The scale, brutality, sophistication, surprise, and ultimately success of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, has shocked Israel and upended its entire security conception. It has created deeply profound, painful new strategic and operational dilemmas for the Israeli nation, the state, and its allies. These have surfaced in the agonizing choices bedeviling, and dividing, the current Israeli leadership’s approaches to the Gaza war, to intense confrontation with Hezbollah on Israel’s northern front, and to the harassment of ships bound for Israel, as well as to periodic attacks on the country’s southernmost city, Eilat. But the broader challenges that came to the fore on October 7 are bound to haunt any future Israeli government.
There are two pressing priorities for the current Israeli government, in descending order of timeliness: 1) developing a viable new formula for freeing the hostages still held by Hamas and 2) resoundingly defeating Hamas and establishing security and, by extension, civilian governance in Gaza that would follow the termination of the ground incursion by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the strip. A third priority is to come up with a comparable security arrangement for Israel’s northern front with Lebanon, facing Hezbollah, ideally without a military confrontation to attain it. Both security arrangements would need to meet a high bar to restore the confidence of the Israeli population living adjacent to these borders, which was badly shaken by Hamas’s cross-border raid, massive hostage taking, and rocket and missile attacks, as well as by Hezbollah’s subsequent rocket and missile attacks.1
Upon deeper reflection, it becomes clear that the October 7 attack has done much more than merely expose Israel’s vulnerability to a powerful display of audacity and brutality by a second-rate hybrid military-civilian substate entity such as Hamas. Most prominently, it has exposed the vast scope and network of threats Israel and its allies face from Iran and its regional proxies (not to mention Iran’s highly worrisome nuclear ambitions, which Israel has endeavored to contain prior to October 7, albeit with only moderate success). And probably most critically for the longer term, the attack brought to the surface the acute Palestinian issue that recent Israeli governments have tried hard to marginalize. In the process, it has also revealed multiple structural, fundamental vulnerabilities as well as new threats and challenges (but also several opportunities) that not only Israel but also its allies (first and foremost the United States) and neighbors must urgently come to grips with.
Overall, the events on October 7 and over the following four months tested nearly all the core tenets of Israel’s security outlook, its traditional military and defense doctrine,2 and its national security policy, including:
- the reliability of Israel’s military-based deterrence posture to dissuade nonexistential aggression (mostly through the threat of retaliation and punishment) and secure extended periods of relative security tranquility;
- the capacity of Israel’s formidable intelligence apparatus to forewarn of imminent threats;
- the ability of the Israeli military to secure a quick and decisive victory against any regional aggressor;
- the role and parameters of defensive measures in protecting the Israeli population both across its borders and in its hinterland;
- the viability of defense self-sufficiency and sovereign decisionmaking; and
- the utility, feasibility, and endurance of political arrangements for addressing security risks.
This article reviews the magnitude and complexity of the challenge this new security environment presents Israel, and by extension the United States and other relevant parties. It also offers some thoughts on the necessary and likely implications for Israel’s future security conception.
The Rude Awakening
The most obvious casualty of Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7 was the widely shared belief, regained thanks to its many successes since the dismal failure to warn of the Syrian-Egyptian intent to launch a war on October 1973, that Israel’s formidable intelligence apparatus could be trusted to provide timely warning of imminent threats. Such a warning could have been used to undertake preemptive action and/or reinforce the small standing military by calling up for duty the far larger reserve force.
No less severe is the acute dent the attack has caused in the belief in the efficacy of Israel’s deterrence posture, even against a far inferior foe. Israel’s deterrence failed miserably against Hamas. Neither the formidable Israeli deterrence posture nor the inducements Israel offered Hamas (such as employment opportunities for Gazans in Israel, financial assistance from Qatar, and the shipment of goods and services from and through Israel to Gaza) dissuaded Hamas’s single-minded leadership guided by extreme Islamist ideology from launching a brutal onslaught against Israel that would ultimately greatly harm Gazans as well. Nor did these inducements ameliorate Hamas’s deep-rooted ideological rejection of any enduring accommodation with Israel.3 Hamas’s leadership proved capable of consistently diverting huge resources from the impoverished population of Gaza toward extensive, methodical military buildup and patiently engaging in intense, methodical, and novel operational preparations. Hamas took advantage of significant economic backing from Qatar; extensive military hardware, training, intelligence, and advice from Iran; Egyptian collusion in facilitating the smuggling from Egypt of money, arms, and components and machinery to make weapons and the movement of Hamas’s leaders between Egypt and Gaza; and repeated Israeli attempts to buy off Hamas’s acquiescence with the status quo.
