How Israel completely transformed the balance of power in the Middle East
For Israel's critics, the attack was the inevitable consequence of the country's blockade of Gaza, occupation of the West Bank, and failure to resolve the Palestinian conflict through diplomatic concessions. Many Israelis have drawn the opposite conclusion: They believe that the October attack – the deadliest in Israeli history – stemmed from Israel's failure to pre-emptively and decisively defeat its enemies.
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'In the 20 years before October 7, we allowed threats to develop beyond our borders, trusting that our intelligence would give us prior warnings of any attack,' said Major General Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence.
'The trauma of October 7 completely changed that mindset and made us willing to take risks that we didn't take in the past,' Yadlin said. 'We will no longer wait to be attacked, and we will not wait to be surprised.'
The approach echoes Israel's strategic outlook in the early decades of its existence, when it often acted more swiftly and decisively to remove threats on its borders, Yadlin said. The clearest example was in June 1967, when Israel pre-emptively attacked Egypt after the Egyptian military moved troops toward the Israeli border.
'As Egypt massed troops on our southern border, we did not wait to be surprised,' Yadlin said. 'Now, we are reviving that doctrine.'
Israel's new approach is the culmination of months of reevaluation, during which the military's confidence - crushed by the failures of October 7 – was gradually restored.
While Israel's approach to Hamas was immediately wrathful, the country was initially wary of taking on Hezbollah and Iran. Netanyahu called off a pre-emptive attack on Hezbollah in the first week of the war in 2023, amid fears that Israel would struggle to maintain a multifront war against the Iran-led alliance.
For nearly a year, Israel fought only a low-level border conflict with Hezbollah. Despite increasing clashes with Iran in 2024, Israel limited its strikes on Iran to avoid an all-out conflict.
Israel's approach began to change in September, when a sequence of unexpected moves allowed Israel to decimate much of Hezbollah's senior leadership.
That increased Israel's confidence and prompted its leaders to order a more decisive assault on the group. Troops invaded southern Lebanon and the air force killed Hezbollah's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah.
Israel then severely weakened Iran's air defence systems and successfully repelled massive barrages of Iranian missiles, giving Israel greater confidence in its offensive and defensive abilities. More than a year after October 7, Israeli leaders finally concluded that they had a rare window of opportunity to mount a decisive blow against Iran's nuclear program.
Though Israel's new approach has undercut Iran's regional influence, it has done little to resolve Israel's oldest and most intractable problem: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In Gaza, Israel's retaliation has led to widespread destruction and bloodshed, reinstating a fearsome sense of Israeli might and reducing Hamas' threat for a generation.
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But the conflict has provided no clear long-term trajectory for either Gaza or the wider Palestinian question. Netanyahu has consistently ignored opportunities to end the war, balking at the idea of either leaving Hamas' remnants in charge or allowing other Palestinian groups to take over.
'Instead, we are left with only bad options,' said Tzipi Livni, a former Israeli foreign minister. 'Either occupation or chaos, rather than a diplomatic process involving moderate regional and Palestinian stakeholders that could change the reality on the ground for both Palestinians and Israelis.'
A similarly aimless dynamic could yet emerge in Iran, analysts said, if the Israeli leadership fails to clearly define its goals there and set an exit strategy.
For now, Israeli officials hope the United States will join the attack and help Israel destroy Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities. If the US stays away, and if Iran refuses to stop the enrichment by choice, it is unclear whether Israel's forceful new doctrine will achieve the kind of game-changing outcomes that many Israelis desire.
'One wonders whether effective military performance is matched by a sober political vision,' said Nimrod Novik, a former senior Israeli official and a fellow at Israel Policy Forum, a research group in New York. 'Or, like in Gaza, we are left without an endgame. Time will tell.'
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Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil has been released from federal immigration detention, 104 days after becoming a symbol of President Donald Trump 's clampdown on campus protests. The former Columbia University graduate student was freed in Louisiana on Friday after a court ruling. He is expected to head to New York to reunite with his US citizen wife and infant son, born while Khalil was detained. "Justice prevailed, but it's very long overdue," he said outside the facility in a remote part of Louisiana. "This shouldn't have taken three months." The Trump administration is seeking to deport Khalil over his role in pro-Palestinian protests. He was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan. During an hourlong hearing conducted by phone, the New Jersey-based judge said the government had "clearly not met" the standards for detention. The government filed notice that it's appealing Khalil's release. 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He said his time in the detention facility had shown him "a different reality about this country that supposedly champions human rights and liberty and justice." "Whether you are a US citizen, an immigrant or just a person on this land doesn't mean that you are less of a human," he said, adding that "justice will prevail, no matter what this administration may try to portray" about immigrants. In a statement after the judge's ruling, Khalil's wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, said she can finally "breathe a sigh of relief" after her husband's three months in detention. The judge's decision comes after several other scholars targeted for their activism have been released from custody, including another former Palestinian student at Columbia, Mohsen Mahdawi; a Tufts University student, Rumeysa Ozturk; and a Georgetown University scholar, Badar Khan Suri. Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil has been released from federal immigration detention, 104 days after becoming a symbol of President Donald Trump 's clampdown on campus protests. The former Columbia University graduate student was freed in Louisiana on Friday after a court ruling. He is expected to head to New York to reunite with his US citizen wife and infant son, born while Khalil was detained. "Justice prevailed, but it's very long overdue," he said outside the facility in a remote part of Louisiana. "This shouldn't have taken three months." The Trump administration is seeking to deport Khalil over his role in pro-Palestinian protests. He was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan. During an hourlong hearing conducted by phone, the New Jersey-based judge said the government had "clearly not met" the standards for detention. The government filed notice that it's appealing Khalil's release. Khalil was the first person arrested under Trump's crackdown on students who joined campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza. The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be deported as it considers their views antisemitic. Protesters and civil rights groups say the administration is conflating antisemitism with criticism of Israel in order to silence dissent. The international affairs graduate student served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists and wasn't among the demonstrators arrested, but his prominence in news coverage and willingness to speak publicly made him a target of critics. The judge agreed Friday with Khalil's lawyers that the protester was being prevented from exercising his free speech and due process rights despite no obvious reason for his continued detention. Khalil said Friday that no one should be detained for protesting Israel's war in Gaza. He said his time in the detention facility had shown him "a different reality about this country that supposedly champions human rights and liberty and justice." "Whether you are a US citizen, an immigrant or just a person on this land doesn't mean that you are less of a human," he said, adding that "justice will prevail, no matter what this administration may try to portray" about immigrants. In a statement after the judge's ruling, Khalil's wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, said she can finally "breathe a sigh of relief" after her husband's three months in detention. The judge's decision comes after several other scholars targeted for their activism have been released from custody, including another former Palestinian student at Columbia, Mohsen Mahdawi; a Tufts University student, Rumeysa Ozturk; and a Georgetown University scholar, Badar Khan Suri.
