The latest war in Gaza began with Hamas’s 7 October attack. Israel’s response is brutally destructive but is proving indecisive while worsening regional tensions and global problems.

The preeminent war philosopher Carl von Clausewitz famously declared that war is a continuation of politics by other means. He argued that wars were instrumental, fought to achieve defined political objectives and not simply to kill people and break things. Clausewitz’s insight deeply informs Western strategic and military thinking.  

This logic, however, is not informing how Israel and Hamas are fighting in Gaza. Instead, the war is perceived by both as a war of existence. In such wars, there are no considerations about whether the costs are worth the gains. Israeli strategic thinker Martin Van Creveld considers these wars non-political, and so unable to “be used for this purpose or that. [Instead] the outburst of violence is best understood as the supreme manifestation of existence as well as a celebration of it.” Noting Israel’s 1967 War as an example, he continues: “For six glorious days, war was Israel and Israel was war.”  

The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) was sent into Gaza principally to destroy Hamas. Talk about Gaza’s circumstances post-war was deliberately spurned. Now, months later, the IDF is bogged down with ill-defined objectives, its original timelines for victory unmet; the rescuing of the remaining hostages improbable; many Hamas tunnels remaining; and a realisation that eventually killing Hamas’s leadership is unlikely to bring much joy.  

The US is trying to steer Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu towards allowing a sovereign Palestinian state but his political career has been built on stopping this. His policy has arguably helped bring Israel to its current impasse.  

Given this, the default, as Israel’s National Security Minister sees it, is to “encourage the emigration” of Palestinians to other countries. Some Israeli media see “voluntary resettlement…becoming a key official policy of the government” with the Congo mentioned as a possibility. The logic is that Palestinians who emigrate elsewhere cease to be Palestinians. Over time the Palestinian nation as an entity will then vanish, solving Israeli disquiet.  

On the other hand, in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank there are five million Palestinians with many more in Jordan and Lebanon. Solving Israel’s Palestine problem by “voluntary resettlement” is improbable. 

All this means the IDF is simply thrashing around with ill-defined objectives. The force appears to be destroying things willy-nilly hoping this will help bring a victory of some sort. Some 100,000 buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, neighbourhoods have been razed, all university buildings have been levelled, most schools are unusable, many hospitals are inoperative, and most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people now live in tents. For a demographically young population, with almost half under 18, remaining in Gaza may appear unviable.  

There are implications arising from Israel’s non-political war of existence. First, the war ends the myth of IDF military prowess that dates back to 1973 and its last decisive military victory. The IDF has been preparing for this specific war for years, including fighting earlier wars in Gaza, but its performance now looks mediocre. Intelligence warnings were ignored, and the response to the incursion was slow. Meanwhile, the IDF’s large-scale air/ground offensive has proved indecisive, and only one of some two hundred hostages has been rescued, and three were inexplicably killed. The IDF’s ability to deter adversaries has been badly damaged.  

Second, in being an existential war, escalation worries Israel less than if it was a Clausewitzian war – the costs that might arise are deemed irrelevant. Israel has not tried to tamp down unrest in the West Bank; rather the reverse, the government was apparently keen to launch a full scale attack into Lebanon early on, and it continues launching gratuitous air raids into Syria. If the US is trying to avoid a major regional conflict, Israel seems not.   

Third, Israel’s inability to adequately address the Palestinian question will continue to trouble international relations more broadly. The issue acts as both a motivator and an excuse for others to resort to violence. The Houthi’s anti-shipping attacks, problems on Lebanon’s border, and attacks on US forces in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan highlight that the Palestinian issue can potentially ignite a regional crisis at short notice.  

Fourth, the issue could reenergise global terrorism. Even in Gaza, support for Hamas, and by implication its terrorist acts, is growing. In a worrying indicator, Bin Laden’s 9/11 related letter that justified terrorism partly based on Palestine went viral on Tik Tok in early November. Palestine is a poly-crisis that left unsolved will continue to indefinitely threaten global peace.  

Lastly, given this is a problem that Israel hasn’t solved, but which can harm others, how can the damage these nations may suffer from it be limited? Defensive measures need active reconsideration. Indeed, the Houthi’s Red Sea attacks suggest the risks may be more extensive than earlier thought.  

More proactively, engagement with Israel may need stepping up. If Netanyahu is unable to solve the problem, should others be supported instead? There are strong counter-arguments and in this, Netanyahu simply losing office may not be enough.  

On the other hand, it’s been almost 75 years since the problem first arose and the Palestine issue is still not going away. Is continued global apathy the best solution? Israelis for years have argued their problem is our problem. Maybe we should agree and take action. 

Dr Peter Layton is a Visiting Fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and the author of Grand Strategy. 

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.