07 October was the first anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel near the Gaza border. A dastardly event that saw 1,200 dead and over 250 innocents taken hostage. Taking Israel, a traditionally alert nation, by complete surprise, that event triggered one of the most intense conflicts of recent times anywhere in the world.
By West Asian norms, intense wars involving Israel have mostly been short, focused and result-driven. The war initiated by the 07 October attack, however, has witnessed an Israeli overkill campaign in Gaza as a response that has recently expanded to other borders and regions. It’s one of those inexplicable campaigns where complete asymmetry exists, but final success for Israel is and will remain elusive.
The campaign has progressed only towards greater complexity with little chance of any eventual drawdown, stabilisation or outright victory. It’s a strange war, essentially conventional by one side (Israel) but against a non-state entity (Hamas) that does not fight by rules. As a result, Israel has also chosen to fight without international rules and norms of war.
Two factors have driven Israel’s selection of its strategy. First, the status of its own leadership has been under severe political test even before the war. Hence, it considers the war a point of relief. An outright victory for Israel may have brought a reprieve for the leadership. If an end state had been achieved in which the hostages had all been rescued or released, or Hamas had sued for a ceasefire. Even if no solutions would have emerged or negotiations initiated, a kind of status quo ante would still have been restored.
By Israeli military standards, the revenge for 1,200 deaths could pragmatically have translated into the surgically targeted killing of Hamas fighters and leadership, probably three or four times that number. Sadly, as against that, an overkill strategy has been adopted under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership.
Israel’s selection of ‘total victory’ as against restoration of ‘status quo ante plus’ resulted in the pursuance of a doctrine that aims to eliminate the last Hamas terrorist standing without concern for the collateral that ensues. Was this adoption done to overcome the complete failure of military anticipatory measures, intelligence and appreciation of how Hamas would fight if it chose to use the intense option of resisting in the Gaza strip? We have had no answer from any military quarters in Israel or from Western think tanks.
The question any military mind would ask is why Israel failed to impose essential restrictions to prevent the Gaza strip from becoming a zone where effective resistance could be brought to bear through means such as the tunnelling system that must have absorbed tons of concrete and cement, besides wire and other hardware to construct fighting installations and set up communications. With all supply lines under its control, Israel simply displayed an incompetence that its leadership is now trying to dispel through a second mistake of an overkill strategy.
The concept of surgical operations to take out the enemy that uses the civilian population as hostages and human shields was always perceived as a speciality of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Was it frustration, dire necessity or simply pressure of reputation that forced the IDF to achieve what it has at the cost of over 40,000 innocent Palestinians dead, mostly women and children? Mind you, the Gaza war has not even ended.
It’s as good a time as any to take stock of where the entire war is going after the activation of the northern Israeli border, the neutralisation of a large number of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders (including Ismail Haniyeh and Hassan Nasrullah), targeting of Beirut and other Hezbollah and Lebanese positions to limit or neutralise capability, a limited conventional surface-based advance into Southern Lebanon, and Iran’s firing of over 200 advanced missiles mainly on military targets in Israel. Hezbollah and Hamas would realistically have lost much of their capability, especially the ability to refurbish their own capacity to resist, after the targeting of supply lines and creation of a potential ‘hot war’ situation with Iran.
At this stage, rational predictability is near impossible, but termination of conflict at any of the ends is not in sight. The central conflict situations at this moment are in Southern Lebanon and the realm of a direct confrontation between Iran and Israel if Israel decides to retaliate in kind for the 200 missiles that Iran fired. Israel is fighting on all fronts and may not wish to invite another direct confrontation with Iran.
Neither may Iran, whose leadership probably perceives that calibration is the best strategy and a good face-saver with respect to its relationship with the proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. Both militarily and economically, Iran does not have the will or the capability to perpetuate the current round.
A do-or-die response, existential in nature, will only be evoked if its nuclear assets are addressed, and that is something Israel and its sponsor US are most focused upon, knowing it’s the red line. In the existing window of the period of lame duck President Joe Biden, Israel could well make an attempt, but without US support, this may not be possible. For all his other failings, Joe Biden is unlikely to be the initiator of another serious war in West Asia.
Israel has a second option of targeting Iran’s oil industry and leaving it in shambles. That could invite an Iranian response against the oil terminals and infrastructure of some Gulf countries, throwing the entire region into turbulence with a huge impact on Indian and many others’ interests. It would of course draw the ire of the world, especially China, and a sharp uptick in international economic challenges. India has probably communicated its serious concerns on all this to Israel.
It would be in Israel’s interest to limit its conflict engagements to focus on winnable goals. However, total victory for any side here is the last thing that can be achieved. Temporary positions of advantage are about all that any side can aspire for.
