Understanding Israel’s Gaza Offensive: Response to Existential Threat

Many podcasters and other public figures are saying that Israel made a mistake going into Gaza. These pundits say that Israel has lost much support worldwide as a result of the civilian deaths and destruction in the war and that the government should have conducted targeted killings of Hamas leaders instead. It’s a reasonable perspective. Civilians have died in the war. And Israel has lost support.

Yet, these perspectives are myopic. They don’t take in important aspects of what’s going on in the region that effectively took away Israel’s perceived choice to go into Gaza. To start, the viciousness and size of the Hamas attack on October 7 swayed public sentiment in Israel to a near-unanimous belief that Hamas as an organization could no longer exist and that all weapons smuggling going into Gaza with which to attack Israel needed to end. As a democracy, the leaders in Israel had to oblige the demands of their people. But, then, there is arguably an even more important reason that took away Israel’s choice. Iran.

Iran’s leaders have publicly stated their desire to annihilate Israel. “It is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map of the region,” Ayatollah Khameini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, has stated in the past. Over the years, it has become clear that this is not just rhetoric. In the pursuit of their objective, Iran has funded Hamas, Hizbullah, Houthis, and other groups in the region, all of whom have the same aim – to destroy Israel.

Israel is a small country with a population of just under 10 million. Hamas and Hizbullah exist right on Israel’s border. The worry of being attacked by these groups and others simultaneously on multiple fronts became much more poignant after October 7. It became clear that Hamas needed to be taken out of power to remove one of the battlefronts that now looked to be certain with Iran and the rest of the proxies.

Now, as for going into Gaza, amidst all the criticism Israel immediately faced, it was clear that their war plan was working. They were eliminating Hamas leaders, members, and infrastructure so quickly that Hamas actually negotiated. In the history of the region, the deal was one of the best, if not the best, Israel has ever received for a hostage exchange. But then, Israel was effectively restricted from doing much by the U.S. After that happened, the war began to drag on and became much more challenging for Israel to achieve its goals, even though it still achieved many.

Today, there is worry worldwide about the potential for a bigger war in the Middle East. Whether one breaks out or not is still to be determined. But for those who criticize Israel and the decision to enter Gaza, it’s good to think about what this war today would look like if Hamas was still in power. For Israel, it would mean significant attacks from pretty much every side of the country. If for no other reason, this one made the war with Gaza necessary, even if undesirable.

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Notes

Read about the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.