Did Israel “win” the post-October 7 war?

There was never going to be a “winner” of the bloody conflict that has raged in the Middle East for the past 15 months — not considering how the war began or the destruction it has caused. But after a tentative ceasefire went into effect on Sunday, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have largely been able to accomplish their objectives, while conceding far less than seemed possible for much of the course of the war. 

“Let’s start with what’s most obvious and tragic: We lost the war on October 7,” Nimrod Novik, a former senior adviser to the late Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, told Vox. “Everything after that was trying to restore our confidence in our strength, in our security, in the fact that Israel is well protected by our security forces. I believe that objective has been accomplished.”

Netanyahu sounded a triumphant note in announcing the ceasefire last week, saying that “all of the objectives of the war” had been accomplished, including “returning all of our hostages, eliminating Hamas’ military and governing capabilities and ensuring that Gaza will never again constitute a threat to our country.”

Following the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, that killed some 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 hostages, Israel’s war in Gaza killed more than 46,000 people, according to local authorities. Thousands more were killed in Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Around 90 percent of Gaza’s population has been displaced, and malnutrition and disease are rampant. Multiple international organizations have accused Israel of genocide and Netanyahu himself has been charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court. 

And yet, in the view of many of the Israeli government’s backers, the campaign since October 7 — in both Gaza and the wider Middle East — succeeded not just in enhancing Israel’s security, but in dealing a massive blow to the regional ambitions of Iran, which prior to the attack was seen by Israeli leaders as the much more serious threat to their security. 

Netanyahu, who for months faced protests and calls for his resignation over the security failures that led to October 7, the failure to secure the release of the hostages afterward, and a raft of preexisting personal scandals, has seen a stunning rise in his poll numbers. And despite frequent tension between the US and Israel in recent months over Israeli tactics and the growing civilian toll of the war, the outgoing Biden administration believes its ongoing support for Israel — in the face of widespread criticism and the loss of at least some support during the last presidential election — was ultimately vindicated by the results. 

“It is just impossible, and I’m speaking from the Middle East, to overstate how significantly this region has changed,” said a senior Biden administration official, speaking on background shortly after the ceasefire was announced on January 15. “Our adversaries are significantly weaker. Our partners and allies are significantly stronger.”

History has not been kind to previous predictions of regional transformation in the Middle East: Recall former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s infamous 2006 description of a previous Israel-Hezbollah war as the “birth pangs of a new Middle East,” or for that matter Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s assessment, just days before October 7, that the region was “quieter” than it had been for two decades. 

The reality is that whatever security Israel may have bought itself with 15 months of brutal fighting may prove to be short-lived. And the number one reason is that Hamas — the militant group responsible for October 7 — is anything but destroyed. 

Hamas is down, but not out

Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials had long vowed to continue the war until “Hamas is destroyed.” By that standard, at least, the war effort has not succeeded. 

Numbers tell the story: Of the roughly 30,000 fighters in Hamas’s ranks on October 7, the Israeli military believes it has killed around 17,000 — including Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the attack — and detained thousands more. But US officials say the group has managed to recruit nearly as many fighters as it has lost. 

The ceasefire deal, which is divided into three phases, largely punted on the question of Gaza’s future governance. Right now, all that’s been formally agreed is phase 1 of the deal, which includes a cessation of hostilities, the partial withdrawal of Israeli troops, and the exchange of hostages and prisoners. Questions about the reconstruction of the territory — which has seen 92 percent of its housing destroyed or damaged, according to the UN — and its political future will be taken up in phase 3, which is still to be negotiated. 

Regional leaders and the previous US administration have favored the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, taking over governance in Gaza, but the authority is very unpopular with Palestinians, and is opposed by the Israelis as well.

And so, for all the months of debate about who would govern Gaza “the day after,” the answer for the moment at least appears to be: Hamas. The group is still the de facto governing authority in most of the strip and faces few domestic rivals. 

“Hamas obviously hasn’t been dislodged. I think Israel has very much failed in that sense,” said Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. “Whether it’s the dominant political force, I think that’s something only time will tell.”

Still, the Biden official pushed back on the notion that the group has weathered the Israeli onslaught, pointing out the killing of many of Hamas’s senior leaders and the destruction of much of its command infrastructure. 

“It is a far cry from an organization that invaded Israel in military formations with thousands of organized fighters on October 7,” the official said. “Its ability to do that, I really believe, has been forever foreclosed.”

Of course, Biden himself assessed back in May, when the militant group had accepted a ceasefire deal broadly similar to this one, that “Hamas no longer is capable of carrying out another October 7th.” But Netanyahu and his defenders would no doubt counter that if they had taken a deal at that time, Sinwar would still be alive, as would Hassan Nasrallah and the senior leadership of Hezbollah, all of whom were killed as Israel ramped up its war in Lebanon. 

