Israel’s State of Permanent War Is About Expansion, Not Survival
This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his security Cabinet has authorized a new plan to eradicate Hamas and its system of underground tunnels in Gaza, involving the mobilization of tens of thousands of reserves and the occupation of large swathes of the territory. The plan is ostensibly meant to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining Israeli hostages it continues to hold, without engaging in the permanent withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza envisaged by the short-lived ceasefire the two sides agreed to in mid-January.
But in many ways, the return to massive military operations in Gaza after the relatively successful ceasefire, which saw the release of dozens of hostages and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza’s civilian population, reflects the shift in Israel’s regional security calculus to what amounts to a permanent war footing.
Since Hamas unleashed its surprise attack on Israeli military installations and civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, killing roughly 1,200 people, Israeli forces have been continuously engaged across the region. Starting with its war in Gaza and the conflict with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and including intermittent exchanges of fire with Iran and the Yemen-based Houthis as well as repeated airstrikes in Syria, Israel is now approaching nearly 600 consecutive days of war.
Long after severely diminishing the militant groups that stepped up their attacks against Israel in the wake of Oct. 7, it has opted to continue destroying infrastructure and civilian life in both Gaza and Lebanon, as well as in Syria and Yemen. Moreover, in mid-April, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz stated that the Israeli military would remain indefinitely in the territories it has occupied in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Though Hamas and Hezbollah no longer pose any military threat, and the Houthis only a manageable one, Israel continues to act as if it faces a military emergency.
Yet, despite regularly framing its wars as existential, Israel’s military operations around the region today have little to do with survival. Its current belligerence, fueled by hubris and the unquestioning support of U.S. Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, is no longer about countering the threat from militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, or even about returning Israeli hostages from Gaza.
Rather, the common thread in all these fronts is that they allow the current Israeli government to maintain in place conditions that it needs in order to fulfil several goals, chief among them the messianic expansionism espoused by the extremist members of Netanyahu’s Cabinet.
Initially billed as an incursion to eradicate Hamas and rescue the nearly 250 hostages seized on Oct. 7, the war in Gaza has long since turned into wanton killing and displacement of Palestinian civilians, with barely any military response from Hamas. Israeli bombing and military incursions have killed at least 52,000 people, the majority of whom have reportedly been women and children, while damaging or destroying nearly 70 percent of all housing and infrastructure in the territory. Severe food shortages endured by the population are being worsened by the two-month blockade of aid delivery enforced by Israel since it torpedoed the ceasefire in March. What’s more, the militarized campaign has spread to the West Bank, where Israel seized more Palestinian land in 2024 than in any previous year over the past three decades.
Israel has transformed the tragedy of Oct. 7 into an excuse for regional intervention, changing facts on the ground in the Palestinian territories and accelerating its expansionist ambitions in the wider region.
In Lebanon, Israeli forces continue to bomb Hezbollah targets regularly and occupy parts of southern Lebanon, both in violation of the ceasefire that ended the conflict in November. As part of that agreement, the Lebanese army and state have the difficult task of disarming what remains of Hezbollah’s military apparatus, while leading the country’s difficult post-conflict recovery amid Lebanon’s long-running economic crisis. As President Michel Aoun has repeatedly emphasized, Israel’s continued military operations in the country complicate both tasks.
To the east, Israel is also regularly bombing and conducting ground operations in Syria, even as the country navigates a challenging political transition after the collapse of the regime of former dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. Last week, Israeli warplanes bombed the vicinity of Syria’s presidential palace in what Netanyahu described as a warning to President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, after sectarian clashes between Sunni militias and Syria’s Druze minority left over 100 people dead. The next night, Israeli warplanes conducted another sweeping raid, targeting Syrian military targets all over the country.
Israel has presented itself as the “defender” of Syria’s Druze minority, a self-portrayal it similarly deploys with regard to its own Druze community. But this is simply cover to justify its ongoing intervention in Syria. Last week’s strikes followed months of Israeli air raids as well as the seizure of a buffer zone beyond the occupied Golan Heights in the days after Assad’s fall, despite the fact that the new Syrian authorities have made it clear since taking power that they do not seek a confrontation with Israel. Even if they did, it is hard to imagine how Syria’s Soviet-era military capabilities could possibly threaten Israel.
Instead, Israel’s actions in Syria since the fall of Assad can be seen as an effort to simultaneously stoke and take advantage of instability in the country. By derailing the political transition, Israel aims to maintain Syria as an assortment of disjointed statelets, rather than risk seeing it coalesce into a unified country headed by an Islamist-leaning Sunni majority with strong ties to Turkey. Syrians have many reasons to be suspicious of Al-Sharaa’s intentions as well as of Turkish encroachment. But few want Israel to step in and play the role of savior.
Throughout, Israel’s overreach in its response to the Oct. 7 attacks has been enabled by unconditional U.S. backing, first under Biden and now under Trump. Indeed, because they feel they can count on Washington’s full support, while never having to answer for the war crimes the Israeli military has committed in these conflicts, the most extremist members of the Israeli government don’t even try to hide their intentions.
Just hours after Israeli aircraft had launched yet another air raid over Damascus last week, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that Israel would not stop fighting until Syria was partitioned and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been expelled from Gaza into third countries.
As in the past, Israeli forces seem intent on building buffer zones for land Israel seized in previous conflicts by occupying territory beyond it. Nearly eight decades after its founding, Israel remains a country without finalized borders, its expansion driven by the political aspirations of the Israeli right, whose vision of a “Greater Israel” encompasses not only the West Bank and Gaza, but also parts of Lebanon and Syria.
Although Netanyahu does not openly advocate for this sort of messianic expansionism, it is the position of several far-right members of his Cabinet, including Smotrich but also Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir. Both see the idea of a Greater Israel as the way forward and the current conditions as the most favorable in decades for achieving it.
Whether or not Netanyahu is fully aligned with his Cabinet on the question of Greater Israel, his political future also seems to hinge on perpetual war. Should Israel’s multiple conflicts ever end, he would be forced to reckon with the security failures under his watch that made the attacks of Oct. 7 possible. Public attention would also turn back to the multiple corruption cases he is fighting in court as well as his concerted efforts to undermine rule of law.
But more importantly, Netanyahu would have to explain to the Israeli families waiting for the return of their loved ones still being held in Gaza—as well as to those who have had to mourn the deaths in captivity of their own—why, given so many chances to bring the hostages home, he has repeatedly opted to endanger their lives by continuing the offensive in Gaza.
Israel has transformed the tragedy of Oct. 7 into an excuse for unbridled brutality and regional intervention, changing facts on the ground in the Palestinian territories and accelerating its expansionist ambitions in the wider region. And by giving it carte blanche to continue with no end in sight, the U.S. and other Western countries are enabling a state of permanent war in which there is a constant risk of regional escalation—and a guarantee of humanitarian suffering.
Francisco Serrano is a journalist, writer and analyst. His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Weapons of Reason, The Outpost, Foreign Affairs and other outlets. His latest book, “As Ruínas da Década,” about the Middle East in the decade after the 2011 popular revolts, was published in 2022.