Hezbollah, Ansar Allah (also known as the Houthis), and other Iranian proxies throughout the region have manifested many similar traits as Hamas since October 7. They have repeatedly attacked Israel and U.S. bases and personnel in Jordan, Iraq, and Syria, and they have targeted ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, despite muscular military and diplomatic efforts to dissuade them from such actions. All of this is a sobering reminder of the inherent limitations of deterrence against determined adversaries willing to undertake bold actions that would seem to Western eyes to be suicidal and inimical to the interests of their people. More concretely, it has also given a feel for the magnitude of the challenge Israel and its allies have to be prepared to deal with if or when they feel compelled to respond militarily to Iran’s growing nuclear threat.
It is also becoming increasingly clear that the third pillar of Israel’s military doctrine—the IDF’s capacity to transfer war into enemy territory to secure a quick military decision—is also lacking when pitted against a deeply entrenched opponent, especially when the opponent is so embedded in heavily populated urban areas. The IDF has inflicted heavy casualties in Gaza and wreaked havoc on Hamas’s military infrastructure in most of the strip. But despite the mass commitment of Israel’s standing force, reinforced by extensive deployment of IDF reservists, and the unleashing of its military wrath (massively resupplied by the United States) over four months, Hamas is not finished. It is vigorously fighting back above and below the ground and retains a residual capacity to fire rockets against and into Israel.4 Over 130 hostages remain in Hamas’s captivity.5 Israeli military casualties continue to mount. The international community is losing its patience with Israel’s sustained operations in Gaza. And Gazans are suffering profoundly and widely in a humanitarian catastrophe of multiple actors’ making.
The scope and duration of Israel’s operation in Gaza, alongside the intense friction with Hezbollah due to its profession of solidarity with Hamas, in addition to security operations in the West Bank, has demonstrated the acute challenges Israel faces fighting forces on several fronts simultaneously. It has also exposed the United States’ bandwidth limitations when having to deal simultaneously with acute security challenges in Ukraine, the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Pacific region, and, alarmingly, possibly on the Korean Peninsula.
Defense, the fourth and most recent leg to be added to Israeli military doctrine, has shown mixed results. Confronted by over 11,000 rockets and ballistic and cruise missiles from various directions, Israel’s multilayered active defense has proven to be indispensable and its performance a spectacular success. It has made quasi-normal life possible throughout Israel and spared extensive damage and casualties. Yet the forward physical defense of the towns and villages bordering or close to the Gaza Strip has proven appalling, forcing evacuations of the remaining population there. A similar response has been taken on the northern border with Lebanon due to Hezbollah’s intense daily solidarity with Hamas attacks and the threat of cross-border action. Neither population is willing or able to return home until trust in the fact that Israel can eliminate the threats posed by Hamas and Hezbollah is regained.
Two other pillars of Israeli security—namely, self-sufficiency and sovereignty in decisionmaking, logistics, and political agreements with regional parties—have also been put to a test by the war, with rather comparable results. On the one hand, Israel has benefited greatly from an unprecedented level of U.S. political, military, and economic support to sustain its military operation, free its hostages held in Gaza, and dissuade and respond to other threats. It has also enjoyed sufficient political elbow room to sustain its military campaign. And the durability of Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt, Jordan, and to a lesser extent other Arab parties to the Abraham Accords has given Israel invaluable peace of mind on several fronts. On the other hand, these accords have also revealed Israel’s growing dependence on the United States and acute need for stability on at least some of its borders. Israeli policymakers are forced not only to accommodate many operational U.S. wishes and demands (painting the contours of the “day after” being a notable exception) but also to heed Egyptian and Jordanian concerns lest the war spill over into their territory, endanger their internal stability, and undermine their peace treaties with Israel.
