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Since it was attacked on October 7, 2023, Israel's conflicts with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran have continued to evolve and intersect in new ways, making its geopolitical challenges more complex.
Illustration by Geopolitics Next
The past year's escalation in tensions and violence has left Israel grappling with defending its security against mutated threats on multiple fronts.
This essay will examine the development of these conflicts over the past year, Israel's successes and failures, current threat perception levels, and implications moving forward.
The ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which erupted almost a year ago, has morphed into a complex regional conflict involving a network of state and non-state actors. Hamas' initial surprise attack, which utilised a combination of rockets, militants, tunnels, drones, paragliders, and amphibious landings, caught Israel off guard despite its advanced intelligence capabilities.
The attack killed over 1,300 Israelis, injured 3,300, and took hundreds hostage, prompting Israel to declare war and initiate a comprehensive air and ground campaign against Gaza.
Image Credits: Deutschlandfunk Kultur
Israel's military response has been characterised by the use of advanced technologies, such as AI-powered target selection systems like Habsora, which integrates real-time intelligence from multiple sources to identify and prioritise targets.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have also employed an operational tactic of warning civilians to evacuate before striking Hamas targets, although the effectiveness of this approach has been limited by factors such as errors and inconsistencies in the warnings, the scale of displacement required to locate and eliminate Hamas operatives and their tunnel network, the destruction of communication infrastructure, and Hamas' use of civilian disguise and human shields.
The intended and unintended consequences of this strategy have led to the mass displacement of Gazans, with approximately 90% of Gaza's population (roughly 1.9 million people) having been internally displaced at least once since the war began.
Returning the displaced Palestinians will be challenging, as an estimated 50% of all structures in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed, and 360,000 housing units have been damaged.
Despite Israel's technological superiority, the urban battlefield of Gaza has posed significant challenges. Locating and destroying Hamas' extensive tunnel network has proven difficult, as many tunnels are booby-trapped and used to hold hostages. The densely populated urban environment also creates significant risks for civilians, with mounting casualties fuelling global criticism of Israel's actions.
Image Credits: The Economist
Regional actors such as Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran have become increasingly involved in the conflict. Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon have engaged in cross-border skirmishes with the IDF and launched indiscriminate rocket attacks into Israel, displacing close to 90,000 Israelis as of June 2024.
Between 200,000 and 250,000 Israelis were evacuated or self-evacuated from their homes in the North and South of Israel following Hamas's October 7th attack, with more than 80,000 people evacuated from Israel's North alone.
Hamas and Hezbollah have fired approximately 12,000 and 8,000 rockets, respectively, at Israeli civilians since October 7th, while the Houthis in Yemen have been targeting Israeli and international ships in the Red Sea. In July, a Hezbollah airstrike killed 12 civilians in an Israeli-controlled Druze village, triggering an Israeli retaliation.
Israel has made returning civilians to their homes in the country's north a top priority, placing it on the same level of importance as securing the release of hostages taken by Hamas during the initial October 7th attack.
Israel's intelligence agencies have played a crucial role in countering these threats. As part of a shaping operation in September, Israel allegedly carried out a sophisticated sabotage operation against Hezbollah, likely orchestrated by the Mossad in collaboration with Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate’s (Aman) Unit 8200 (signals intelligence, cyber warfare & code decryption) and Unit 504 (human intelligence).
Although the details are not yet confirmed, the operation presumably involved compromising Hezbollah's supply chain and embedding small amounts of stable explosives in the group's pagers and walkie-talkies, which were detonated simultaneously, allegedly killing at least 9 people and wounding thousands.
Concurrently, Israel has expanded its operations against Hezbollah and Iranian targets in Lebanon and Syria in response to these escalating threats. These operations have included clandestine special operations, airstrikes, and targeted assassinations of key leaders including, but not limited to, Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh.
In early October, the IDF deployed additional infantry and armoured units to southern Lebanon for a limited ground incursion against Hezbollah positions. This will almost certainly broaden.
This escalation followed a series of Israeli Air Force (IAF) airstrikes in Beirut that resulted in at least 5 civilian fatalities and a day of intense combat with Hezbollah fighters that claimed the lives of 8 IDF soldiers.
The high incidence of civilian casualties, including the deaths of at least 4 medical personnel people over a two-week period, underscores the operational challenges the IDF confronts in targeting Hezbollah's assets while adhering to the principles of distinction and proportionality.
Image Credits: Al Jazeera
Hezbollah's tactical integration of its combatants and military infrastructure within densely populated urban environments, coupled with the complex topography of southern Lebanon and Beirut's suburbs, significantly complicates the IDF's ability to employ precision-guided munitions (PGMs) without causing collateral damage.
