Invading Gaza Is the Least Bad Option for Israel

Israel appears poised to launch a major ground incursion into Gaza. If and when an invasion begins, the mission of the Israel Defense Forces will be to destroy Hamas as a military force capable of attacks like the one it carried out on October 7 and to remove the group from power in Gaza. Those goals are ambitious—especially the second one. But they have a logic in the “world of war” in which Israel now finds itself: a place in which an intolerable threat exists and can be eliminated only through the use of force. The many Western observers and countries counseling the Israelis against a large-scale ground invasion—including, it seems, the Biden administration—are failing to see that logic because despite the many military actions that Western countries (especially the United States) have carried out in recent decades, they have fundamentally inhabited a “world of peace”: a place in which even significant threats can be managed and mitigated through a combination of force and diplomacy.

Since World War II, most Western military operations have had limited objectives, and in the past 30 years, those objectives have been primarily political. Some of these operations have been what cynical field officers term “diplomatic démarches with booms”: political signaling via carefully orchestrated military actions, such as when the U.S. Air Force recently bombed the munitions stocks of Iranian-backed militias in Syria in response to those militias’ own careful attacks on American forces. Other operations were transformational nation-building missions such as those Washington undertook in Afghanistan and Iraq, which were predicated by security concerns but driven by political aims. (The operation in Afghanistan arguably started as a world-of-war response to an intolerable threat, but it quickly morphed into a chiefly political project to render Afghanistan governable.) Consequently, the United States and most of its allies have become unaccustomed to weighing the costs and benefits of military actions in world-of-war terms, which means focusing on the effect military action has on a military situation rather than emphasizing a political goal that is related to but distinct from a military objective.

From a world-of-peace point of view, the goal of any military action is to bring a threat under control. That may explain why, after the October 7 attacks, both U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the U.S. State Department liaison to the Palestinians initially expressed support for a cease-fire and de-escalation. In a world of war, however, the goal is not to manage a threat but to remove it.

This has become difficult for many in the West to understand. For example, the desire for revenge is often cited, including by U.S. President Joe Biden, as a potential motivation for an Israeli war in Gaza. Revenge is understandably on the minds of many Israelis, but that is not what is driving the country’s response. Rather, it is a simple calculation that if Hamas retains military capabilities, it presents an intolerable security threat.

On October 7, in addition to engaging in repulsive acts of sadistic violence against Israeli civilians, Hamas demonstrated a sophisticated set of abilities: to simultaneously distract the Israeli military with rockets, strike Israel’s high-tech electronic border defenses, launch ground forces to overwhelm Israeli border troops and sweep into civilian areas, and paralyze Israeli command and control. With a new appreciation for what Hamas can do, Israel now fears a multifront conflict akin to the ones it endured in 1948 and 1973: for example, another Hamas assault in the south coupled with coordinated attacks in the north carried out by Hezbollah (which can launch Iranian-made long-range missiles deep into Israeli territory) and terrorist bombings in the West Bank.

Such a scenario could lead to a long conflict with massive effects on Israel’s population and economy. That is the military problem that Israel is seeking to solve with a military solution. A ground offensive to defeat and possibly destroy Hamas will be bloody. It will complicate the hostage situation, cause civilian casualties, and pose some risk of escalation. But all of those potential costs are outweighed by the need to avoid a devastating two-front war.

FROM BAD TO WORSE

Israel has long believed that its military strength and carrot-and-stick diplomacy could deter Hamas. It is no longer possible to believe that. The only way to remove the intolerable threat Hamas poses is by taking out its offensive capabilities and removing the group’s safe havens in Gaza.

In the last 30 years, the United States has twice undertaken somewhat similar military missions, both of which were successful: the liberation of Kuwait after it was invaded by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1990 and the elimination of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in Iraq and Syria. In both cases, the enemy forces were not completely destroyed. Saddam’s army survived its defeat, and ISIS cells still operate in Iraq and Syria. Nor did either campaign produce a clear victory. After the 1990–91 Gulf War, Saddam remained in power. After ISIS was defeated, Iraq remained a fragile, difficult-to-govern country, and the Syrian civil war dragged on. But in both cases, U.S. foes lost the ability to hold terrain and launch major offensives.

That is a feasible goal for the IDF to pursue in fighting Hamas, and achieving it would allow Israel to restore deterrence. Before launching its October 7 attack, Hamas knew that Israel could crush it but thought the Israelis would not do so for fear of significant military casualties, endangering the hostages that Hamas planned to capture, and encountering a likely explosion of outrage that an invasion would trigger in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Israel must demonstrate that such factors will not deter it; otherwise, there will be little reason for Hamas and its allies to not push forward with the kinds of offensive strikes that Israel cannot tolerate.

The arguments mobilized against a ground attack include the potential availability of steps short of an invasion to neutralize Hamas, the disastrous regional political fallout of a ground incursion, the possibility of escalation by Iran or its surrogates, massive civilian casualties, and uncertainty about what will happen in Gaza “the day after.” But in Israel’s world of war, none of those concerns can outweigh the need to remove the intolerable risk of another, even bigger October 7.

In a world of war, the goal is not to manage a threat but to remove it.

“Smart alternatives” to a ground assault, such as targeted airstrikes and raids to take out Hamas leaders and rescue hostages, would amount to little more than “mowing the grass.” Israel has relied on those techniques for the past decade; October 7 showed that they had utterly failed. Moreover, the risk of escalation, although real, has been lowered by the Biden administration’s move to bulk up U.S. military deployments in the region. That step, combined with Biden’s trip to Israel, sent a clear, sobering signal to Iran and Hezbollah that the United States would help Israel defend itself.

Israel and the United States must grapple with the political problem of who will rule Gaza after a ground invasion eliminates Hamas’s ability to do so. But the sequence in this case cannot be to wait for a difficult-to-design political solution to appear and only then act to remove the intolerable threat. When a state faces a threat of the sort that Hamas poses to Israel, it must eliminate it—and wait until the day after to deal with “the day after” problems.

In making the choice to launch a ground assault, Israel must consider not only the risks of invading but also the risks of not doing so. It cannot keep its 360,000 reserves mobilized indefinitely to deter a new attack. And a revival of the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” is inconceivable; if that process was not dead before, it is now. Only when Hamas is out of the picture can Israel even consider restarting negotiations that might lead to a two-state solution.

No country in a situation like the one Israel faces would pass up on a feasible option to eliminate an intolerable threat like the one Hamas poses. A ground invasion is not guaranteed to succeed. And even a successful campaign will impose significant costs. But October 7 demonstrated that every other option has already failed to provide Israel with a necessary modicum of security. In the world of war into which it has been thrust, Israel has no other defensible choice. The country has only bad options: of those, a ground invasion is the least bad.