Almost six months into the Gaza conflict, Israel has achieved tactical successes that have gradually discredited Hamas and deterred its Iranian backers. At least on the ground, they can carry out “target killing” of the enemy almost at will. But the strategic rewards of “victory” and regional stability seem more distant than ever.
Monday’s strike against Brig.-Gen. General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, commander of the Quds Force in Lebanon and Syria, was a brutal but impressive show of Israeli force. The Israelis gathered information that he met with six commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in a building adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Damascus and that he would attack them with advanced weapons from his F-35 fighter jets.
Victims of the Quds Force were far from innocent overseas. Their hands had Israeli and possibly American blood on them. Mr. Zahedi supported direct operations by Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iranian militias in Syria. Like his mentor Qasem Soleimani, who was killed by the US in a similar precision strike in 2020, he was the commander of Iran’s undeclared war against Israel and the US.
Operation Damascus demonstrated what Israel’s military and intelligence services do most effectively: attack the enemy in amounts equivalent to precise assassination plots. Their skill in these targeted killings is described by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman of the New York Times in his excellent 2018 book Rise and Kill First.
“After World War II, Israel assassinated more people than any other Western nation,” Bergman wrote. By his calculations, Israel had conducted at least 2,300 similar operations as of 2018. The message was, “If you are an enemy of Israel, we will find you and kill you, wherever you are,” he wrote.
This unblinking use of deadly force was intended, and often did, to intimidate Israel’s adversaries. But it was also part of the arrogance that led to the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack. Israel overestimated the capabilities of its own militias and underestimated the capabilities of Hamas. Since then, Israel has continued to be reeling from a sense of vulnerability and atrophying military proficiency.
Operations like the attack on Damascus could only be carried out with the direct approval of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And at a time when Prime Minister Netanyahu is under intense attack both at home and abroad, it is a reminder that he is a formidable opponent who will take great risks to maintain what he defines as Israel’s security.
Many analysts have warned that the Damascus attack could ultimately push Iran and Hezbollah into a broader regional war that they have so far avoided. That is clearly a risk that Netanyahu was prepared to take. He may not be able to kill Hamas military leader Ehya Sinwar, who is in a tunnel hideout somewhere beneath Gaza. But Zahedi in downtown Damascus could be targeted.
Do these tactics really provide better security in the long run? That’s the question Bergman explores in his book. He told his story partly through the eyes of Mossad chief Meir Dagan, saying it was Dagan who orchestrated the killing of six of the 15 Iranian nuclear scientists on the target list. According to Bergman, Duggan believed that assassination was “‘much more moral’ than all-out war.”
But before his death in 2016, Dagan began to doubt that Israel’s strong military alone could provide the security it desired. As Bergman explains, Dagan concluded that Israel “has achieved a long history of remarkable tactical successes, but it has also achieved disastrous strategic failures.” Dagan (along with many of Israel’s most hardline military and intelligence chiefs) decided that the country’s security required a political solution with the Palestinians through the establishment of a Palestinian state. Prime Minister Netanyahu was and still is vehemently opposed.
Which brings us back to the other attack that made headlines on Monday. Israel claims it was an unintentional attack on a three-vehicle convoy belonging to the relief organization World Central Kitchen. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described it as a “tragic incident in which our military unintentionally attacked innocent people.”
Let’s assume that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s characterization is accurate. Nations make terrible mistakes in war. Even so, the World Central Kitchen tragedy denies Israel a proper plan for coordinating humanitarian assistance in Gaza that prioritizes the safety of non-combatants alongside its efforts to annihilate Hamas. , is part of a larger pattern. Why did Israel agree only now, in the aftermath of this disaster, to establish a joint coordination center to plan humanitarian relief?
It is this lack of foresight and planning that Biden administration officials are referring to when they claim that Netanyahu does not have a strategy to end the war in Gaza and stabilize the region. It’s not just that the Palestinians need a safe and stable Gaza, it’s also vital for Israel in the long run.
Israel has a cause: fighting Hamas and its financiers in Iran. But Monday’s events should remind us that sustainable security cannot be achieved through force alone.
