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Every conflict provides unique insights into strategy, tactics, technology, intelligence, and other factors that are vital to security. Perhaps most importantly, conflicts test the adaptability and learning capabilities of institutions: Good security establishments improve after a conflict, while bad ones make the same mistakes again and again.
Every conflict provides unique insights into strategy, tactics, technology, intelligence, and other factors that are vital to security. Perhaps most importantly, conflicts test the adaptability and learning capabilities of institutions: Good security establishments improve after a conflict, while bad ones make the same mistakes again and again.
Israel’s history shows both tendencies. In June 1967, the Israeli military triumphed over the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria in one of the most crushing victories in modern history. From this victory, Israel learned that its air force was superior to those of its Arab foes, that its tank formations could punch through enemy lines with ease, and that its intelligence would accurately reveal enemy plans and intentions. The Israeli military proceeded to strip its armored divisions of infantry, artillery, and supporting arms, while its intelligence services mirror-imaged Arab armies, assuming they would not attack until they could gain air superiority and otherwise fight Israel on its own terms.
All this proved disastrous in the first weeks of October 1973, when the armies of Egypt and Syria broke through Israeli lines and threatened to go deep into Israel in a surprise attack. Israel’s unsupported armored forces took huge losses in tanks, while Egypt used effective air defenses to counter the Israeli Air Force, not gaining air superiority of its own but neutralizing that of Israel.
After weeks of hard fighting, Israel eventually prevailed and—as the shock of the surprise wore off—totally transformed its security establishment. Failure proved a good teacher. Israel improved its intelligence and early-warning methods, reserve mobilization system, doctrine for using tanks, military relationship with the United States, homefront preparedness, and other essentials. From the 1973 disaster emerged one of the most formidable militaries and intelligence services in the world.
The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack was perhaps a worse military and intelligence failure for Israel than the 1973 invasion, with around 1,200 Israelis dying, often brutally, as a result. Israeli intelligence detected but dismissed the plot, Hamas efficiently overcame the much-touted barrier along the Israel-Gaza border meant to pen it in, Israel’s vaunted military forces proved unable to respond quickly, and other basics of Israel’s containment of Hamas failed.
In December, I took part in a trip to Israel—organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies—where we met with a range of security and political officials, all of whom cited lessons from Oct. 7 to explain what Israel should, and should not, do next. Let’s consider six I heard during my visit that seem logical on the surface but do not hold up under close scrutiny. As my assessment of these six supposed lessons suggests, the answer is not a need to radically change course, but rather an unsatisfying “do better.”
Deterrence Doesn’t Work
Since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, Israel has tried to deter the group as well as other adversaries, notably the Lebanese Hezbollah, using the threat of force or limited strikes to convince them that the price of any attack would be too high. For 16 years, this worked to an extent, with only brief eruptions of conflict that killed a small number of Israelis (though often far more Palestinians), before the situation returned to a version of the status quo ante. Israelis assumed that Hamas leaders were in a box and recognized that a full-scale assault on Israel would be disastrous for Palestinians in Gaza, their own hold on power, and their ability to provide economically for Palestinians in Gaza—and would fail to boot. Hamas’s all-out assault on Oct. 7 seemed to show that deterrence is a mistake. As one Israeli security official told me, “Deterrence is something that lasts until the other side is ready for war.”
Yet deterrence often does work, and in any event Israel simply has too many foes (Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen, among others) to be fighting on all fronts all the time. Successful deterrence has allowed Israel to avoid multiple wars, and it appears to be working with Hezbollah right now. Hezbollah avoided joining Hamas in an all-out strike on Oct.7 and seems to be carefully calibrating its attacks to show solidarity with Hamas while avoiding a massive war because it fears Israeli punishment.
You Cannot Rely on Intelligence
Since its creation, Israel has relied heavily on its intelligence services to provide warning about an adversary’s capabilities and intentions, enabling Israel to shift from adversary to adversary without overstretching its resources. Intelligence failed disastrously on Oct. 7. This occurred despite Israeli intelligence intercepting Hamas’s battle plan more than a year in advance as well as numerous tactical warning signs that senior Israeli military officials ignored.
From this experience it is tempting to simply assume the worst case about an adversary’s capabilities and intentions to avoid being caught unprepared. Doing so, however, inevitably inflates the threat, requiring far more defense spending and, in the Israeli case, a larger, more prolonged call-up of reserves, which the country can ill afford. In addition, not trusting intelligence creates incentives for Israel to launch preventive wars against groups like Hezbollah, particularly if Israel also believes deterrence does not work, because Israel might worry that Hezbollah could attack at any time. A misguided attack on the group could lead to all-out war in the region.
Defenses Don’t Work
Israel built a 40-mile so-called smart fence around Gaza, decked out with cameras, radars, and sensors. This was meant to both stop large-scale Hamas attacks and provide warning if Hamas was gathering its forces. This, too, failed on Oct. 7.
Defenses, of course, did work for many years. Hamas, which used to send numerous suicide bombers into Israel, was largely unable to penetrate the border from Gaza for years, in large part due to the fence. In fact, Hamas had to plan for several years and conduct a massive operation to overcome the defenses, not an easy task and one that should have been identified, and disrupted, by Israeli intelligence.
Defenses by themselves are never sufficient. They must be backed up by intelligence and a rapid-response capability, making any breach less consequential for Israel and potentially disastrous for Hamas. Indeed, had Israel been able to scramble a small number of attack helicopters to Gaza quickly as the assault force was breaching the fence, Hamas would have suffered huge losses.
