Steven A. Cook is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies and director of the International Affairs Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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From the very beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip that started with Hamas’s killing spree on October 7, 2023, there has been a deep and abiding disconnect between the United States and Israel. Both U.S. Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump have sought to paper over these differences with rhetoric vowing to support Israeli efforts to destroy Hamas, but throughout the last twenty-two months of bloodshed and suffering, the United States and Israel have sought different outcomes.
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Put plainly, the Israeli government is seeking victory while both Biden and Trump have pushed ceasefire deals. Israel’s belief that it can rely on its military power alone to improve the country’s security and, in turn, transform the Middle East is mistaken, however. There is a real risk of Israeli overreach that will undermine, or at least diminish, the gains that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) has made in almost two years of war. Indeed, the current mess over the provision of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza is a direct result of Israel’s post-October 7 desire to resolve its security problems rather than manage them.
Israel’s military achievements in the region are important. The Lebanese group Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful and potent proxy, had built a vast arsenal of rockets and missiles, but efforts to wither Israeli military operations since October 7 have greatly diminished the group’s power. So much so that for the first time in decades, the Lebanese government has been able to assert its sovereignty in areas that were previously Hezbollah strongholds. This has had a profound impact on Syria, where the group could not muster the forces to save former President Bashar al-Assad—another Iranian client—from the onslaught of rebel groups who marched into the capital, Damascus, in December 2024. Assad’s fall ended Syria’s strategic alliance with Iran, making it difficult for the Iranian regime to continue its struggle against Israel through Hezbollah.
This was a big win for Israel, but not an unqualified one, mostly because Israeli leaders risk overplaying their hand in Syria. The new regime in Damascus has signaled a willingness to engage in confidence-building measures with Israel, which was surprising given the fact that a jihadist turned statesman, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, now leads the Syrian government. The Israelis have not repaid Damascus with goodwill. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the IDF to establish a large buffer zone in Syrian territory between the two countries. His defense minister has declared that Israel would remain within 25 miles of Damascus indefinitely. The Israelis may have had good moral and strategic reasons to come to the defense of their Druze allies, but they risked overreach when they bombed Syria’s defense ministry in Damascus in the process. The Israelis risk a backlash that could undermine the prospects for better relations with its northern neighbor, which despite being weak, can still create security problems for them.
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When it comes to Iran, Israel’s Operation Rising Lion was an extraordinary feat of military and technological prowess, but the Iranian regime lives on. Even in its weakened state, the Islamic Republic remains steadfast that it has a right to enrich uranium. Toward that end, the Iranians are clearly working to salvage whatever is left of their nuclear program while simultaneously continuing to arm Yemen’s Houthis, working to rebuild Hezbollah, and sowing instability in Syria. The Iranians are down, but they are not out.
For all its accomplishments, the risks for Israel in the region abound, yet Netanyahu and his advisors remain committed to the idea that they can change the region through force. Nowhere has this played out with more dire consequences than in Gaza, where the deteriorating humanitarian situation perfectly encapsulates Israel’s flawed approach. It is important to note that even if there is a fair amount of misinformation and disinformation about the extent of the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, it exists. If there was no hunger there, large numbers of people would not be walking long distances across a war zone in search of food.
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A lot of hands have helped create this unfortunate situation, including the United Nations and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), but most of the blame lies with the two combatants. Hamas is alleged to have absconded with international aid to raise revenue, pay its fighters, and maintain control over the broader population in Gaza. For their part, the Israelis place onerous security checks on aid to Gaza, which in and of itself is controversial within the Israeli political arena. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir oppose the assistance, and their supporters have periodically attacked and destroyed trucks bearing shipments of food and medicine bound for Gaza. Most importantly, Israel has also purposefully throttled aid as it has laid siege to different parts of the Gaza Strip at different times to deny Hamas resources it can turn into money to fund its war effort.
In its attempt to destroy Hamas and change the region, the Israelis established the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The goal was to produce an alternative mechanism that would simultaneously help Palestinians in Gaza while starving Hamas of resources that aid its own war effort. It turns out that the GHF did not impair Hamas, but people in Gaza are hungry, and Israel is paying a price in terms of international outrage and isolation. The Israelis walked themselves into a trap with GHF, which was based on a faulty set of calculations about the willingness of the United Nations and NGOs to participate in the project and what a large-scale humanitarian relief operation in Gaza would entail. Most of all, the idea for an alternative means of providing aid to those in Gaza was predicated on the strategically dubious imperative of “victory.”
If it was not obvious before October 7, it is certainly not obvious after almost two years of war that Hamas can be beaten into submission. If the Israeli government chose to manage the conflict through targeted military action against its enemies, a willingness to contemplate alternative Palestinian governance structures in Gaza, engagement in regional diplomacy, and deterrence of Hamas and others, it would realize several benefits for both Israelis and Palestinians. Notably, there would be fewer hungry Palestinians, an unwinnable war would end, and Israeli hostages would return home. It might also help loosen Hamas’s grip on the Gaza Strip.
Since Hamas took over the area in 2007 after a short and violent conflict with its rivals, the group’s public support has waxed and waned, generally increasing during periodic conflicts with Israel and faltering when the group was confronted with the challenges of governance. Contrary to Netanyahu’s recent declarations, if Israel were to step back from its goal to destroy Hamas, the pressure will be on the group’s leaders to demonstrate to Palestinians in Gaza that all the suffering was worth it. They will be hard pressed to do so given the scale of destruction and what Hamas’s attack on Israel precipitated. With the Arab League and a variety of other governments now demanding that Hamas lay down its arms and end its rule in Gaza, Israel is in a good position to shut down the GHF and agree to a ceasefire.
Managing the conflict could in fact bring about Hamas’s demise sooner and with less suffering than the IDF’s guns. That would be a fitting victory for Israel.
This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.