After a year of war, how to get to the ‘day after’
Essential domestic and international components of a strategic approach
David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He is the author of "Still Life with Bombers" (2004) and "A Little Too Close to God" (2000), and co-author of "Shalom Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin" (1996). He previously edited The Jerusalem Post (2004-2011) and The Jerusalem Report (1998-2004).
This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.
As the Hebrew anniversary of Hamas’s Simhat Torah slaughter approaches, and many Israelis decorate their sukkahs with pictures of the hostages we have been unable to return, the cliché about it being easy to start a war but hard to end one requires some amendation: It was all too dreadfully easy for Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar to start this war, and it is proving unsurprisingly complex for Israel to bring it to a tenable conclusion.
The war that Hamas triggered with its invasion from Gaza has expanded, as Sinwar hoped it would, to seven military fronts in all — Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, the West Bank and Iran — and the fact is that there is no end in sight to the fighting on any of them.
Israel’s military is, very belatedly, facing down the terrorist armies that it watched for years establishing themselves on its borders, and doing so with extraordinary successes in some cases. But that redoubtable army is under immense strain — indeed, Israel is under relentless physical, psychological and financial strain, its reservists at the front, its civilians dodging rockets and missiles, its economy contracting, its alliances fraying.
Through a year of war that began with utter catastrophe, the people of Israel have proved themselves astoundingly resilient. What’s lacking is the leadership strategy that, this time next year, would see at least some of those strains alleviated, and some of those war fronts quieted, with a clear agenda for those that remain.
In Gaza, the IDF has, as promised, dismantled the organized, 24-battalion Hamas army that it confronted after October 7, 2023. But Sinwar retains 97 living and dead hostages from October 7, and hopes global pressure for a ceasefire — reaching new heights with the US issuing an ultimatum to Israel over humanitarian aid to the Strip — will yet enable his barbaric organization’s return to power.
Far from working toward a “day after” plan for alternate governance of the Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition has yet to decide on its post-war objectives, with many members seeking renewed Jewish settlement and long-term Israeli governance of Gaza, and Netanyahu unable even to reach a decision on mechanisms for distributing aid that would keep it out of the hands of Hamas.
In Lebanon, the campaign to radically degrade Hezbollah, when it finally began last month, unfolded with spectacular initial success — with the detonation of thousands of pagers on their Hezbollah owners followed by the targeting of much of Hezbollah’s weaponry and the elimination of almost all of the leadership, including many of the Radwan Force commanders long planning an invasion of the Galilee. Nonetheless, Hezbollah continues to fire hundreds of rockets deep into Israel daily, and the potency of its drone capabilities was underlined by the deadly impact of a single UAV that evaded detection en route to an IDF training base at Binyamina on Sunday.
Some analysts believe that these first weeks of the battle against Hezbollah have averted the feared worst-case scenario of thousands of rockets and missiles being rapidly unleashed on Israel, and there is more optimism than at any time in the past year about a potential return to their homes of the tens of thousands of displaced northerners. But the guaranteed security that those northern residents would need has not yet been achieved. Hezbollah is neither incapacitated nor deterred.
And as the IDF gradually expands what the government has repeatedly said is intended to be a limited ground operation, close to the border, there is a temptation to capture one more hill, tunnel, or missile launch site — a temptation that needs to be set against the danger of mission creep and the knowledge that ground maneuvers as fall turns to winter would be a very different proposition in the Lebanese mud.
Israelis’ current new reality evidently requires coming to terms with the fact that everywhere in the country is now a potential intermittent target for missile and drone attack, too, from Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and a recognition that Iran and Hamas are doing their utmost to stoke terrorism in and from the West Bank, with the IDF on high alert for Sukkot amid dozens of reported terror warnings.
All of which, again, underlines the imperative for a strategic approach to this multi-front war.
Domestically, that strategic approach requires that the leadership act to ensure, rather than merely talking about, all Israelis being in this existential battle together.
That, in turn, requires legislating to ensure a fairer distribution of rights and responsibilities — as in, requiring military or national service for all, rather than insistently excusing the ultra-Orthodox community, and funding the costs of the war fairly from all, rather than placing untenable further financial burdens on those least capable of bearing them.
It also requires leaving aside other radically divisive policies, such as the neutering of the judiciary, tackling settler extremism against Palestinian civilians, and urgently rescuing the police force from the ministerial control of its reckless, brutalizing minister.
These are not minor policy or personnel matters, but issues central to cohesion and harmony at a time of national crisis.
Internationally, an effective strategy requires creating a public diplomacy operation — yes, “creating,” from scratch — working to disseminate material on the broader aspects of Israel’s efforts to face down enemies avowedly committed to its destruction, and operating 24/7 to provide immediate information on the specifics of the war. There is simply no such mechanism in place today.
So dire is the situation — as endless reams of unverifiable material emerge from Hamas-overseen Gaza and Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon, in a first, unanswered draft of history disseminated via traditional and social media — that official Israel to this day does not actually even know what it’s up against.
Finally, Israel must focus strategically on Iran, and nurture the international alliances that it requires to speed the collapse of the ayatollahs’ regime. As Tehran internalizes that Israel is no longer deterred by Hezbollah, the ayatollahs, bracing for Israel’s response to their October 1 ballistic missile assault, face one dilemma over whether, in turn, to further escalate their direct war with Israel. And they face a second dilemma over whether to now accelerate their drive to nuclear weapons or maintain their patient if relentless progress to the bomb.
Israeli leaders and security officials, past and present, are adamant that Israel has developed effective capabilities for use against the Iranian regime and its assets. But utilizing them requires close coordination with regional and international allies, most especially the United States.
Israel has been extremely grateful to have a coalition alongside it in defending against Iran’s two direct attacks to date, and has been immensely boosted by the deterring presence of the considerable US military deployment in the area over the past year. Tackling Iran in the absence of still deeper cooperation and coordination would be both reckless and unnecessary.
As the Hebrew anniversary of Hamas’s Simhat Torah slaughter approaches, there’s no question that both US presidential candidates would want the ensuing multi-front war wrapped up by the time one of them takes office in January.
That is not about to happen. But with Kamala Harris unlikely to be more robustly supportive of Israel than Joe Biden, and Donald Trump advising Israel for months to “get it over with fast,” a coordinated strategy for tackling Iran and thus restoring security and stability for Israel and the region must be in place, and in play, long before then.
