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Let’s conduct a mental exercise. It’s Oct. 7, 2025, two years after Hamas’s devastating terrorist attack that killed around 1,200 people, and Israel’s Gaza Strip policy is in ruins. Hamas emerged from the rubble of the war in 2023 and again controls Gaza, with its prestige in the West Bank and elsewhere greatly enhanced. Israel’s international standing, including in Washington, is in tatters. At home, Israel’s political and social divisions are even more pronounced than before the war, effectively paralyzing the country. Perhaps most troublingly, Iranian proxies are more aggressive than ever before, with regular rocket attacks into northern Israel by Hezbollah and with Houthi fighters in Yemen menacing Israeli shipping.
Let’s conduct a mental exercise. It’s Oct. 7, 2025, two years after Hamas’s devastating terrorist attack that killed around 1,200 people, and Israel’s Gaza Strip policy is in ruins. Hamas emerged from the rubble of the war in 2023 and again controls Gaza, with its prestige in the West Bank and elsewhere greatly enhanced. Israel’s international standing, including in Washington, is in tatters. At home, Israel’s political and social divisions are even more pronounced than before the war, effectively paralyzing the country. Perhaps most troublingly, Iranian proxies are more aggressive than ever before, with regular rocket attacks into northern Israel by Hezbollah and with Houthi fighters in Yemen menacing Israeli shipping.
This kind of exercise is known as a pre-mortem, a technique first proposed by the psychologist Gary Klein to reduce the risk of failure and recommended by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman as a way of countering overconfidence. The idea is simple. Imagine that a plan or policy currently being pursued ends up failing horribly. Now ask what went wrong. The result is a list of potential pitfalls that leaders can study today to craft better policies.
I learned about some of these potential failure points on a recent trip to Israel with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where we interviewed security officials and other senior figures. For Israel in Gaza, the pitfalls could stem from underestimating Hamas itself, unwittingly strengthening the group, weakening domestic cohesion, failing to transition from war to governance in Gaza, and undermining Israel’s relationship with the United States.
Underestimating Hamas’s Resilience
Israel seeks to destroy Hamas, killing its leaders and much of its military rank and file. Of the roughly 25,000-strong Hamas force that existed before Israel invaded Gaza, Israel claims to have killed around 7,000 cadres as of mid-December, including many key operational leaders.
Yet Hamas will prove exceptionally difficult to destroy completely, and it could well regrow in Gaza. Israel can estimate Hamas’s strength by assessing numbers in Hamas formations, monitoring funerals and death announcements, and counting dead combatants. However, as one Israeli expert told me, “I would be very skeptical about [Israeli estimates regarding] the number of Hamas fighters killed.” Troops in combat are not likely to carefully catalog enemy dead and may easily count all males of fighting age as presumed combatants. In addition, some people in Gaza may take up weapons because they are being attacked, thus adding to Hamas’s overall numbers.
Hamas is also deeply embedded in Gaza. It has controlled the strip since 2007: A generation has grown up under its control. It works closely with Gaza’s clans and has a power base in the Gaza refugee community. Well before 2007, it ran schools, hospitals, and mosques, giving it a presence in almost every aspect of society. This stands in sharp contrast with groups like the Islamic State, which was a relative newcomer to the areas it conquered and whose fighters were often foreigners with few connections to the local population.
With these deep roots, Hamas can easily regrow, even if the vast majority of its fighting apparatus is destroyed. To prevent this, a different polity must take Hamas’s place and ensure that the group does not reappear once Israeli pressure eases.
Strengthening the Resistance Narrative
Hamas is more than an organization: It also embodies what it calls “resistance,” using violence to end the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza and eventually to destroy Israel—a credo embraced by many Palestinians as well as Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran, and other regional actors.
The Oct. 7 attack electrified many Palestinians and much of the Muslim world, with approval of the attack soaring to above 80 percent in the West Bank. (Perhaps not surprisingly, those in Gaza, whose family members are dead and whose homes are destroyed, are less enthusiastic.) Israel’s aggressive response and the high levels of civilian casualties have further vindicated Hamas’s methods among many in the region. In Gaza, this means Hamas or any other resistance group has fertile soil in which to grow—an important long-term factor, as almost half of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are under 18. Outside Gaza, this narrative generates support for Iran and other enemies of Israel, and it makes it harder for friendly states in the Arab world such as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to openly work closely with Israel, despite their hostility to Hamas.
A Crisis of Faith
The Oct. 7 attack forced many Israelis out of their homes in the south near the Gaza border. The near-constant rocket and mortar fire in northern Israel from Hezbollah has displaced tens of thousands more. A total of 250,000 Israelis are now living away from home, either in hotels paid for by the government or with family. Giving these people the confidence to return to their homes is an Israeli priority.