The Way Ahead
Israel’s political and military leadership is presently increasingly myopic, totally consumed by the immediate external and internal challenges associated with the war in Gaza, the intense friction on the northern front, the threats posed by the Houthis, and the potential targeting of Israel’s offshore energy assets on the Mediterranean. Further constrained by disagreements within the governing coalition, it is struggling to think ahead strategically. Disagreements in the coalition have been exacerbated by posturing in anticipation of a political reckoning, demands for accountability for the October 7 debacle, and intensifying calls for holding early elections after the fighting subsides. Consequently, few definitive answers have thus far emerged to Israel’s new and future strategic challenges. Yet the undercurrents do reveal several tentative directions that are likely to be pursued the day after; they also highlight acute challenges that must be confronted in the not-too-distant future.
It already seems clear that Israel will have no choice but to offset the uncertainty about the efficacy of its intelligence early warning and deterrence posture by further strengthening its defensive pillar. It must do so to hedge against a revival of Hamas and similar attacks by Hezbollah and others—and, above all, regain the trust of the populations living near Israel’s various borders. The Israeli leadership must bear in mind that these populations likely will not return to their homes before the nearby threats are effectively and irrevocably removed.
Such an effort would require the IDF to regularly deploy forward a larger number of ground troops and enhance the role and armaments of local volunteer units (the latter essentially reviving the concept of territorial defense from the state’s early days). This would entail a reversal of the trend of scaling back the IDF’s active-duty force by prolonging anew the mandatory military conscription period as well as enlarging its reserve forces by extending the age requirements for reserve service and prolonging their annual reserve duty. Both would require a dramatic increase in Israel’s defense budget and a growing burden on reservists and the national economy writ large. The IDF is also likely to expand the role of women conscripts in fighting units, which it had been hesitant to undertake in part due to fierce religious objections. It has already begun lobbying against political objections to expanding its ranks by drafting more ultraorthodox conscripts who have previously eschewed any military service or insisted on conscription into male-only units on religious grounds.
In the same vein, Israel will likely offset the vulnerability of villages and towns close to the borders with Gaza and Lebanon by erecting or expanding buffer zones, thereby expanding a practice that has proven its utility in the Sinai Peninsula with Egypt and the Golan Heights with Syria. But on borders where it lacks peaceful partners, Israel will likely insist on broader interpretation of its right of self-defense to target suspicious targets entering these buffer zones. Particularly in Gaza, at least initially, Israel could go even further and conduct bombing runs and cross-border raids targeting any budding sources of threats.
In response to this perception of narrower security margins, one might also expect Israel to rely more on preventive and preemptive actions to deal with emerging and imminent threats. The preventive bent has already been evident in persistent actions undertaken in recent years in the so called “campaign between the wars” (“Mabam”) to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions, interdict transfers of destabilizing arms to Hezbollah, and disrupt the creation of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) outposts in Syria. But considering the trauma from October 7, a broader preemptive bent is likely to make a comeback, as was close to occurring against Hezbollah shortly after the Gaza war started, on October 11, 2023. The aim would be to capitalize on elements of surprise, first-mover advantage, superior intelligence, and precise firepower to endow the IDF with a decisive edge to regain the capacity to quickly achieve a decisive military victory.
Unlike the first three directions that involve revival of past, unilateral solutions, entrusting some areas of Israeli security to a multinational regional security arrangement would be a new shift in Israel’s approach. Going beyond an embryonic missile defense collaboration facilitated by the U.S. Central Command, a broader regional security framework will likely be developed with moderate Arab states (with other Western parties pitching in) and have a more expansive mandate, such as maintaining maritime freedom of navigation in the Red Sea. Initially, this effort will likely consist of several ad hoc and incremental arrangements, rather than a formal and consistent alliance structure, with only low-key or indirect Israeli participation. Assuming progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track, such a framework might evolve over time to become permanent, formal, and expansive in its mandate, inter alia, to counter Iranian aggression throughout the region.
Some of the ideas behind such an approach may be traced back to the establishment of the Multinational Force and Observers in the Sinai in the wake of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty and the multilateral track of the Middle East peace process in the 1990s. But the current novelty centers on Israel’s necessity and opportunity to evolve in the direction of a multilateral security framework, its timing (long before a permanent Israeli-Palestinian settlement is reached), and scope (beyond peacekeeping and information-sharing to jointly act against common threats). Maritime security, especially in the Red Sea, and missile defense stand out as obvious areas for such development, but a broader coalition against destabilizing behavior by Iran and its proxies would be the ultimate aim.
