Israel may have military superiority, but it lacks a clear strategic vision, say experts
Explosions as Israeli forces shelled buildings in Beirut on October 6, 2024.
One year after Hamas’ October 7 massacre, Israel has become embroiled in a multi-front war that includes Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, and Syria.
But while Israel may have military superiority in the region, it lacks a clear, long-term strategic vision to end conflict in the Middle East, according to security experts.
On Tuesday, it said it was expanding its ground operation in Lebanon by adding a fourth division of soldiers.
Meanwhile, it has intensified its air strikes on Gaza and Lebanon, including this week hitting Hezbollah intelligence targets and a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in the area of Beirut.
It is also weighing up a strike on Iran in response to a ballistic missile attack last week. Targets could include nuclear sites, oil facilities, and military bases.
It’s clear the Israel Defense Forces have achieved a series of tactical gains in recent weeks, but they still lack a clear military strategy, security analysts told B-17.
Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow for Middle East Security at the Royal United Services Institute, said the longer Israel’s military operations continue, the more “urgent” it becomes for it to articulate how it envisions war to come to an end.
“There is a lack of strategic coherence on all sides in this multi-front conflict,” she told B-17.
Netanyahu’s goals
In a video address on Monday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is achieving its war goals a year after Hamas’ terrorist attacks.
He listed them as toppling Hamas’ rule, bringing all the hostages home, eliminating any threat from Gaza to Israel, and returning all the residents of southern and northern Israel safely to their homes.
However, Bashir Abbas, a fellow at the Stimson Center, told B-17 that Israel still has a way to go in pursuing national security.
“Even in Gaza, Israel has simply not articulated a long-term strategy for Israeli security at all, apart from wiping out Hamas — which would be virtually impossible to do fully given the nature of insurgent groups.”
“You cannot just bomb Hamas into oblivion and destroy it,” concurred Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab British Understanding NGO.
While he said Israel could degrade Hamas’ capabilities, at the end of it, “how will Israel live side by side with 7 million Palestinians going forward after all that they’ve done to it?” he asked.
“There has to be underpinning it, a political agreement and strategy— that means an agreed cease-fire,” he said.
Doyle made the same point for the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militia group.
“Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and 1982, the consequences of which were the establishment of Hezbollah 42 years later,” he said.
“They’re not just fighting Hezbollah, but they’re fighting an organization that is now a state within a state with a huge arsenal of missiles of all sorts of types,” he added.
An ‘escalatory trap’
Anthony Pfaff, the director of the Strategic Studies Institute at the US Army War College, said in August that Israel may be stuck in what he termed the “escalatory trap.”
“If Israel escalates,” wrote Pfaff, “it fuels the escalatory spiral that could, at some point, exceed its military capability to manage.”
However, if it chooses the status quo, it will have done little to improve its security situation.
“Neither outcome achieves Israel’s security objectives, which would represent a defeat for the IDF and could threaten the survival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government,” Pfaff said.
The problem may be that Israel’s security doctrine has long been based on short wars. As the Guardian points out, the opposite has now taken place.
None of the IDF’s operations “comes as part of a clear strategy with achievable aims that will, in the end, bring greater ability and peace to Israel, to Israeli civilians,” said Doyle of the Council for Arab British Understanding NGO.
Instead, he said it “escalates the conflict, but without any clear sense that there is an exit.”
The increasingly drawn-out conflict has triggered fears of full-blown war in the Middle East, which could spark inflation and lead to a global economic downturn.
Last week, Moody’s Israel lowered Israel’s credit rating, citing heightened tensions, economic uncertainty, and the potential for escalation into a full-scale conflict.
Prior to Israel’s incursions into Lebanon last month, Israel’s finance minister described the war as the “longest” and “most expensive” conflict in Israel’s history, with about $54 billion to $68 billion in “direct” costs.
The Bank of Israel estimated in May that the costs arising from the war would total about $66 billion through the end of next year — equivalent to roughly 12% of Israel’s GDP, per CNN.
Will the election change things?
Netanyahu’s stance toward a peace deal may hinge on who wins the US presidential elections in November, said Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior advisor to the Counter Extremism Project.
While former president Donald Trump would give Netanyahu “carte blanche” to do everything on his own terms, Vice President Kamala Harris would push for a “constructive attitude to ceasefires and peace processes,” he said.
“I think we’re a lot closer to the beginning of this conflict than we are to the end,” former CIA station chief Daniel Hoffman told Fox Business on Monday.
“There’s going to be a new administration, and that will have a lot of implications on our strategy.”
