Why is Israel preparing again for war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip?
Part of the answer lies in a truth many Israelis continue to struggle to accept: military force cannot alone solve our problems. While military force is essential, and there was never a more legitimate war than the one after October 7, wars are not won only by force. They also require a political strategy.
Here is just one small example: Early in the war, Israeli forces seized Shifa Hospital, uncovering tunnels, command centers, and evidence that hostages had been held beneath and inside the facility. Hamas fighters were eliminated, and the area was cleared.
Then, months later, we awoke one morning to the news that Israeli forces had surrounded Shifa, where about 1,000 terrorists had taken refuge. It didn’t make sense. Just a few months ago, it was empty. How did it suddenly return to being a terrorist refuge?
The answer was that while Israel cleared the area militarily, it left a vacuum, refusing consistently throughout the war to work with any alternative entity that could control Gaza. And in the Middle East, vacuums do not remain empty for long. Hamas filled it again.
That pattern repeated itself throughout the war - Israel would enter an area, dismantle terror infrastructure, withdraw, and then watch Hamas slowly return.
To some extent, the same thing happened in Lebanon. Israel fought Hezbollah, agreed to a ceasefire in November 2024, and assumed deterrence would hold. But there was no broader political architecture established afterward. No alternative mechanism. Then, after the war with Iran broke out at the end of February, Hezbollah resumed firing rockets into Israel once again.
Even with Iran, when the recent war was over, the Israeli public largely felt like the country had failed, despite most of the defense establishment viewing the operation as a significant military success
The reason was that the moment the fighting transitioned into diplomacy and ceasefire negotiations, the Israelis lost confidence. If force did not get the Iranian regime to give up its uranium, then why would negotiations?
And that may be one of the deepest strategic problems Israel faces today: there is no belief in political processes.
There are a number of factors behind this, but one of them is that Israelis are deeply traumatized by the failure of what was the last political process to try and end our longest conflict – the Oslo Accords.
While peace with Jordan was reached after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, this agreement with the Palestinians is remembered as such a failure that it impacts Israelis’ ability to consider political agreements as pathways to stability.
That disenchantment is what shapes the nation’s approach to war and is why Israeli discourse revolves almost exclusively around phrases like “total victory,” “crushing the enemy,” and “victory for generations.” The language is always military, and the solutions are always military.
But if October 7 taught Israel anything, it should be that military force alone cannot sustainably solve these conflicts.
Yes, Israel must remain powerful, must act preemptively against emerging threats, and must be prepared all the time to deploy military force, but after so many years of war, it should be obvious that military power by itself does not create political reality.
And unless Israel begins to think seriously about what follows the fighting – in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and beyond – it may continue winning battles while repeatedly finding itself dragged back into the same wars.
jpost.com/opinion/article-89…