Such development, however, would merely be the tip of the iceberg of a necessary shift toward further deepening the Israel-U.S. security alliance. Upgrading and perhaps formalizing the alliance would significantly bolster Israel’s ability to deter aggression and defend itself against threats from all fronts—most prominently from Iranian nuclearization and action by its proxies—but this would come at the expense of diminishing some of its decisionmaking autonomy. It is unclear whether a tighter alliance would or should require formal codification, which is a point of contention for both sides. At the same time, the future of the alliance could be heavily dependent on at least some progress toward solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially under a Democratic administration in Washington.
In fact, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not merely an obstacle, and its resolution an opportunity, to address other security threats facing Israel. It also constitutes a grave long-term threat facing Israeli security and identity and a potential explosive trigger for a wider conflict with Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Several diplomatic efforts in the 1990s to resolve the remaining conflicts with Israel’s immediate neighbors—Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinians—have resulted in dismal failures. Indeed, Hezbollah (with massive Iranian assistance) has ascended to become a full-fledged, sophisticated armed militia that dominates Lebanon and projects its power far beyond. The Iranian IRGC has established a foothold in Syria and Lebanon. Multiple waves of Palestinian terrorism against Israel have occurred, and peace-rejecting Hamas has brutally consolidated its power in the Gaza Strip and heavily armed itself. Within this context, many Israelis have become disillusioned with the prospects of full Arab-Israeli reconciliation and peace processes to obtain reconciliation with the Palestinians in particular. This has incentivized successive Israeli governments to largely abandon the diplomatic route to diffusing the conflicts with its remaining Arab neighbors.
Instead, these Israeli governments have largely relied on deterrence; surgical, preventive military strikes; a mixture of prolific economic incentives, narrowly bounded autonomy for, and measured cooperation with the Palestinian Authority (PA); and extensive internal security measures to keep a lid on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s potential for inciting violence. In parallel, these governments have engaged in creeping annexation of parts of the West Bank and endeavored to bypass the Palestinian issue as an obstacle to normalizing Israel’s relations with other Arab states.
With Gaza in particular, recent Israeli governments have consistently opted for a policy of co-opting Hamas into an uneasy mix of unacknowledged, guarded collaboration; intermittent, limited friction; and brittle ceasefires to sustain its rivalry with the PA. The rude awakening wrought by the events on and since October 7 has exposed the folly underlying this policy. Even more profoundly, the events have highlighted the risks and costs associated with sustaining the current approach toward the Palestinian issue, not solely because it has such an innate potential for triggering local and regional violence but also because it could increasingly stand in the way of consolidating the bilateral and multilateral security arrangements envisaged above.
Israeli policy toward the Palestinian issue, however, remains deeply contentious domestically and especially divisive when it comes to the public’s attitude toward a two-state solution. A sizable minority (including leading members of the current ruling coalition) rejects outright such an outcome. On the Palestinian side, although practically all parties wish to see the creation of an independent Palestinian state, Hamas is not the only faction that categorically rejects the two-state approach, rules out a historical reconciliation with Israel, and denies Israel’s right to exist. This position is also shared by Iran and enjoys support in broader Islamic circles calling for a one (Palestinian) state solution from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Even among those on all sides who espouse the two-state solution, sharp differences exist over its acceptable parameters. Key points of contention include the borders, the status of refugees, control of Jerusalem, the “right of return,” and security arrangements.
Thus, notwithstanding the strong desire of the international community to see progress toward the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, permanent settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains elusive for the foreseeable future. Moreover, distrust in the notion of peaceful coexistence, or at the very least opposition to the creation of a two-state solution, is not merely ideological or theoretical. Opponents on all sides are already engaging in concerted actions to dash hopes for a peaceful settlement; some are even inclined to resort to violence to torpedo it.
The events of October 7 have raised the saliency of the Palestinian issue and infused some diplomatic energy into renewed efforts to peacefully resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But this has hardly made it easier to do so. In fact, it has seeded further doubts about the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence because the attack was popular among West Bank Palestinians, who increasingly espouse violence against Israel as the preferred way to end its occupation. At the same time, many Israelis doubt that Israel could risk living next to a Palestinian state that might turn against it, Hamas style, or fail to prevent some Palestinian factions from arming and engaging in violence against Israel. Even among Israelis who pin some hope on a two-state solution, many if not most are expected to insist that the Palestinian state be demilitarized and that Israel retain the ultimate responsibility for security over the entire territory, obviously making such an arrangement difficult for the Palestinians to accept.
