One Battle After Another: Netanyahu’s New Security Doctrine

After Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack, Benjamin Netanyahu vowed “total victory” in the conflict that followed. Yet more than two years later Israel’s enemies — while unquestionably weakened — are still standing.

Hamas and its gunmen still rule over the ruins of half of Gaza. Hizbollah, which Netanyahu said was “crushed” in 2024, fires a steady stream of rockets from Lebanon on northern Israel. And less than a year after he declared a “historic victory” against Iran, Israel and the US are back at war with the Islamic republic.

Rather than promise decisive triumph, the prime minister now speaks of the long arc of history, rising and falling threats, and changing the region’s “balance of power” — all as he prepares Israelis for a future in which dangers are constant and conflict open-ended.

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According to Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser still considered close to the premier, the succession of offensives in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran was designed to avoid simultaneous, full-scale wars on multiple fronts.

“The logic was to take out the proxies in order to focus on Iran . . . and reach the attack on Iran in the best and most co-ordinated position,” said Amidror, now at the JINSA think-tank in Washington. “On every one of the fronts there was a strong hit, but the work is not done.”

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