In recent weeks, Hamas has made some significant concessions in negotiations, including agreeing to a deal that temporarily leaves IDF troops in parts of Gaza as the ceasefire takes effect, which US officials have credited to the military pressure the group was under as well as the damage sustained by Iran’s proxy network. One argument is that Hamas was more willing to negotiate when it saw that Hezbollah and Iran were in no position to help. 

Whether Israel’s gains in those months were worth the number of Israeli hostages and IDF troops who died in the meantime, not to mention the far greater number of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, is another question.

A body blow to Iran

It’s hard to overstate the level of damage sustained over the course of the war by the so-called “Axis of Resistance” — the network of anti-Israel and anti-American proxies backed by Tehran throughout the Middle East. In Lebanon, Israel has decimated the ranks of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed proxy group with whom it fought a previous war in 2006, including through an audacious operation in which dozens of Hezbollah members were killed by exploding pagers that had been rigged by Israeli intelligence. 

Israel has also demonstrated an ability to reach directly into Iran itself. In July, it killed Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, with an explosive placed inside a fortified guest house in Tehran. An Israeli jet and drone attack struck Iran’s missile defense system and missile production facilities in October, demonstrating an ability to overpower the country’s air defenses. Israel’s own air defenses, by contrast, almost completely neutralized an Iranian missile barrage targeting the country last October (thanks in part to help from the US and other allies).

Israel’s final blow to Iran’s regional interests was likely unintentional, but just as consequential. The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an important regional partner for Iran, collapsed in December after a surprise rebel assault that brought an abrupt end to a 13-year civil war, in large part because Assad’s Hezbollah and Iranian allies were no longer able to help. 

One exception to this largely pro-Israel trend is Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who out of avowed solidarity with Gaza have been able to sustain a campaign of attacks on global shipping through the Red Sea that has literally reshaped the global economy. The Houthis have said they will now only attack “Israel-linked” ships, but their record at distinguishing those has been mixed at best. And while the Houthis are undoubtedly reliant on Iranian support, they are also more independent from Tehran’s dictates than other members of the Axis. 

“There will be another reconstitution [of the Axis],” predicts Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East program at the UK think tank Chatham House. “But it might be that, for the time being, Iran will focus domestically because it has been weakened, and it will encourage the Axis groups to do the same.”

Let’s make a deal(s)

The Axis was supposed to be Iran’s means of projecting power in the region and deterring its rivals from attacks, but its greatest test has proven it to be something of a paper tiger. Paradoxically, that might eventually serve to enhance the threat Iran poses — there has been some speculation that Tehran may now rush to develop a nuclear weapon to reestablish a deterrent. Still, the experience of the last few months must have given Iranian leaders pause about whether they can do so without Israel immediately noticing, or resist Israeli (and possible US) attacks in response. 

On the other hand, a reeling Iran might also be more open to diplomacy with the United States, even though President Donald Trump famously pulled out of the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal during his first term, authorized the killing of Iran’s most senior general, and was himself the target of an alleged Iranian assassination plot. Thanks to a helicopter crash last spring which killed Iran’s hardline President Ebrahim Raisi, the Islamic Republic is currently governed by a relative moderate, Masoud Pezeshkian, who might be more inclined to seek a deal in order to win some sanctions relief for his country’s beleaguered economy.  

That’s not the only megadeal potentially in the offing. Just prior to October 7, the Biden administration was working to achieve a diplomatic normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. It was a continuation of the Trump-era “Abraham Accords” — but because of the Saudis’ economic and religious clout, the hoped-for deal would have been a much more important step toward resolving decades of enmity between Israel and its Arab neighbors and the wider Islamic world. 

The war, and the furious Arab public reaction to it, put a halt to the process. The Saudis only became more insistent that normalization had to be linked to meaningful progress toward establishing a Palestinian state, at the very moment when Israel’s war in Gaza made such progress seem impossible. That didn’t stop the Biden administration from repeatedly trying to use the prospect of Saudi normalization as a carrot to get Israel to end the war. Influential voices like the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman warned that Israel was sacrificing “Riyadh” — relations with an important regional and global power — for “Rafah,” the Gaza city that Israel controversially attacked last February. 

In the end, though, Israel may still get both Rafah and Riyadh. Despite having accused Israel of “genocide,” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman still seems to be interested in a deal, albeit not one perceived as a total sellout of the Palestinians. 

Whether Salman would have a partner for such a deal is another question. Netanyahu, and more importantly his right-wing governing partners, would probably reject even the nominal moves toward a two-state solution that would make an agreement possible. Any moves by Israel to formally annex parts of the West Bank — which some influential voices in Israel are calling for — could put it completely out of reach. And while Trump, for his part, would clearly love to complete the Abraham Accords, there are doubts he would be willing to put the pressure on Israel that may be necessary to accomplish it. 