The IDF has alleged that Hezbollah is utilising civilian structures, such as medical facilities, schools, and religious sites, for military functions, thereby rendering them legitimate targets under international humanitarian law (IHL).
However, the IDF maintains a legal responsibility to assess the anticipated military advantage against the potential civilian harm before engaging such targets.
The inherent fog of war and the strategic imperative to rapidly neutralise Hezbollah's offensive capabilities, further compounded by the displacement of over 70,000 Israeli civilians due to Hezbollah's indiscriminate rocket attacks, may be influencing the IDF's risk calculus when authorising strikes in areas with a known civilian presence.
The elevated non-combatant casualty figures indicate that the IDF may be encountering difficulties in fully adhering to its obligations under IHL to take feasible precautions to protect the civilian population, despite Hezbollah's deliberate tactic of exploiting civilian areas for military advantage.
Additionally, these actions suggest that Israel might be pursuing a decapitation strategy aimed at weakening Hezbollah by targeting its leadership and critical infrastructure.
Israel's ability to integrate intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets across multiple domains (air, sea, land, cyber, space) has provided a significant tactical advantage in these operations.
Both the Israeli attack on Hezbollah operatives through pagers and the Israeli missile attack using surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missiles on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon required detailed intelligence on Hezbollah's suppliers, distribution networks, organisational structure, command and control centres, munition stockpiling sites, and lodging sites for operatives.
These attacks highlight Israel's ability to penetrate its adversaries' networks. However, they also prompted a severe response from Iran, which launched a coordinated missile strike on Israel from multiple fronts on October 1. Most of these missiles were intercepted by Israel's air defence systems and U.S. naval destroyers.
Image Credits: Bloomberg
However, Israel's military successes have been, at least partially, offset by the adaptability and resiliency of its adversaries. Hezbollah's introduction of new weapons and tactics, such as explosive drones and anti-ship missiles, poses a growing threat to Israel's security. Iran's ability to transfer advanced weapons, including precision-guided missiles, to its proxies in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen presents another significant challenge.
The potential for direct confrontation between Israel and Iran adds another layer of complexity to the conflict. Given the geographic separation between the two countries, air forces would likely play a critical role in any direct confrontation.
Israel's advanced air force, with its F-35 stealth fighters and standoff munitions, gives it the ability to strike targets deep inside Iran. However, Iran has invested heavily in ballistic missiles that can hit targets across Israel, as demonstrated by the October 1 strikes in which Iran fired around 180 missiles.
Iran has also focused on air defences to protect key sites and raise the cost of Israeli strikes, recently acquiring Russian S-300 systems to bolster these defences. Additionally, Iran could respond asymmetrically through regional proxies like Hezbollah, which has a vast rocket arsenal capable of saturating Israel's defences, complicating Israel's air campaign planning.
While Israel maintains a clear qualitative edge in aircraft technology, Iran has sought to narrow this gap through domestic production, reverse-engineering, and upgrades. Although still outmatched, Iran's fighters could pose challenges, especially over their own territory and supported by ground-based air defences.
As the conflict continues to escalate and expand, Israel faces a strategic quandary. Its military superiority has been tested by the asymmetric tactics and capabilities of its adversaries, while its international standing has been eroded by the humanitarian toll of the conflict. The United States, Israel's closest ally, finds itself in a difficult position, seeking to support Israel while avoiding further entanglement in the region.
Looking ahead, Israel's threat perception remains high, with the "Axis of Resistance" posed by Iran and its proxies viewed as an existential challenge. While Israel has achieved some notable successes in degrading the capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah, the growing sophistication and coordination of Iran's proxy network present a formidable long-term threat.
Image Credits: Reuters
To effectively counter these threats, Israel must enhance its already advanced intelligence, surveillance, and strike capabilities while refining urban warfare strategies. Improvements in HUMINT, SIGINT, ELINT, PGMs, UAVs, and missile defence systems are crucial. Israel needs to update urban warfare doctrines, emphasising combined arms operations and agile tactics, while revisiting ROEs to better adhere to international law principles.
Exploring new non-kinetic options could yield benefits. Critically, Israel must improve strategies for minimising civilian casualties in complex urban battlefields, balancing military necessity with humanitarian considerations. Diplomatically, Israel must maintain support from key allies like the U.S. while preventing further erosion of relations with Arab states.
As the conflict evolves, balancing military and diplomatic imperatives is crucial for preventing regional conflagration and securing Israel's long-term stability.
BY GEOPOLITICS NEXT
CURATED BY TEAM GEOSTRATA
Timely and informative!
very insightful!
Intresting to know
Insightful
Important