The one-year mark for the Israel-Hamas war comes at an unsettling time for the region. After several months in which it seemed like the war in Gaza was winding down, Israel’s military operations there now appear to have ramped back up, with Israel once again issuing evacuation orders for the northern part of the territory. In Lebanon, Israel has launched a massive air campaign and limited ground invasion in recent weeks against Hezbollah, prompting Iran last week to launch a barrage of missiles at Israel for the second time since April.
While a broadening of the war to include Iran seems imminent, whether that will occur or what it will mean if it does are questions that are impossible to answer. Despite, or perhaps because of, that uncertainty, it makes sense to look back at what we have learned in the past year, including which of our initial expectations did or did not come to pass.
Most obviously, we learned the extent of Israel’s willingness to pursue its military objectives in Gaza and now in Lebanon. It was clear due to the nature of Hamas’ attack that Israel’s response would be intense, but the sheer scale of its operations in Gaza, and the humanitarian catastrophe that those operations have unleashed, still came as an initial shock. The intensity of Israel’s sudden bombing campaign in Lebanon in the past month demonstrates that Israel’s refusal to tolerate the presence of even latent threats on its borders is now a new normal.