While Trump may have been willing to play hardball with Netanyahu to get a deal done before he took office, any hopes among critics of Israel that he would be “tougher” than Biden going forward were dashed on Tuesday when, amid a flurry of first-day executive actions, Trump lifted sanctions imposed by Biden on Israeli settlers in the West Bank. 

Those sanctions were arguably the toughest action the Biden team had taken to constrain Israel over the past four years, though their actual impact on the ground was debatable: 2024 saw a record number of acts of violence by settlers against Palestinians on the West Bank as well as some of the largest seizures of land by the Israel government. In the coming days, Trump is widely expected to lift the Biden administration’s hold on the delivery of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. Some of his diplomatic nominations, including ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and ambassador to the United Nations Elise Stefanik, have views on Israeli-Palestinian issues that could be considered far-right even in an Israeli context. (Stefanik affirmed during her confirmation hearing that she believes Israel has a “biblical” right to control the West Bank.)

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Netanyahu, a lifelong student of American politics, appears to have played Washington perfectly, managing to prosecute the war with few meaningful restrictions from a Democratic administration and ending it just in time for his preferred Republican to return to office. 

Israel fought international law – and Israel won

Israel’s conduct of the war and the high civilian death toll have been met with global protest and outrage — as well as some legal action. NGOs including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. South Africa has brought a case accusing Israel of genocide to the International Court of Justice, which the court is still considering.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants in November for Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. In theory, this means that Netanyahu could face arrest if he travels to any of the 124 countries that are members of the court — the kind of fate usually reserved for dictators like Muammar al-Qaddafi or Sudan’s former president Omar al-Bashir.

But that doesn’t mean we’re likely to see Netanyahu in the docket at the Hague. The government of Poland is a party to the ICC, but it recently announced that it would guarantee safe passage for Netanyahu to attend the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. That’s perhaps an early sign that most Western countries will be very reluctant to arrest the prime minister of Israel on their soil. 

The US isn’t a party to the ICC, though it has cooperated with the court on several occasions, including the war in Ukraine, and the Biden administration opposed the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. The Trump administration has already taken steps to reimpose sanctions on the court. Ultimately, it may turn out to be the ICC, rather than Netanyahu, that sustains more damage from this attempted prosecution. 

Novik, the former government adviser who is now a fellow at the Israel Policy Forum, said that the international protests and legal actions have had little impact on either Israel’s domestic politics or the government’s decision-making. 

“As a result of the fact that Israelis have not been really exposed to the images [of destruction in Gaza] in the media here, there is a tendency in the country to frame international reaction as antisemitism, rather than driven by resentment of the actual suffering of Palestinians,” he said. 

Too early to say

So, did Israel “win” the war that began after October 7? In the short term, it’s hard to say no. Even if Hamas has not been eliminated, Israel has been able to inflict far more damage on its enemies in both Gaza and the wider region, and ended the fighting with far fewer concessions, than many would have thought possible when the conflict began. 

In the long term, though, that victory is less clear cut. For one thing, the war may not actually be over. Netanyahu has called the ceasefire temporary and said Israel reserves the right to continue fighting. The deal might never reach phase 2, when a permanent cessation of hostilities is supposed to begin, leaving the bombs to fall again. There are still more than 90 hostages left in Gaza, and not all of them may be released. (Some may no longer be alive.) 

At an event hosted by the lobbying group J Street last week, Ilan Goldenberg, who until last summer served as a senior Middle East adviser on Biden’s national security council, said that “the most likely scenario is the parties kind of paper over the arrangements in post-conflict Gaza to a point where enough aid is going in and Hamas sustains the deal and the hostages come out.” While certainly better than the situation over the last 15 months, Goldenberg said this would mean “we still have Hamas in Gaza in some form or another, we still have a lot of Palestinian suffering, and we still don’t have a meaningful way forward.” 

For now, Israel appears to have defied critics who predicted that the war in Gaza would turn into yet another costly and drawn-out quagmire. But quagmires often have promising beginnings. Goldenberg described Israel’s triumph over its enemies in this war as “not all that dissimilar to where we [the US] were in Iraq in 2003 and 2004,” he said. “You go in and you destroy things and you take out the bad guys, but you can’t beat something with nothing … there’s going to be perpetual insurgency there, or perpetual Hamas control, unless you have just a whole fundamental shift in attitude by the Israeli government.” 

Israeli leaders referred to their rounds of fighting with Hamas in previous years as “mowing the grass”: destroying and degrading the group’s capabilities and ability to attack Israel, without eliminating it completely. What Israel has done over the past 15 months to both Hamas and Iran’s proxies is something more than that, but there’s still reason to believe the grass will grow back.