The Security Case for a New Israeli Approach to the Middle East

Forget morals and values for a moment. What Israel is doing is not working and not making it safer.

When I talk to Israeli policymakers and friends about the Palestinian issue and Israel’s broader approach to the Middle East, I often hear the same response:

“You are a naive American. You don’t understand our security concerns. You don’t understand the Middle East and you don’t live here. You can talk about morality or diplomacy, but unless you can address our security needs, none of it matters.”

I may not live in Israel, but I have spent my entire career working on national security issues, and have often had to put idealism aside, analyze the world as it is, and make recommendations in tough situations where there were no good options. So for today, let’s put idealistic notions aside and look at Israel’s situation through a purely security lens.

The bottom line: Israel’s security strategy has not been working for years. It proves its military superiority in conflict after conflict only to end up worse off at the end. The pattern holds whether it’s Gaza, Lebanon, or Iran. It is past time for a different approach.

Some Basic Realities

Let me start with some basic background and assumptions.

Israel exists as a Jewish state. The Jewish people are not simply a religion. They are a people, and like many other peoples around the world, they have a right to self-determination. Through thousands of years of exile, persecution, and repeated failed attempts at assimilation, Jews developed a distinct national identity and demonstrated that for Jewish security, a state is necessary. The Jewish people deserve a state of their own, and have had one for 80 years. At this point, anyone who desires to undo that reality must acknowledge that it would be violent and destabilizing..

At the same time, there are millions of Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. They too have a national identity and are not going anywhere. Israel has three choices to deal with them. It can use a combination of ethnic cleansing and genocide to remove the Palestinian population from the West Bank and Gaza. In the process it would turn itself into an international pariah and cause fissures inside its own society that would leave it unrecognizable -- a strategic disaster in addition to the obvious violations of both Jewish values and international law, but one that has some traction with the Israeli far right.

A less extreme option is to continue the current system of ruling over Palestinians in perpetuity. This too comes with tremendous costs. Israel lives with permanent instability. It has had to maintain a massive and expensive military for such a small state. Since October 7th reservist call-ups have put tremendous, near-unsustainable pressure on Israeli society. This state of affairs with the Palestinians also stands in the way of Israel coming to agreements with many of its regional neighbors and integrating into the broader Middle East, and creates opportunities for its adversaries – primarily Iran – to apply pressure on Israel by supporting proxy groups on its borders. This approach is also leading to Israel’s international isolation and now a fraying relationship with its closest and most important ally – the United States. In short, this approach is turning Israel into what Bibi Netanyahu last September called “Super-Sparta.”

Third, Israel can look for a way to come to an arrangement with Palestinians where they too achieve freedom, security, and self-determination. Israel could be integrated into the region and at peace with all of its neighbors, more accepted in the world, reducing much of the isolation it faces internationally, and reducing the costs imposed by constant fighting and instability.

Most Israelis would support this third option or at least tolerate it, but they do not believe it is possible. They will never take the risk of allowing Palestinians freedom and self-determination unless they are confident in their own security. They believe they have already given a Palestinian state a fair chance through the Oslo Process and it failed. They believe that the broader regional environment beyond the Palestinians also creates too many security risks and threats to take a chance. And therefore they are resigned to live with permanently ruling over the Palestinians, even while they recognize many of the downsides.

Israel’s Failed National Security Strategy

But what if I told you this was not a dead end. That Israel actually has strategic options, but that for at least the past 25 years and arguably the past 45 years it has been pursuing a strategy that limits its national security options and forces it into one singular choice of essentially creating “Super Sparta.”

To understand why, we need to go back to Israel’s founding and the wars it fought between 1948 and 1973. Those were primarily conventional wars between states. Israel excelled at them. The Six-Day War demonstrated the extraordinary capabilities of the Israel Defense Forces. Even in 1973, after being surprised, Israel ultimately recovered and prevailed.

Two factors explain those successes.

First, Israel was fighting conventional wars, where superior military capability and technology can decisively determine outcomes.

Second, Israel’s leaders understood that military victories are not ends in themselves. Military success must be converted into political gains.

That is exactly what happened with Egypt and Jordan. Military victories created the conditions for diplomacy, and diplomacy created lasting security. The Camp David Accords and Israel-Jordan peace treaty transformed Israel’s strategic position and produced a level of security unprecedented in its history.

