After the October 7, 2023 assault on Israel by Hamas, Israel cannot brook illusions about the dawn of regional peace, nor can it return to the "containment" policies of recent decades that prioritized diplomacy over decisive military triumphs.
Israel can no longer accept policies that emphasize "quiet for quiet" and prioritize "restraint," because this allowed enemies to develop attack capabilities under the cover of diplomatic breathing time; what some Western officials mistakenly call periods of "stability."
That approach failed. It blew-up in Israel's face, with terror and invasion from the West Bank and Gaza and from Syria and Lebanon, and with the march of Iran's nuclear bomb program to near completion.
Therefore, Israel is gearing for extended conflict at varying degrees of intensity, basing itself on a more aggressive mix between diplomacy and the use of force to scuttle enemy threats. Israel intends to act like a superpower, proactively asserting dominance along its borders and strategic ascendancy against threats farther away. Operation Roaring Lion is a demonstration of this.
In this regard, even after President Trump pauses American strikes on Iran, expect Israel to continue to make fierce, overwhelming, and surprise moves against enemy strongholds from Khan Yunis to Isfahan. It needs to keep its enemies off base with beeper blasts, targeted assassinations, computer viruses, and occasional bunker-busting airstrikes.
Israel wants to be feared, militarily dominant, and even "hegemonic" – not loved. Jerusalem knows that its neighbours will seek true reconciliation only when Israel is strong. More Abraham Accord-style peace treaties (even with Saudi Arabia) are possible and desirable, but these will be based on strength and explicit defense partnerships.
So, get used to a revamped Mideast strategic situation anchored by a very strong Israel.
ISRAEL'S UPDATED security posture and strategic doctrine also means that the "borders" between it and its failed and/or hostile neighbors must change. What was between Israel and Gaza, Israel and Syria, and Israel and Lebanon, and Israel and the Palestinian Authority will be no more.
Israel is asserting a forward defensive security zone on all four fronts, amounting to long-term military control of critical territories alongside diminution of hostile civilian populations.
This already is the case in Gaza where the IDF has taken control of 53% of the land that previously was under the thumb of Iran's proxy terrorist army Hamas, and it continues to destroy every town in this area that Hamas had turned into a military garrison above and below ground.
These is, and will not be for the long-term future, any Palestinian life in this area. No rehabilitation and reconstruction here. Nothing that would once again place Palestinian terrorist armies smack right up against and adjacent to Israel's magnificent farming towns and peaceful cities in the Gaza periphery.
The same goes for Syria, where Israel now holds the "Crown" of the Hermon mountain ridge, formerly known as the Syrian Hermon, along with several strategic border outposts in what used to be considered "Syrian territory."
Do not expect this to change any time over the coming decades, certainly not while a former ISIS terrorist named Ahmed al-Sharaa (a.k.a. Mohammed al-Jolani), under the tutelage of the Islamic dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, parades around as the new president of Syria.
To some extent, Israel also will continue intervene on behalf of the non-jihadist Druze community in Syria, which holds a zone of strategic importance in the southeast of that country along Israel's northern border. There are no UN or EU "peacekeepers" with the guts to use real bullets to protect the Druze and secure the border area.
The same is now true for Lebanon, the classic Middle East failed state, where for the past decades an Iranian-backed army called Hezbollah has ruled the roost and rained down hell and brimstone on Israel with tens of thousands of rockets and missiles.
The IDF is now clearing Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, bunker by bunker, building by building, one enemy missile firing emplacement after another. When Israel is done, nothing will remain, alas, of the villages of southern Lebanon, and no Lebanese villagers likely will be able or allowed to return to this area – just like the current situation in eastern Gaza.
The IDF must and will continue to control this area through long term military garrisons, ranging from the former "border" up to the Litani River area.
In this regard, international statements of support this week for Lebanon's "inviolable sovereignty & territorial integrity" are misplaced if not laughable. Lebanon has not exercised real sovereignty or enjoyed territorial integrity for more than a generation. Large parts of Lebanon were first decimated and controlled by the PLO, and in recent decades by Hezbollah. They used Lebanon as a launching pad for non-stop assaults on Israel.
Yet nobody in the "international community" huffed and puffed and protested about the decrement to Lebanon's "inviolable sovereignty & territorial integrity" all those years. Nobody was moved to express "deep solidarity" with the people of Lebanon when Arafat, and then ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, occupied and raped Lebanon.
All they did was put up a dummy international "peacekeeping" force called UNIFIL – which did nothing at best and even ignored Hezbollah's fortifications and provocations.
Only now when Israel has decided to put an end to the charade of Lebanese sovereignty in southern Lebanon and essentially reset the border for solid security reasons – do the denizens of Berlin, Canberra, London, Ottawa, and Paris begin to protest, and to patter about "sacrosanct" international borders.
SO, HERE is the place to say it plainly: From Israel's perspective there are no more "sacrosanct" borders in its immediate vicinity. Security lines and defensive zones will necessarily be drawn and redrawn according to frontier needs.
This, without reference to stale lines that go back to the colonial era (such as the Sykes-Picot boundaries), without regard for useless UN resolutions (such as resolution 1701 that followed the conflict in 2006 and which promised the defanging of Hezbollah and demilitarization of southern Lebanon), and without reliance on the expired, hollow Oslo Accords.
Consider Judea and Samaria. Nobody is under the illusion that any Palestinian "authority" can or will counteract the build-up of Iranian backed Islamic terrorist armies in these areas, which directly threatens Jerusalem and central Israel. Only the IDF can and will.
Thus, brigade-level Israeli military operations in places like Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus will continue to resolutely rout out terrorist threats. Thus, Israel increasingly will reassert military and civilian-settlement control over the open and strategic highlands of Judea and Samaria. This is likely to be permanent Israeli policy going forward for decades if not forever.
Israel has no confidence whatsoever in the ability of the "international community," not even through President Trump's 2020 "Peace Through Prosperity" plan (a.k.a the "Deal of the Cenury") or through his newfangled "Board of Peace," to make the Palestinian Authority into a "democratic, transparent, efficient, and sustainable governance system" – never mind a real partner for peace.
Thirty years and billions of dollars and euros later, the return on Western investment in Palestinian independence is abysmal. There is no democracy, no rule of law, no transparency, no sustainability, no investment in economic stability, and no peace education in the PA.
There is only nepotism and corruption, "pay-for-slay" handouts (meaning the incentivizing and rewarding of terrorism against Israel), violent propagandizing against Israel (including support for Hamas's October 7 invasion and massacres), and diplomatic assault on Israel in every possible international forum.
And today, Israel also has real reason to fear and ward off Hamas-style organized military assault by PA forces on its Gush Dan population center.
So don't lecture Israel about "sacrosanct" borders. Do not waste breath on protestations of Lebanese, Syrian, or Gazan "inviolable sovereignty & territorial integrity" or on the "internationally mandated territorial contiguity" of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. These are hackneyed concepts, extinguished by reality in the region.
