Over the course of 2024, and especially since July, Israel has demonstrated its clear military advantage over its regional rivals. Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza has reduced Hamas from the organized militia it was on Oct. 7, 2023, into a loose and ineffective guerrilla force, while killing tens of thousands, displacing millions and turning Gaza itself to rubble. In Lebanon, the leaders of Hezbollah, who believed they had established a stable status quo of deterrence with Israel, have mostly been killed, and the organization’s military ability has been severely degraded, with wide swathes of southern Lebanon and neighborhoods in Beirut and elsewhere having also been leveled.
Israel’s brutal response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack has demonstrated that for the foreseeable future, Israel itself cannot be defeated—let alone destroyed—by military force. But Israel has not won this war.
Just as Israel’s military advantage did not prevent the huge blow of Oct. 7, it is also insufficient to decide the ongoing war of attrition between Israel and “the axis of resistance” in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Iran. Daily barrages of rockets and missiles continue to cause damage, kill Israeli soldiers and citizens, and severely disrupt the Israeli economy. And even if cease-fires in Gaza and southern Lebanon are reached soon, they are unlikely to restore the relative stability Israel enjoyed between 2006 and 2023.