Going to war isn’t making Israel safer. Its enemies have only grown in number

For all the killing, destruction and displacement wrought upon Gaza over the past 10 months, Israel is likely to be less safe when military operations end than when they began. Nobody denies that Israel had a right to defend itself in response to Hamas’s own terrorist bloodletting against Israeli civilians, but vengeance is not a strategy. And too much of the Netanyahu government’s decision-making has been driven by a short-term desire for vengeance rather than a long-term need to provide for Israel’s future security.

At present, Israel is militarily engaged on multiple fronts, and has shown that it has excellent regional intelligence capabilities and the technical means to exploit that intelligence to achieve tactical victories. But those short-term tactical victories have disguised, and in some cases increased, the strategic threat Israel will face in the future.

Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system fires interceptors at rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, in the days after the October 7 attacks. Credit: AP

The most obvious threat will be from Gaza. In the absence of a post-conflict plan for the governance or security of Gaza, tens of thousands dead and many more wounded, and more than half the buildings destroyed or damaged, the physical reconstruction of the Palestinian coastal strip will take a generation. Everyone in Gaza’s population of 600,000 will have been affected by the conflict.

And while Israel’s actions were in response to an attack by Hamas, any blame that may have been aimed at Hamas’s leadership is likely to be directed at Israel instead for the sheer magnitude of destruction they have wrought upon Gaza. To paraphrase a Vietnam War-era quote, there is a sense that the Israeli military and political mindset was that to “save” Gaza it was necessary to destroy it. In reality though, there was never a sense of saving Gaza, only of punishing it.

Once the guns fall silent, Hamas will not have been destroyed. Badly damaged for sure, but militarily destroying an organisation like Hamas is virtually impossible, and certainly an unachievable strategic aim. And with a median age of under 20, Gazans will have long memories of what has happened to them and their families and there will be an almost unlimited ability for groups such as Hamas to recruit new fighters who will have a deep-seated hatred of Israel.

To the north of the country, since Lebanese Hezbollah began its supporting action against Israel following the October 7 attack, the Israeli military has exacted a high cost on the semi-state actor, killing more than 400 of its fighters, including some mid-ranking commanders and a more senior operational commander in Fuad Shukr.

But Hezbollah is a robust organisation that knows everyone is a potential martyr and therefore replaceable, so while the deaths of these commanders may provide a short-term fillip for the Israeli government, the strategic impact is limited if it exists at all. Israel’s targeted killing in 1992 of Abbas Musawi, the then secretary-general of Hezbollah, led to the emergence of its present leader Hassan Nasrallah who has overseen the group’s rise to levels of political influence and military strength that dwarfs that achieved under Mussawi. Sometimes targeting the existing leadership simply allows the emergence of more effective replacements.

The present conflict has also taught Hezbollah some important strategic lessons. Despite its losses and the impact on local Lebanese, the constant but relatively low-profile strikes against northern Israel has also imposed a significant economic cost on Israel as tens of thousands of Israelis remain displaced and living in other parts of Israel. And Hezbollah has also tested a range of capabilities that could be used in future conflict, including a drone attack more than 30 kilometres inside Israel that damaged the multimillion-dollar Sky Dew aerial surveillance balloon.

In the case of Iran, Tehran had always preferred to put military pressure on Israel through its proxies and allies, in the belief that a direct attack against Israel would have consequences for Iran that could not be justified. Yet Israel’s April strike against Tehran’s diplomatic compound in Damascus that killed two senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers forced Iran’s hand. It was nevertheless careful to forego the element of surprise so that Israel and its allies had time to establish a layered air defence system that destroyed the majority of the Iranian drones and projectiles before they reached their targets. Having now crossed the threshold of directly attacking Israel, Tehran may be less constrained by it in the future. Or at least Israel can be less sure that Iran feels constrained. Again, Israel’s tactical success in Damascus may have negative strategic implications.

The Houthi movement has also imposed an economic cost on Israel through its targeting of Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea, as well demonstrating an ability to strike directly at the heart of Tel Aviv. And the recent death of a senior Houthi missile commander in a strike in Iraq that killed a number of Iraqi militia operatives highlights the degree to which the present drawn-out conflict has allowed a greater degree of co-operation between disparate members of the so-called Axis of Resistance than existed prior to the Gaza operation.

There is no question that the Netanyahu government had to militarily respond to the Hamas terrorist attack. Yet the strategic aims it set itself, along with the scale and duration of the Gaza operation should have been constructed so that at the end of the military campaign Israel was more secure than it was at the start. Yet in its local and regional response Israel has mistaken tactical acumen for strategic acuity. In trying to destroy Hamas by military means alone and therefore prolonging Gaza’s misery, Israel’s future security is now less certain.

Dr Rodger Shanahan is a Middle East analyst. As an army officer, his operational experience included Lebanon, Syria and Afghanistan. He is the author of Islamic State in Australia.

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