Lessons for Israel’s Gaza War In America’s Strategic Blunders

Lessons learned from counterterrorism operations indicate that purely military solutions are doomed to fail, and Israel is primed to repeat many of these mistakes. The comparison between America’s post-9/11 wars and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not perfect: Al-Qaeda was in Afghanistan but was not native to the country, and the transnational ISIS emerged out of the chaos in Iraq and Syria. Hamas, by contrast, represents a resistance movement indigenous to Gaza. The militant group is deeply rooted in the political and social struggle for Palestinian self-determination, and its activities and support are motivated by desperate conditions on the ground. If Israel’s assaults on Gaza in retaliation for the October 2023 Hamas bloodbath are to achieve enduring security, key questions arise, including whether the conflict will end with military occupation or political settlement. I argue that Israel should learn from the US strategic blunders in Afghanistan and Iraq. Absent a political solution, Israelis are likely to face terrorist assaults in the future. The military campaign may weaken or impair Hamas’s infrastructure and power bases in Gaza, but without a plan for governance and development, Israel is likely to face the re-emergence of a broadly based resistance movement.