Israel’s Greatest Threat Is External
Both the number of deaths on Oct. 7 and the horrific brutality of the attacks shocked Israel, with many of those I met declaring the crisis existential. As dangerous as Hamas showed itself to be, however, the deaths of 1,200 people on Oct. 7—and scores more of Israelis in the war so far—are a fraction of the almost 10 million people who live in Israel. In contrast to past wars with powerful Arab states like Egypt, Hamas has no chance of conquering Israel, or even a small part of its territory.
The bigger danger to Israel as a democratic state is internal. Before Oct. 7, Israel was rife with divisions, including tension between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, between Jews in general and the large Israeli Arab population, between religious and secular Jews, and between right-wing and left-wing Israelis. The Netanyahu government made all this far worse, creating a coalition with right-wing extremists and proposing legislation that would roll back judicial independence, among other controversial measures.
One of the only silver linings of Oct. 7 is that Israelis have come together, with Israeli Arab leaders denouncing Hamas, Haredi men who once shunned military service volunteering for the Israel Defense Forces, and secular civil society groups that overnight went from protesting the government to organizing support for those displaced after Oct. 7 and for Israeli soldiers.
Yet this domestic cohesiveness could soon unravel. All of these tensions could easily resurface, jeopardizing Israel’s stability and even posing a threat to its democratic character. Israel’s high court has struck down a controversial proposal to reduce judicial independence that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put forward early in 2023, which had led to massive protests. Netanyahu himself is already playing politics with the Oct. 7 attack, implicitly saying his critics were responsible for past waves of Palestinian terrorism and jeopardizing the support of the Biden administration by rebuffing U.S. calls for peace talks in the long term. Indeed, if the government is going to ask Israelis to serve in reserves and make economic sacrifices in the name of fighting Hamas, it needs to ensure that its actions are linked to strategic necessity, not politics.
Palestinian Suffering Doesn’t Matter for Israel
More than 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza have died, many of them children, since Oct. 7. Palestinians in the West Bank, too, have suffered, with several hundred casualties since the Hamas attack. As one security official told me after discussing the rape and brutality that accompanied the Oct. 7 assault, “You won’t find one Israeli who cares [about Palestinian lives].” Another noted that no one thought the workers from Gaza allowed into Israel would “rape our daughters.” The Israeli military had loose rules of engagement in Gaza, which it recently tightened under U.S. pressure, according to a report. Israel justifies the civilian casualties as militarily necessary for its goal of destroying Hamas and its military infrastructure. Thus, it has targeted Hamas tunnels even if this meant collapsing the buildings built over them.
In addition to the human cost, the Palestinian civilian deaths undermine Israel’s international reputation and key diplomatic relationships. A number of European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, offered Israel unconditional support after Oct . 7 but now are criticizing Israel for the deaths of Palestinian civilians and are supporting U.N. resolutions for a cease-fire. Arab states that made peace with Israel have not broken relations, but their criticism of civilian deaths has increased, largely due to the outrage of their own publics. Most consequentially, the Biden administration has criticized the deaths of civilians, with important Democratic constituencies particularly critical of U.S. President Joe Biden for his strong support of Israel.
Continued high levels of civilian casualties risk jeopardizing U.S. financial and military support for Israel. Israelis might argue that even if they reduce casualties in their operations and allow in more humanitarian aid, they will be hated in some circles. But it is better to be hated less. This reduces support for groups like Hamas, and it decreases international pressure on Israel.
Palestinian Leaders Cannot Be Trusted to Make Peace
For many Israelis, Oct. 7 was the brutal culmination of a pattern of Palestinian duplicity. In their eyes, the eruption of violence in the Second Intifada in 2000 showed the peace talks of the 1990s were a sham. Similarly, many Israelis believe that their 2005 withdrawal from Gaza led to the Hamas takeover there, and the result of giving up territory was rockets and mortar attacks, not peace. Oct. 7, far worse than any of these, occurred at a time when the Israeli government believed Hamas was in a box and that it was negotiating with Israel over work permits because it recognized that it could not successfully attack Israel. In addition to these specific incidents, Netanyahu has blamed Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas and his administration for radicalizing Palestinian society.
Yet Abbas and other PA leaders have repeatedly embraced peace talks, and they would say that expanded settlements, unpunished settler pogroms in the West Bank that took place before Oct. 7, and Israel’s facilitation of support for Hamas showed Israel was acting in bad faith. They have also repeatedly acted against Hamas in the West Bank and otherwise fought terrorism there.
In reality, Palestinian leaders are responding to political incentives and strategic opportunities. Some, like Hamas leader Yehia Sinwar, clearly were duplicitous as they feigned modest intentions while preparing for war. Others, like Abbas, are weak leaders but have consistently embraced negotiations over violence even as negotiations stalled and Arab states made peace with Israel while largely ignoring the Palestinians.
Conclusions
The unsatisfying lesson from Oct. 7 is that Israelis must simply do better in many traditional policy areas rather than jettison useful strategic approaches and give in to the understandable anger gripping the country. Israeli intelligence must learn the lessons of its failure on Oct. 7 in order to provide more effective warning, while the country must also strengthen defenses—without relying on them completely. Deterrence can hold, but assumptions regarding adversary capabilities and intentions must be checked repeatedly. Perhaps most importantly, Israelis must ease their military campaign to reduce Palestinian civilian casualties and allow far more aid into Gaza and embrace, rather than reject, peace negotiations with the PA. None of this will be easy, but all of these steps are necessary for Israel to be secure in the long term.
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