Jerusalem – for almost two decades, Israel avoided a total war with its greatest enemies. He waged conflicts contained with the Hamasbut in the end, it allowed the group to maintain power in the Gaza. Kept a tense calm with the Lebanese militia Hezbollaheven while their combatants were saddened in the south of the Lebanon. And despite planning a major attack on Iran, it limited its actions to smaller and clandestine operations.
Highlights an extraordinary change in Israeli military doctrine since Hamas, the Palestinian ally of Iran, attacked the country in October 2023. It is a change that redesigned the dynamics of power in the Middle East, dismantled the regional alliance of Iran and consolidated Israel as the dominant military force in the region.
After giving the Hamas years to prepare for the October 7 attack, Israel changed course and launched one of the most destructive campaigns of recent wars. He then murdered most of Hezbollah’s lead and devastated large areas of southern Lebanon. Now, in Iran, is performing the type of broad and bold attack that had long threatened, but has never dared to execute.
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“We are changing the face of the Middle East,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a press conference on Monday. “And that can lead to profound changes within Iran itself,” he added.
For now, this second statement remains not proven. The Israeli military campaign has weakened Iran, but has not yet destroyed the country’s nuclear program or overthrew its government, and may not get either of them. War can also turn into an intractable quagmire without a viable output strategy or alternative.
Tectonic changes
Netanyahu’s wider point is more difficult to contradict. Hamas is no longer a threat to Israel. Hezbollah’s influence on Lebanon – much less the danger it represents for the Israelis – is very reduced. The Government of Syria, a pillar of the Iran Regional Alliance, was overthrown in December, in part because Hezbollah could no longer help him.
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These tectonic changes also reflect a major transformation in the Israeli mindset and strategy since the Hamas attack in October 2023.
For Israeli critics, the attack was the inevitable consequence of blocking Gaza, the occupation of the West Bank and the failure to resolve the Palestinian conflict through diplomatic concessions. Many Israelis have come to the opposite conclusion: they believe the October attack – the deadliest in Israel’s history – resulted from the country’s failure to defeat their enemies in a preventive and decisive manner.
“In the 20 years prior to October 7, we allowed threats to develop beyond our borders, trusting that our intelligence would give us previous notices of any attack,” said Division General Amos Yadlin, former head of Israeli Military Intelligence.
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“The trauma of October 7 completely changed this mindset and became willing to take risks that we would not run in the past,” said Yadlin. “Let’s no longer wait to be attacked, nor do you wait to be surprised.”
The return of preventive doctrine
The approach echoes Israel’s strategic vision in the early decades of its existence, when it often acted faster and more decisively to eliminate threats on its borders, Yadlin said. The clearest example was in June 1967, when Israel prevented Egypt after the Egyptian army moved troops towards the Israeli border.
“When Egypt concentrated troops on our southern border, we don’t expect to be surprised,” said Yadlin. “Now we are reliving this doctrine.”
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Israel’s new approach is the result of months of reevaluation, during which the confidence of the Armed Forces – shaken by the October 7 failures – was gradually restored.
Although Israel’s response to Hamas was immediately furious, the country initially hesitated to face Hezbollah and Iran. Netanyahu canceled a preventive attack on Hezbollah in the first week of the war in 2023, fearing that Israel had difficulty maintaining a multiple war against Iran’s covenant.
For almost a year, Israel has only had a low -intensity conflict on the Hezbollah border. Despite the increase in clashes with Iran in 2024, Israel limited its attacks on the country to avoid total conflict.
Israel’s approach began to change in September, when a sequence of unexpected movements allowed the country to decimate much of Hezbollah’s senior leadership.
This increased Israel’s confidence and led its leaders to order a more decisive attack on the group. Troops invaded southern Lebanon and the Air Force killed Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.
Israel then severely weakened Iran’s air defense systems and was able to repel major attacks by Iranian missiles, giving the country more confidence in their offensive and defensive abilities. More than a year after October 7, Israeli leaders finally concluded that they had a rare window of opportunity to unleash a decisive blow against the Iranian nuclear program.
And in the long run?
Although Israel’s new approach has reduced Iran’s regional influence, little has done little to solve Israel’s older and intractable problem: Israelo-Palestinian conflict.
In Gaza, Israel’s retaliation led to widespread destruction and spill, restoring a feared sense of Israeli power and reducing Hamas’s threat by a generation.
But the conflict did not bring a long -term clear trajectory to Gaza or the broader Palestinian issue. Netanyahu has consistently ignored opportunities to end the war, rejecting both the idea of leaving Hamas remnants in charge and allowing other Palestinian groups to take control.
“Instead, we have only bad options,” said Tzipi Livni, former Foreign Minister of Israel. “Either occupation or chaos, instead of a diplomatic process involving moderate regional and Palestinians who could change reality on the ground to both Palestinians and Israeli.”
An equally aimless dynamics may arise in Iran, analysts say if Israeli leadership does not clearly define their goals there and set an exit strategy.
For now, Israeli authorities expect the United States to join the attack and help Israel destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. If the US remains away, and if Iran refuses to interrupt enrichment on its own will, it is unclear if Israel’s new powerful doctrine will achieve the transforming results that many Israelis desire.
“The question is whether effective military performance is accompanied by a sober political view,” said Nimrod Novik, a former Israeli employee and a member of Israel Policy Forum, a research group in New York. “Or, as in Gaza, we run out of an outcome. Time will say.”
This article was originally published in the The New York Times.
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