The possible emergence of a more centrist Israeli government after the next election, as well as the reform of the PA and the ascendancy of a skillful, moderate successor to aging PA President Mahmoud Abbas, are necessary but insufficient conditions for a peaceful breakthrough. And in any case, neither seems imminent. That said, an interim arrangement might prove possible, driven by the acute need to find an acceptable arrangement for governance, humanitarian relief, and subsequent reconstruction and security in and around the Gaza Strip, as well as to contain the war’s contagion effects regionally and beyond. Such an arrangement could loosely encompass both Gaza and the West Bank and involve a renovated PA assuming a governance role in Gaza—reinforced by moderate Arab states, the United States, and European states—in return for assuming some additional attributes of statehood and ceding overall security responsibility in both areas to Israel. Evolution in this direction would be both aided and complemented by expansion of the Abraham Accords and solidification of the Israel-U.S. alliance.
Conclusion
Looking ahead, Israel now finds itself—even if it has yet to fully realize and admit as much—in the unenviable position of having to revisit practically every tenet of its traditional security outlook. Doing so requires a solid and forward-looking government that enjoys a fresh public mandate and broad international support, not least in order to overcome intense, residual domestic public resistance to new peacemaking efforts with the Palestinians. The reemergence of such a government is not given and is bound to take some time. So, in the interim, it is unrealistic to expect much more than partial and improvised responses to emerge from Israel. But when a reemergence does occur, stocktaking would be a good point of departure for building a security conception befitting the new era partially ushered in by October 7.
At that point, Israel can look back with satisfaction at its numerous security accomplishments over the years, including attaining a huge qualitative edge over its foes, cultivating a state-of-the-art military force and defense industry, and facilitating the growth of a prosperous social welfare country and a vibrant society. It may also find gratifying the solid bonds with the United States whose depth came to light after October 7, as well as the level of social cohesion and popular mobilization within Israel that the events revealed, perhaps unexpectedly having been preceded by a the highly acrimonious rift that was triggered by the ruling coalition’s effort to pass a far-reaching constitutional reform that was widely perceived to encroach on its established democratic institutions earlier in 2023. But Israel must also be clear-eyed, self-conscious, and courageous enough to admit that the future demands more and different security solutions—and it must boldly build off its traditional areas of strength to pursue them.
The magnitude and complexity of the security challenges Israel faces, and the gravity of the risks entailed in pursuing the necessary security transformation, make Israel-U.S. collaboration indispensable, all the more so during the precarious transition phase until the security risks it will be undertaking in the process really pay off. Currently, Israel enjoys support from the U.S. executive branch as well as from both sides of the aisle in Congress. U.S. security interests in the region and the historical bonds between the two nations incentivize a stronger partnership. Ultimately, however, strengthening the relationship hinges on leaders in both countries being willing to face up to the requirements of such a partnership, which cannot be taken for granted given the internal political dynamics in both countries. The starting point inevitably has to be in Israel; the formation of a new government is indispensable for its ability to formulate a viable new security vision and regain both the trust of a solid majority of its people and the confidence of its international allies. But a concerted U.S.-led diplomatic effort to present the Israeli leadership and public with clear and appealing choices about the way ahead could be instrumental in helping forge a domestic consensus in Israel to espouse such vision and marginalize the residual opposition to such a course of action.
Notes
1 According to public opinion surveys conducted after October 7, roughly two-thirds of the Israeli population is now anxious about physical security.
2 For an overview of Israel’s traditional defense doctrine, see Ariel Levite, Offense and Defense in Israeli Military Doctrine (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989).
3 Even after it revised and somewhat softened its charter, this remains Hamas’s formal position.
4 According to statistics provided by the IDF spokesperson, as of January 6, 2024, over 9,000 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip and penetrated Israel’s airspace; an additional 2,000 rockets came from Lebanon. The total number of rockets and missiles fired is believed to be far larger, and many more rockets and missiles have been fired over the past month.
5 More than 250 hostages were originally taken by Hamas and other Gaza-based Palestinian factions. Some have since been released, rescued, or found to be dead.