Beginning in 1982, however, the nature of Israel’s wars changed. Israel’s adversaries concluded they could not defeat Israel conventionally. So they shifted to a strategy that emphasized asymmetric warfare. And since then, Israel has either lost or fought to a draw in virtually every major conflict it has entered.

Not because Israel lacked military superiority. On the contrary, Israel repeatedly demonstrated overwhelming military dominance over Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran. Yet when you look at the outcomes after each war, Israel ends up in roughly the same position – or worse.

This pattern stretches from the twenty-year occupation of Lebanon, to repeated wars in Gaza, to the catastrophe of October 7, and now to the cycles of conflict with Iran and Hezbollah.

Hawks argue these outcomes occurred because Israel didn’t use enough force. If only Israel had gone further. If only Washington had been more supportive. If only Israel had fought harder and longer. But that explanation makes little sense. Israel has repeatedly demonstrated overwhelming military power. If military power alone were enough, these conflicts would have been resolved long ago in Israel’s favor.

So why does this keep happening? Two reasons.

The first is that asymmetric wars cannot be won through military means alone. The United States learned this lesson in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. A strategy based on body counts and killing as many enemies as possible does not work. It often produces the opposite effect, generating more resentment and strengthening insurgent movements.

Israel’s twenty-year occupation of Lebanon ultimately produced a stronger Hezbollah. In Gaza, after October 7, Israel pursued a largely conventional search-and-destroy campaign aimed at eliminating Hamas fighters. Yet Hamas remains deeply embedded in the areas where nearly all Palestinians live. It has not been sustainably displaced.

By contrast, one of the few successful counterinsurgency campaigns in recent decades was the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS. The United States worked “by, with, and through” Iraqi security forces and Kurdish partners. Military operations were combined with political, humanitarian, and governance efforts. Local actors with legitimacy took control of territory after ISIS was pushed out. The result was not perfect, but this strategy allowed us to replace ISIS with a viable alternative, which was the only way to sustainably displace it.

We repeatedly encouraged Israel to pursue a similar approach after October 7. During my time at the White House, we urged Israeli counterparts to combine military operations with a plan to empower credible Palestinian alternatives to Hamas. The IDF, Shin Bet, and Mossad were open to these recommendations. But we were told Netanyahu and the political leadership would not consider it because the only viable though highly imperfect alternative Palestinian option was the Palestinian Authority, and empowering them would cause Ben Gvir and Smotrich to leave the coalition and collapse Netanyahu’s government.

The same dynamic has played out in Lebanon. For years, the United States and others have encouraged efforts to strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces as an alternative to Hezbollah. But Israeli skepticism repeatedly leads to search-and-destroy conventional military action that undercuts the very local institutions that could eventually replace Hezbollah.

Which brings us to the second flaw in Israel’s strategy: the inability to convert military success into a political endgame.

Lebanon is perhaps the clearest example.

From a tactical perspective, Israel’s pager operation and subsequent military campaign in late 2024 was extraordinarily successful – far more militarily effective than Israeli or American decisionmakers expected it to be. Hezbollah emerged weaker than at any point in decades. A new Lebanese government took office that was more anti-Hezbollah than any government in recent memory. There was a genuine opportunity – imperfect, but real – to strengthen state institutions and gradually reduce Hezbollah’s grip on southern Lebanon and bring in the Lebanese Armed Forces.

Instead, Israel continued relying primarily on force to take shots at Hezbollah, undermining any Lebanese alternative. Eighteen months later, instead of consolidating meaningful progress to replace Hezbollah, Israel is occupying southern Lebanon, taking casualties on a near-daily basis, and finding itself at loggerheads on this issue with the Trump Administration. Rather than a new way forward, Israel is back to the same strategy that it pursued from 1982 to 2000, which led it nowhere and eventually became too costly.

The two recent wars with Iran present a similar story. Israel achieved extraordinary military success. It dominated Iranian airspace, hit thousands of targets, intercepted thousands of missiles, and eventually convinced the United States to join the fight – a long-time aspiration of Bibi Netanyahu’s.

Yet where are we today after that incredible show of force? Iran’s regime remains in power. It still possesses hundreds of kilograms of highly enriched uranium. Its missile capabilities remain significant. It continues to wield influence through proxies. And it now has demonstrated its enormous leverage over the global economy through the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has calculated that Israeli interests no longer align with American interests on this issue and is negotiating its own deal with Iran that it is forcing onto Israel.

