Israel’s Victory Doctrine Achieves Indeterminant Outcomes

On January 19, 2025, a ceasefire was agreed to after nearly 16 months of continuous combat in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. In short order, every side immediately began to claim victory, glory, or defeat. As predicted in 2021, Israel’s victory operational concept led it down a path of two further indeterminate outcomes against Hamas and Hezbollah.

Hamas initiated its genocidal total war on October 7, 2023 with a genuinely deluded sense of their own combat power, expecting Israel to collapse under the weight of a few thousand irregular fighters. Instead, the war soon turned into one of the most punishing urban conflicts of the 21^st century, transforming Gaza into a ruin. The war would kill around 50,000 Palestinians, with 1,200 people killed, raped, and tortured in the initial Hamas attack, 251 hostages taken, and nearly 1,000 Israelis killed in ground combat. It would end with Hamas’s governance and military capabilities, as well as the social bonds of Gaza, significantly degraded, even as the fighting continued.

Acknowledging Owen’s point that there is no official, singular, victory doctrine, the intended purpose of the mosaic of changes to Israeli strategic thought, often colloquially described as its ‘victory doctrine’, was to ensure victory into the future. This was to be achieved via, according to Eran Ortal,

A “turn on the light and extinguish the fire” maneuver would be able to attack deep into enemy territory to conquer main nerve centers and inflict a decisive [military] defeat, while suppressing enemy rockets and missiles launched nearby toward Israeli forces and toward the home front.

Having learned from the 2021 short war between Israel and Hamas, Israel had the benefit of additional years of capability purchases and training before October 7. While Gaza was the primary battlefield, it was ultimately used most powerfully against Hezbollah.

The Cry for Total Victory

It was not just the character of the attack by Hamas, the humiliation of the surprise, nor the savagery shown by Hamas on October 7, that drove the Israeli demand for victory. Over the past decades, Israel itself had become increasingly uncomfortable with the outcomes of the various wars, quick battles, and intifadas it had fought. Israeli society became more willing to unleash such destruction in the hope victory would be achieved finally.

Symbiotically, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would utilize this shift and begin to call for “total victory” against Hamas. What this actually meant in practice was never really described beyond generalised demands for the destruction of Hamas and the return of the hostages, however. It was emblematic of the overall problem with contemporary Israeli strategic thought under Netanyahu: superior military action to defeat enemy military forces that distracted from larger political questions that undermine overall strategic effectiveness.

However, others attempted to fill this vacuum. The most notable idea floated was by Einat Wilf, who suggested “the Palestinians of Gaza, either collectively and individually, surrender.” Specifically, that the Palestinians accept the state of Israel, to settle in Gaza as citizens, and to accept the loss of the right of return. This was the closest anyone came to defining goals that meet the real test of victory, contra Owen’s peculiar assertion that victory only occurs in the military realm.

No Day After Plan

Israel’s victory operational concept focused on high-tech enabled fires, with ground forces to cordon off territory and search and destroy enemy forces within the buildings and underground bunkers in claustrophobic close quarters battle. But those units would soon leave, and operations were then carried out by units raiding from outside the Gaza border into urban areas, as well as special operations units to engage in small unit actions. The effect of this was to destroy Hamas’ standing armed units when they could be found, and slowly fracture the bonds of Gaza as fleeing populations were constantly shifted between spaces.

What was missing, which everyone had demanded from the Netanyahu-led war Cabinet from day 1, was a plan for the day after. There was a severe execution gap between the victory operational concept and achieving said victory. By having no plan beyond destroying Hamas units, it became impossible to end the war on favourable terms, get the hostages back, and to reconstruct Gaza to ensure the resistance to Israel was dead for good. Without this, Netanyahu effectively welcomed the charges of genocide that were levelled against him.

The mere fact that Hamas still has hostages as bargaining chips for the ceasefire is proof enough Israel never really controlled Gaza. It only ever controlled the very spots its units sat on at that particular moment. It was noted early on that even after Israeli units had passed through an area and seemingly cleared it of fighters, Hamas would return quickly. As Israel never controlled the food distribution or infrastructure of Gaza, Hamas used it to enforce its continued rule. By enforcing its rule, it kept its tunnel networks and supporter safehouses—the very place it kept the hostages—in operation. Israel’s battle plan helped to cause its own indeterminate outcome.

Activating the Reality Distortion Fields

As predicted, both Hamas itself, Iran, as well as many Western observers immediately noted that just by the fact that Hamas had survived, it had won the war. By not surrendering to Israel, it was said, the Resistance would never end. Surviving was often enough for Gazans to celebrate as if they were the great conquerors Hamas thought they would be on October 7. Yet, to others, for the same reasons, that meant the Palestinian people had lost. In Israel, it simultaneously feels the frustration of another indeterminate outcome, while also celebrating the return of the hostages in due course. In other words, the term ‘victory’ has been once again been reduced to a muddled field of bland platitudes and indecipherable metrics for success. This is the inevitable result of an indeterminate outcome.

Conclusion

Israel has severely disrupted the governance and military capabilities of Hamas, yet it remains in control of Gaza. Israel has made the extraordinary price for continued resistance to Israel’s existence clear to every Palestinian, yet they remain unbowed. Israel has masterfully decapitated Hezbollah, and then gave it a decent military whipping, yet it still controls southern Lebanon. Israel has humiliated Iran by attacking into its own territory, yet it has gained no guarantee of peace. Israel’s actions also helped to collapse the puppet regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria in a few short weeks, yet Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham will eventually want the Golan Heights returned to Syria. Despite what Israel achieved, it only ended these wars with a series of ceasefires and not a lasting settlement.

Moreover, Netanyahu has so damaged Israel’s reputation with large swathes of the American public, Israel’s only great power backer, it is in the electoral benefit of the Democrats to politically feud with, humiliate, arrest, and even kill Israeli political and military leaders.

On October 7, 2023, Israel was handed the chance to end the war against it once and for all across the entire region. Instead, it played itself into an series of indeterminate outcomes. As Israel will inevitably begin its own post-war investigations, it should be made clear from the very start that victory was never an option because these operational concepts were never designed to achieve victory, only to successfully fight battles to unworthy ceasefires.

Cover photo: IDF soldiers in Gaza, 2024. Credit: IDF. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Source: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IDF_infantry_team_in_Gaza_2024.jpg