Why Israel’s Intelligence Successes Won’t Get It the Desired Results

The past two months have been admittedly impressive from the Israeli point of view. But while high-profile successes are a morale booster, they certainly do not close the deal. Israel, like any other party in a conflict, needs to find a political solution rather than celebrate its intelligence-based actions.

From the high-tech targeted explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies to the assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Israeli intelligence and security have notched notable results. However, for every one of these successes, it is possible to show that these actions are inconclusive and, in some cases, counterproductive.

The high-profile technological attack resulted in many injuries and some deaths (mostly civilians). In addition, blowing up the pagers, which appears to have been done due to their near discovery, seems to have denied Israel the ability to continue eavesdropping on Hezbollah. Israel received a wide range of criticism for having booby-trapped technological instruments widely used and present in homes, stores, and even hospitals.

The assassinations of Haniyeh and Nasrallah were both clearly intelligence and security coups. But neither action has resulted in any slowdown of the anti-Israeli attacks. If anything, they have escalated them. The assassination of Haniyeh, the person who was involved in negotiations for the release of the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas last October, resulted in the appointment of an even more hardline leader and therefore failed to produce anything close to capitulation and surrender of the Palestinian movement.

While the killing of the popular Hezbollah leader was a big blow to the Lebanese Shiite movement, it has failed to put a stop to the attacks against Israel. While it took a while for Hezbollah to regroup, the fact is that the attacks using a variety of methods have continued and have resulted in Israeli military fatalities and civilian property damages (as Israel has also stepped up its attacks in Lebanon). There is no sign today, weeks after the assassination, that Hezbollah is backing off of its condition for ending attacks on Israel (that Israel end the war in Gaza and agree to a cease-fire and prisoner exchange deal).

The death of Sinwar was not a result of an intelligence action, but rather due to an armed clash in which Sinwar happened to be involved. In that sense, the death of Sinwar demonstrated that Israelis are still unable to infiltrate Hamas despite over a year of daily brutal attacks and a complete siege on the tiny Gaza Strip. How Sinwar was killed also shattered repeated Israeli attempts to paint the architect of the attack on Israel on October 7 as hiding in a tunnel and protecting himself by being surrounded by Israeli hostages.

The overall sum of all the above proves again that high-profile actions, including assassinations, while demoralizing, fall short of ending a conflict. As the saying goes, you may win a short-term battle, but that is not enough to win the war.

To win a war, a parallel approach is always absolutely necessary. Military success without a political goal cannot produce the needed outcomes unless it leads to surrender. But surrender is highly unlikely. Religiously motivated movements may change their tactics and be forced to regroup, but history shows that such movements do not surrender.

However, while such paramilitary movements refuse to surrender, resistance combatants do have an Achilles’ heel in the presence of an unsupportive local enabling environment. A local population unsupportive of guerrilla attacks because of the repercussions on them could easily derail and weaken the will of the fighters.

This may explain the brutal Israeli war crimes against Palestinians and Lebanese. This brutality has been inflicted against civilians, including women and children, hospitals and houses of worship, journalists, and humanitarian workers. By making the civilian populations of Gaza and South Lebanon pay a high price, Israel is hoping that they would turn against Hamas and Hezbollah.

Normally countries that carry out such brutality against civilians are held accountable through international humanitarian law and the legal mechanism of the Hague-based International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.

Nonetheless, the Israelis can get away with murder, largely thanks to continuing support from the United States. But even this widespread brutality against civilians will not last forever. As the news and pictures continue to escape the Israeli media blackout and the refusal of the Israeli leadership to avoid civilian casualties becomes crystal clear, many countries making up Israel’s allies have begun to stop supplying weapons that would make them complicit in war crimes. Spain, Italy, France, and even Germany are demanding guarantees their weapons will not be used against civilians.

What is needed now more than ever is an immediate cease-fire. But cease-fires work only if there are two important components: a neutral external power that is supervising adherence to the ending of the violence and, more importantly, a political path to resolving the root causes of the conflict. While the conflict has spiraled to other Middle Eastern countries, the origin of the conflict continues to be Israel’s 75-year refusal to admit its historic and moral responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem and its 57-year-old occupation of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. The United Nations and the International Court of Justice have both ruled in favor of Palestinian rights on both these issues.

The concern continues to be that, shy of a resolution to solve the Gaza conflict, a regional war involving Iran is becoming more and more possible. The visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the region is aimed at defusing the chance of this. He wants to encourage Netanyahu to use the successes of having killed the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah to finalize a hostage deal. Netanyahu appears to want to continue delaying a resolution in Gaza, hoping that a Donald Trump victory will give him further support to try to finish off Hamas and Hezbollah and reduce Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions, all of which is highly unlikely, regardless of who wins the U.S. elections.

The sooner the violence ends, and concrete steps are taken to give the Palestinian people hope, the sooner this cycle of violence can come to a complete stop.