. The renewed emphasis on manpower will likely continue to fuel heightened controversy over drafting more ultra-Orthodox Jews into the IDF, a significant portion of Israel’s population that, together with Arab citizens, enjoys special conscription deferrals (military service is mandatory in the country for adult citizens). Overall, these developments are, in fact, reminiscent of Israeli strategy in its earlier years to maintain preparedness against the armies of neighboring Arab states.
At the same time, a weakened Iranian “axis of resistance” might facilitate bolder Israeli or U.S. action. The IDF has dealt devastating blows to both Hamas and Hezbollah, while Iran-backed militias in Iraq have stopped attacking U.S. and Israeli targets, likely for fear of retaliation. The Houthis in Yemen continue their attacks on Israel and maritime commerce, but they are too distant to pose the same threat that Hamas and Hezbollah once did. Iran launched drone and ballistic missile strikes in April and October 2024 against Israel, mostly defeated by Israeli, U.S., and allied air defense. Israel retaliated in November with painful strikes on air defense and weapons production sites in Iran. Additionally, in Syria in December 2024, the regime of Iran-allied dictator Bashar al-Assad fell, and Hezbollah could not help him, partially due to the damage it had taken from Israel. With Hezbollah degraded and Iran proving ineffective at dealing serious damage to Israel and the latter showing it can hit critical targets in Iran unscathed, Israel and the United States might now consider directly striking targets in Iran as a more viable, less risky option. This new calculus can come into focus as Israel and the United States seek tools to prevent Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and combat its malign activities across the Middle East.
The new situation also has implications for the Israel-Palestine conflict. On the one hand, Hamas’s actions have strengthened the notion in Israel that giving concessions to the Palestinians will not bring peace any closer and, on the contrary, could set the stage for further attempts to destroy the Jewish state. After all, Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, allowing de facto self-rule in the territory and permitting many Gazans to work in Israel. How much more of a threat might a sovereign Palestinian state pose? On the other hand, the weakening of Hamas might open an opportunity for shaping a moderate alternative Palestinian leadership to replace it. Yet even as President Trump and Egypt propose their own frameworks for the “day after” in Gaza, Israel has remained reluctant to commit serious investment to a plan. Moreover, virtually no actor would be willing to assist in a plan as long as Hamas holds power in Gaza. A prolonged IDF presence in Gaza would also complicate any plans.
Finally, Israel may now find renewed opportunities for normalizing diplomatic relations with Arab and Muslim countries. The Abraham Accords established and boosted relations since 2020 between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and (to a lesser degree) Sudan, states that were long hostile to Israel before. Nonetheless, extending normalization to other states has stalled, largely due to the current war in Gaza. Hamas meant for its October 7 attack to stymie normalization efforts particularly as the United States was striving to broker Saudi-Israel rapprochement. Although the fighting has not ended, normalization efforts are once again underway, with President Trump indicating his wish to get it done with not only Saudi Arabia, but also Lebanon. Reducing the threats posed by Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah has facilitated such efforts, though it remains to be seen whether that will be enough to produce a deal.
The Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023, have set off a devastating war, challenging old Israeli assumptions and ultimately weakening Iran and its axis of resistance. Learning from its recent experience, Israel will likely seek to redouble its defense capabilities and view negotiations with Palestinian actors more negatively. At the same time, new opportunities have opened to exploit Iran’s relative weakness.
Notes
[1] Ibid.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Maayan Hoffman, “Is Israel Ready to Rely on Domestic Arms Production?,” The Medialine, 18/08/2024