But restoring confidence will prove difficult, both militarily and psychologically. Israel must be able to defeat or deter both Hamas and Hezbollah. But “defeat” and “deter” are elusive concepts, and Israel must convince its own people that they are safe. That is difficult given the fiasco of Oct. 7, when Israeli intelligence failed to detect and warn of the attack and Israeli troops failed to defend communities near Gaza.
In the south near Gaza, restoring confidence will require a comprehensive and visible defeat of Hamas; in the north, it would necessitate Hezbollah moving more of its elite Radwan units farther from Israel’s borders to ensure there would be no surprise attack. Israel also might need to station large numbers of forces on every front and provide each populated area with greater self-defense capabilities. Such measures are expensive and are particularly hard for Israel because its military force depends on reservists, making it difficult to sustain a large army in a long war.
Making all this worse, there is a crisis of faith in the political system. Before Oct. 7, Israel was a highly divided society, with sharp splits between religious and secular communities, Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews, and Jews from European countries versus Jews from Arab countries. The Netanyahu government further polarized the country by bringing far-right figures into the government and by undermining judicial independence. Already, some right-wing people are claiming Hamas attacked because it saw Israel as weak due to anti-government protests. Israelis might support higher taxes to fund the military, an extension of service for reservists, and other painful measures—but not if these proposals are seen as part of the partisan jockeying.
The Hezbollah Dimension
A potential disaster for Israel could occur if a full-scale war breaks out with Hezbollah. The Lebanese group has far more fighters who are more skilled and more experienced—and a rocket and mortar arsenal that dwarfs that of Hamas and includes precision-guided munitions. So far, Hezbollah has launched limited attacks on Israel to demonstrate solidarity with Hamas. Israel has responded by increasing its military presence along the border and conducting small-scale attacks designed to push Hezbollah away from its border and, through a limited use of force, demonstrate Israeli resolve. These exchanges of fire could easily spin out of control, and Israel might even decide that it needs to attack Hezbollah in order to end the threat it poses. Indeed, it might have initiated such a war were it not for U.S. pressure.
The Transition Failure
At some point, Israel will end high-intensity military operations in Gaza, either because it has largely destroyed Hamas or because the cost in lives and shekels—and its own international standing—proved too high. At that point, to avoid becoming an occupying power over a hostile population, prevent chaos on its Gaza border, and stop Hamas from regrouping, Israel will need to hand off at least some governance in Gaza to a Palestinian entity. This might be the Palestinian Authority (PA), which rules in the West Bank with Israeli support, or perhaps a group of unaffiliated technocrats.
Here Israel’s options are poor. The PA is corrupt and deeply unpopular, Israel’s West Bank policies have undermined the PA’s credibility, and the Hamas attack and Israel’s response have further eroded its popularity. The PA cannot manage security in the West Bank without substantial Israeli help, and Gaza would be a far bigger challenge. Yet there are no better options.
A Failure to Manage the U.S. Relationship
International criticism of Israel’s campaign is mounting. Israel depends on the United States for munitions (particularly necessary for a campaign against Hezbollah). The United States also offers much-needed financial support and is vital for deterring Iran and stopping groups like the Houthis in Yemen, which have tried to attack Israel. So far, U.S. President Joe Biden has generated tremendous goodwill in Israel with his heartfelt and strong support after the Oct. 7 attack.
Yet the relationship could easily go awry. Biden is trying to manage a fractious Democratic Party, much of which opposes his strong support for Israel, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is already playing politics with his critical relationship with Washington. The United States has pressed Israel to reduce civilian casualties in its military operations and avoid an escalation with Hezbollah, while many Israelis believe that they need to destroy Hamas completely, even if many Palestinian civilians die in the process. These political and strategic gaps could split the United States and Israel, leaving the latter more isolated internationally and without the military support it needs.
What Can Be Done Now?
Some of these challenges cannot be overcome without creating additional problems and stresses. Israelis I talked to recognize that killing Palestinian civilians increases support for Hamas’s narrative and undermines Israel’s international standing. But they feel that, to destroy Hamas, they have no other option but to pursue an aggressive military campaign that inevitably leads to many civilian deaths. Similarly, to avoid a war with Hezbollah, the United States urges restraint, but an approach that keeps the status quo ante will not persuade Israelis to return to their homes in the north.
This list of potential problems, however, also suggests that Israel will need to scale back its objectives. It may need to settle for regular raids on and deterrence with Hamas and a chaotic situation in Gaza, even as it builds up its defenses in order to reassure its people. Israel must also plan for the long term, recognizing that it cannot be perpetually at war and must preserve its relationship with the United States.
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