It is notable that Israel is determined to try something different.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has systematically reduced each of its antagonists. First, it took the war to Hamas by invading and occupying large parts of the Gaza Strip, eventually finding and killing the mastermind of the so-called Al-Aqsa Flood terrorist attack, Yahya Sinwar, in October 2024. Then it neutered Lebanese Hezbollah via the famous beeper-bombs operation and a ground incursion into southern Lebanon to push Hezbollah back from the border. Israel then destroyed Iran’s air defenses and targeted the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, humiliating that country’s political and military leadership class and setting the stage for the U.S. air strikes on Fordow, which were aimed at dealing a substantial setback to Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Last week, Israel killed a dozen senior leaders of the Houthis, including the Houthi prime minister, Ahmed Ghaleb al-Rahwi.
Today, in an astonishing move, Israel has targeted senior members of Hamas’s political leadership, which had been based in Qatar — enforcing its stated policy of pursuing Hamas to the ends of the earth.
In the decades after 9/11, it was a common refrain in the West that Islamist terrorism and jihad could not be defeated by force of arms. Indeed, according to the conventional wisdom, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with counterterrorism operations worldwide, were a road to nowhere at best and were very likely counterproductive.
Israel has taken a very different view in the now nearly two years since it was attacked on October 7. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy is one that has pursued military victory. While not entirely foreclosing a negotiated settlement — so long as the terms are unambiguously in its country’s interest — Israel has chosen to take the war to its enemies in an attempt to defeat them.
Such a strategy need not mean that Israel will necessarily win total victory in this war, of course, if that is defined as all its enemies no longer possessing the will to continue fighting. The attack on Hamas in Doha may result in an unanticipated stiffening of resolve to support Hamas on the part of the Gulf Arabs; Israel has not demonstrated how it will “solve” the problem of a hostile and impoverished population living so close by in the Gaza Strip; Israel’s internal politics could splinter Netanyahu’s governing coalition and take its war policy in a different direction; and the Western powers’ murmurings about recognizing a Palestinian state could metastasize into a material material weakening of Israel’s ability to continue the war.
But fortune favors the bold. And it is notable that Israel is determined to try something different.