Looking out through the broken window of a house in the southern city of Sderot, hit by a Qassam rocket fired by terrorists in the Gaza Strip, May 19, 2009. Photo courtesy of Edi Israel/Flash90.
The big picture: A Resilient Israel
By Mitchell Bard
JNS
There will be no victory parades to mark the end of the Gaza war—not after the shattering trauma of Oct. 7, the funerals of more than 2,000 Israelis, and the memory of the barrage of rockets, drones and missiles launched at Israel. The human toll, the psychological wounds and the financial strain ensure that no one feels triumphant. Yet, something unmistakable happened: Israel endured. Zionism, tested by fire, once again proved its resilience.
Change of Attitude
The commitment and heroism of Israel’s soldiers will become legend. The Israel Defense Forces fought simultaneously on seven fronts—an operational burden few modern armies could have sustained—and emerged with its enemies battered and diminished. The world’s armies will study their tactics and ingenuity.
Even The Economist, seldom sympathetic to Israel, admitted that not since 1967 has the IDF inflicted such a decisive blow on Hamas and Iran’s “axis of resistance.” Israel demonstrated that it is the Middle East’s dominant military power and that it will no longer hesitate to eliminate existential threats rather than merely deter them.
Adversaries Still Exist
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted that Israel moved “from victory to victory,” reshaping the region. The truth is more complicated: The landscape has changed, but every adversary still exists in some form, and several are already rebuilding. Victory is not rhetorical. Quiet borders measure it, the return of soldiers to their barracks, reservists to their homes and civilians to their lives. Israel is not there yet.
With significant help from the United States, the weakening of Iran has reduced the threat to the Arab states, which is a double-edged sword. Arab states can no longer cite Tehran as an excuse to delay open ties with Israel. But the failed Israeli operation in to assassinate terror leaders in Doha rattled Gulf leaders, who now fear that the regional protector might, under certain circumstances, become an aggressor. Still, their core fear of Iran endures, and with it, the strategic logic of cooperation with Jerusalem in regional modernization.
Miracles
Amid these geopolitical shifts, Israel witnessed moments of profound humanity. The survival and return of so many hostages is nothing short of miraculous. Their rehabilitation will be long and painful, yet their resilience embodies the national spirit. Even Israel’s economy—battered by war costs, reserve mobilization and a temporary brain drain—staged a stunning resurgence, growing 12.4% in the third quarter.
But Israel’s strength has long depended on another pillar: its indispensable relationship with the United States. Under U.S. President Donald Trump, Washington provided unwavering military support while simultaneously constraining Israel’s operational freedom and imposing demands on timing, strategy and diplomacy. For the first time in years, erosion in American political backing could be felt in Congress, on campuses and throughout civil society. This tension will shape Israel’s strategic choices long after the guns fall silent.
Of course, when talking about the Middle East, it is always dangerous to interpret the present as a harbinger of the future. Remember the optimism associated with the Arab Spring in 2011, when some predicted the region’s democratization that never happened. Today, the future of Gaza remains the central unresolved question. No state is willing to govern the strip or disarm Hamas. Reconstruction, even in areas under Israeli control, will take decades. For now, Israel is stuck in much the same quagmire it was in before disengagement, unable to withdraw and leave its security to others.
Jerusalem is also coming under greater pressure to provide a political horizon for Palestinian statehood. Netanyahu has reiterated his opposition to the idea and has counted on Palestinian rejectionism to torpedo any plan. Still, with Trump rather than France’s President Emmanuel Macron leading the demands for progress, Israel will have a more difficult time avoiding substantive diplomatic steps. The Saudis stubbornly insist on seeing progress on the Palestinian issue before normalizing ties, but they also dropped a public hint that the real obstacle is Netanyahu’s hold on power. Many believe that Israel’s image problem and much of its loss of public support can be recovered with his replacement.
Yet amid all this uncertainty, one truth stands out. As former Ambassador Michael Oren wrote, the country’s greatest achievement was not militarily. It was societal—a people who refused to collapse even when the state faltered, a nation that withstood a tidal wave of hatred and accusations but held to its values and its sense of mutual responsibility.
For all the talk of existential threats, the state was never in real danger of defeat, certainly not like in 1973. The Arab-Israeli conflict ended that year and has been replaced by the radical Islamic commitment to its destruction on its way to world domination. The Islamists were set back; nevertheless, Israeli arms cannot defeat their ideology. Their demise will only come when Islam reforms itself and the West musters the courage to confront extremists wherever they are and to prevent them from indoctrinating future generations.
In the meantime, the most important outcome of the war is that the Jewish people live and are secure in their homeland of Israel.