From a strategic perspective, Israel is in a worse position than it would have been had it accepted the JCPOA – a deal that pushed Iran further from a nuclear weapon with many more constraints and inspections and emerged from a combination of diplomacy, sanctions, and credible military pressure in which Israel played a meaningful and important role even as it ultimately decided it did not like the outcome.

In the era of Begin or Rabin, the JCPOA might have been viewed as a major strategic achievement. Instead, Israel pushed for more without a realistic plan or strategy for achieving it.

A Viable Alternative

So what can Israel do instead? It can follow the policy prescriptions that we have been arguing for at J Street for years and that many American officials and policymakers have been trying to convince Israel to pursue for even longer.

I will not lay these out in detail here because it would take way too long, but the basic outlines with links to much longer pieces are as follows. Pursue a 23-state solution through a phased process that results in Israel at peace with all of its neighbors, and the creation of a Palestinian state. It starts in Gaza, with helping create a legitimate Palestinian political and security alternative to Hamas. In the West Bank, it means working with the Palestinian Authority and supporting and encouraging reform rather than undermining it. And it means pursuing a regional framework involving Arab states and the international community that can eventually lead toward the 23-state solution. This can also include comprehensive security arrangements that ensure that even as Palestinians achieve statehood, Israeli security concerns are addressed.

In Lebanon, capitalize on Hezbollah’s weakness by strengthening institutions capable of replacing it by working with the new Lebanese government. With Iran, pursue the strongest realistic achievable diplomatic agreement while maintaining military deterrence.

And throughout all of this, Israel can maintain the strongest military in the Middle East as an insurance policy that ensures that even if some of these policies and strategies fail, Israel still has the capacity to maintain its security. Military power remains essential. But it should be used as leverage, deterrence, and an insurance policy – not as a substitute for strategy.

At this point, many Israelis will respond: “We tried withdrawal. We left Gaza and got Hamas.”

That’s true. But the withdrawal from Gaza was largely unilateral and uncoordinated. Israel did little to build a viable alternative to Hamas – and Netanyahu, once elected, actively strengthened it. The apt analogy is President Obama’s decision to withdraw from Iraq. When that decision helped lead to the rise of ISIS, Obama did not conclude that the only solution was a permanent American reoccupation and a return to 2003. That strategy had already failed. Instead, the United States developed a different strategy – one that relied on local partners, sustainable political arrangements, and much more limited use of U.S. forces.

Israel should draw the same lesson. The failure of disengagement does not prove that perpetual occupation is the only option. The 20-point plan, if fully executed with active cooperation from the Israeli government offers a viable alternative to building a replacement for Hamas.

Others point to Camp David and the Second Intifada. They argue Israel made a generous offer and received terrorism in return. “We have no partner.”

There is no question that Arafat and the Palestinian leadership made profound mistakes and bear substantial responsibility for the violence that followed and the failure of Oslo. Some of the American negotiators will also tell you that the U.S. wasn’t ready, that the process had been rushed, that Ehud Barak was too weak politically and that the process had been upended by the death of Rabin and Netanyahu’s run as Prime Minister in the late 90s, which halted much of the momentum.

But most importantly, that was twenty-five years ago. At some point, citing failures from a quarter century ago becomes an excuse for avoiding the obvious reality that the current strategy is not working. The answer to the failure of Oslo is not to look at the much more extensive failures of the past 25 years, which ultimately led to October 7th, and say, “well we have no choice but to keep going.”

In fact, there was a period in the late 2000s when Israel, the United States, and others made meaningful efforts to strengthen Palestinian institutions and build the foundations of a future state. Progress was limited but real.

Instead of building on that approach, Netanyahu chose a different strategy: weaken the Palestinian Authority, provide billions to Hamas, keep it quiet while ensuring Palestinians remain divided, and continue expanding Israeli control over the Palestinian territories. His strategy necessitated disempowering Palestinian voices that wanted to live alongside Israel and empowering those who want to harm it.

The results were evident on October 7th, and as the costs and casualties keep going up and Israel’s isolation grows both internationally and in the United States, they become more evident every day.

From a pure realpolitik perspective, the conclusion is obvious.

What Israel is doing is not making it safer.

It is doing the opposite.

The only path to lasting Israeli security is a fundamental change of course.