The high price of forever wars

Binyamin Netanyahu is quick to start conflicts, but shows no ability to end them

NOT ALL wars are fought alike. One reason for the 78-year survival of Israel, a small democratic country in a mostly hostile region, is that its leaders long grasped that fact. They saw how big gains come from preventing wars but, when necessary, fighting them quickly, with clearly defined and realistic aims. Short conflicts, they believed, should be a prelude to something much more valuable: a flourishing civilian life. In times of peace a country may best grow, building up its economic and technological prowess. For these reasons, over decades, Israel’s military doctrine wisely (if not always successfully) set out that wars should be limited and based on deterrence, early-warning and decisive action.

So it is dismaying to see how Israel’s current leaders have abandoned that approach. As Israelis mark the anniversary of their independence this week, they are embroiled in too many conflicts, of various levels of intensity, that have been dragging on for two and a half years. The Israel Defence Forces are over-extended on four fronts. The army has seized “security zones” in the Gaza Strip, south Lebanon and Syria and is engaged in an increasingly pitiless occupation of the West Bank. Together with America, it has just carried out a campaign of air strikes on Iran, the second round in less than a year. For all their short-term operational successes, it is not clear what benefit prolonging these conflicts will bring; and the costs are mounting.

The way Israel fights its wars has become bloody and ineffective. Israel was fully justified in responding forcefully to the massacre of its people by Hamas on October 7th 2023 and the missile launches by Hizbullah the next day. But the tactics it has since used in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon have caused many thousands of unjustified deaths and continue to cause suffering for millions of civilians displaced from their homes. Despite those years of fighting, Israel has failed to eliminate the threats on its border. Both Hamas and Hizbullah, though weakened, retain a grip.

Compounding those humanitarian and military failures are strategic ones. Traumatised by October 7th, Israel has sought the unattainable goal of winning total victories to guarantee total security. As a result, it has shunned more limited objectives that were achievable and which could have re-established deterrence and begun to build a more lasting settlement.

It rejected proposals by the Biden administration to replace Hamas with the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. It has plunged Lebanon into another war, rather than help its government limit the power of Hizbullah. In Syria it is squandering an opportunity to reach a security agreement with the new government. And it is unclear that Israel has any influence over the on-off negotiations between America and Iran.

Israel’s defenders argue rightly that the Middle East has no simple diplomatic solutions and that the Jewish state has earned the right to be eternally vigilant. But Israel’s overwhelming military superiority is not a solution in itself. One consequence is that people who once sympathised with Israel in democracies around the world, most notably in Europe and America, have grown increasingly hostile to it.

This is in large part the doing of Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister. Like his predecessors, he used to be reluctant to fight. Today, perhaps anxious to avoid a reckoning for his failings before October 7th, he seems driven to repeatedly escalate conflicts in the hope of “changing the map of the Middle East”. Israel’s generals, who could once restrain over-ambitious prime ministers, have become hesitant to speak out.

Elections are to be held by the end of October. Could they bring a new strategy? Campaigning will give Israelis a chance to debate whether it is wise to fight on so many fronts. Yet many feel unsafe after the massacre of 2023 and are unwilling to listen to moderate messages from their leaders.

Voters and political opponents are not scared of confronting Mr Netanyahu. They question him, often aggressively, over constitutional affairs, corruption and his coalition’s subservience to ultra-religious interests. But few seem ready to ask if Israel needs to fight its many wars for so long or so cruelly. The main opposition figures offer no compelling alternative, preferring to limit their criticism to ways in which military operationsare being carried out.

Israel’s politicians are letting their people down. Voters need to hear hard truths. Israel’s founding generations grasped that wars must have limits. Israelis need to recognise that, even after the horrors of October 7th, those limits still exist.■