Where did Israel succeed? And where did it fail?

Neither absolute success nor complete failure—this is how the Israeli situation can be described. To accurately assess this assumption, it is necessary to have standards for measurement. The traditional standard in such matters is to approach the set goals and measure their achievement. Here, there is something to be said: The historical goals associated with establishing a state for the Jews in Palestine, legitimizing this state, and normalizing it in the region have been the supreme goals of the Zionist movement for more than a hundred years. However, with the dominance of the biblical and nationalist right in power in Israel, these goals have undergone a fundamental modification. Biblical expansion has become a clear goal in right-wing discourse, and the concession of the democratic discourse in favor of the Jewishness of the state has been transformed into legislation and policies. But, most importantly, the concept of normalizing the Zionist presence in the region has undergone a modification. Instead of normalization through agreements and relations, normalization is achieved through force, meaning the use of Israel's surplus power as a fundamental element to achieve subjugation that leads to normalization. The model taking place in Syria is clear and is mostly understood in this context, as is Lebanon. In Iran, this policy has not succeeded, at least not yet. With this right-wing, nationalistic, and biblical modification of the scale of Zionist goals, the measuring stick must also be modified. Let's see...

In terms of Israeli power equations, there is intelligence success, air superiority, and failure in ground combat. There is a surplus of equipment and a shortage of combat personnel. There are also impressive successes in military tactical performance and a major failure in achieving the strategic objectives of the war. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of glaring and clear examples, which together form a context from which deductions can be drawn. Israel succeeded in bombing whatever it wanted in Iran and in asserting control over Iranian airspace, but it failed to end the Iranian project in all its aspects. It failed to subjugate or overthrow the Iranian regime, it failed to end the Iranian nuclear project, and it failed to end the Iranian missile project. This means success in aviation first and foremost, success in intelligence information, and a failure on the road to leveraging this success to achieve strategic objectives.

In Gaza, Israel has succeeded in destroying Gaza and has failed - so far - to achieve the strategic goal of this destruction, which is displacement. It has also failed in the ground combat. Twenty months of fighting, with elite military divisions and tens of thousands of soldiers armed with the most advanced military technology in the world, have failed to eliminate Hamas. This means that the ground operation has also failed, a failure that blatantly expresses the exaggeration of the higher goals of the war at the expense of limited geo-military capabilities.

In Lebanon, they succeeded in precise and accurate intelligence operations, but they failed to launch a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, even though they subjected Lebanon to an unfair equation to stop the fighting. They are still trying to exploit this equation to subjugate the country politically, and they are still facing great difficulties that may lead to a delayed explosion.

Israel waged war on multiple fronts, and in a scene that reflects the scarcity of personnel, one or more divisions were periodically transferred from the north of the country to the south, and vice versa, and so on, from south to north, from the West Bank to Gaza, and from Gaza to the West Bank. The size of the population and the number of conscripts within the population constitute a strategic military crisis that cannot be compensated for by air superiority, no matter how great. Twenty percent of the population are Palestinians who do not enlist in the army, and more than thirty percent are religious Jews. There is a worsening crisis surrounding their enlistment, and thus the burden of conscription falls on fifty percent of the population. This makes the army's numerical strength far less than Israel's political ambitions. A country with this population and this percentage of conscripts cannot form an offensive army with the ground operational capabilities to achieve its set political goals.

Israel is a small country by all standards. A few missiles have shut down its airports, ports, airspace, cities, institutions, schools, and streets. Therefore, even if its power increases, its territory cannot accommodate this "excessive Israeli obesity in power" nor does it bear the Israeli political and strategic imperial ambitions.

We are faced with a phenomenon not rooted in history, demography, or geography. It is a phenomenon in which fundamental aspects of power are amplified by a substantial external component. This has been evident in all of Israel's wars, which required military air support and diverse assistance from the United States and Europe. This phenomenon has imposed goals beyond its capabilities, and its crisis is thus linked to this description and liable to deepen as long as Israel's strategic objectives are not reprogrammed.

It is true that Israel has achieved breakthroughs on more than one level, and perhaps the most important achievement is the large-scale destruction of the axis of resistance. However, this achievement, despite its importance, remains within the framework of change, meaning that it is subject to change. In light of Israel's policy based on imposing hegemony by force, the legitimacy of this axis is increasing and strengthening because moderate forces in the region have begun to fear Israeli goals. There is no better evidence of this than the fears of Egypt and Jordan, as well as Syria after the fall of the Assad regime. This is on the one hand, and on the other hand, it has not translated politically into fixed data that contribute to consolidating the Israeli position. The US administration is trying to translate this politically in Israel's favor, but it is clashing with the biblical Israeli expansionist calculations that believe in the primacy of expansion over all else.

Ultimately, wars on eight fronts deepen Israel's strategic dilemma, rather than resolve it. Policies of using excess force fail to create strategic successes, despite impressive operational successes. This matter has its consequences, but it takes time, and time is the most effective weapon.