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Israel’s new status quo: Seven wars that never really end
Israel's long-standing military doctrine depended on short wars fought elsewhere. Now it faces sustained conflicts with constant attacks and no clear end points
Israeli soldiers patrol a street during a large-scale military operation in the West Bank city of Tubas (Nidal Eshtayeh/Xinhua via Getty Images)
Published: 25 June 2026
Last updated: 25 June 2026
More than two and a half years after October 7, Israel finds itself confronting a reality that overturns some of the central assumptions underpinning its national security doctrine since the state's founding.
When David Ben-Gurion formulated Israel's security doctrine in the early 1950s, he recognised that Israel's geography and demographics imposed severe strategic limitations. The country lacked territorial depth, its civilian population lived close to hostile borders, and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) depended heavily on reserve soldiers who could not remain mobilised indefinitely without exhausting the economy and society.
His doctrine therefore, rested on two military principles. Wars had to be short, and they had to be transferred onto enemy territory as quickly as possible, preventing prolonged fighting inside Israel itself. But these military principles served a broader political objective. Ben-Gurion never viewed military victories as ends in themselves. Decisive battlefield success was intended to strengthen deterrence until Israel's Arab neighbours eventually accepted the permanence and legitimacy of the Jewish state. Military power was designed to create the conditions for political agreements, not to replace them.
The war that began on October 7 has challenged all three pillars of that doctrine. It has become Israel's longest war, lasting more than two and a half years. Israeli civilians have remained under missile and drone attacks from Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran throughout much of that period, meaning the battlefield has never been fully removed from Israeli territory. And unlike previous wars that eventually gave way to diplomatic breakthroughs or new security arrangements, most of Israel's seven fronts remain unresolved.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has largely prioritised military pressure and the management of multiple fronts over pursuing comprehensive political settlements with Israel's adversaries. The result is a new strategic reality: instead of decisive campaigns leading towards stable political outcomes, Israel finds itself maintaining a series of open fronts that continue to demand military attention with no clear end point.
This is where Israel stands across the seven fronts.
Iran: strategic gains but no resolution
The Iranian front demonstrates perhaps most clearly the limits of military power in achieving Israel's strategic objectives.
As Dror Doron argued in TJI, the war ended without achieving Israel's principal declared goals. Iran continues to possess hundreds of kilograms of highly enriched uranium and remains dangerously close to nuclear weapons capability. Tehran also refuses to discuss restrictions on its ballistic missile program, while maintaining links to regional allies in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen.
From Jerusalem's perspective, the outcome is particularly frustrating because the United States appears increasingly eager to avoid a broader regional conflict. American concerns about energy markets and regional stability have encouraged a diplomatic approach that leaves many of Israel's concerns unresolved.
The result is a strategic stalemate. Iran survived what many regarded as its most serious external challenge in decades and emerged with a renewed sense of confidence. Israel retains military options, but lacks a clear pathway towards achieving its original objectives.
Rather than delivering a decisive outcome, the Iranian campaign has become another long-term challenge requiring constant management.
Lebanon: a familiar war of attrition
Weeks after the US-brokered ceasefire, Israel continues to maintain a security zone inside southern Lebanon. Israeli leaders argue that the presence is necessary to prevent future Hezbollah attacks against northern communities. Yet maintaining that buffer carries significant costs.
Hezbollah remains operational despite suffering substantial military losses. Drone attacks and roadside incidents continue to inflict casualties on Israeli troops deployed inside Lebanon. Consequently, Israel faces a dilemma reminiscent of its previous occupation of southern Lebanon: the territory may provide security benefits, but holding it exposes soldiers to a continuing war of attrition.
For Lebanon, President Joseph Aoun has attempted to strengthen state authority and reduce the influence of armed militias. However, Hezbollah remains one of the country's most powerful political and military actors and retains the ability to shape events on the ground.
The result is an uneasy stalemate. Israel remains inside Lebanese territory, Hezbollah remains intact, and neither side has achieved a decisive outcome.
Israel remains determined to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its military capabilities and continues targeted operations against the organisation's leadership and infrastructure. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists Hamas cannot remain an armed force in Gaza.
Yet Hamas has survived. Despite suffering severe losses, it continues to function as Gaza's dominant political and military actor. Reports suggest the organisation is rebuilding parts of its command structure and recruiting new fighters.
Meanwhile, negotiations over Gaza's future governance have stalled. There is still no agreed framework for reconstruction, security arrangements or political administration. The result is neither victory nor peace. Instead, Gaza remains suspended between war and diplomacy, with the possibility of another confrontation never far away.
Syria and Iraq: containing threats rather than ending them
Israel's operations in Syria and Iraq have become a permanent feature of its regional strategy. In Syria, Israel continues to target weapons depots, missile facilities and Iranian-linked networks, while maintaining a security presence beyond the Golan Heights. Israeli leaders argue that preventing hostile forces from establishing themselves near the border is essential to national security.
In Iraq, attention has increasingly focused on Iranian-backed militias possessing drones and long-range missiles capable of reaching Israel. Israeli and the US operations have sought to disrupt these networks before they mature into more serious threats.
These campaigns are preventive rather than decisive. They may reduce immediate dangers, but they offer no clear endpoint. Instead of concluding conflicts, they are designed to manage and contain them indefinitely.
The West Bank: the most dangerous open front
Many analysts increasingly regard the West Bank as the most significant unresolved arena of Israel's seven-front war.
Violence between settlers and Palestinians has intensified, alongside expanding military operations and renewed calls from parts of the governing coalition for annexation. Critics argue that settler violence is no longer merely a fringe phenomenon but has become increasingly intertwined with broader government policies.
Warnings are now coming from within Israel's security establishment itself. Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo has described settler violence as an existential threat, arguing that it could undermine Israel from within. At the same time, he warned that attempts to confront extremist elements could trigger severe internal unrest.
The political risks are equally significant. With elections approaching, some observers fear increased attention could shift towards the West Bank, where security concerns and settlement expansion intersect with long-standing ideological objectives.
Unlike the external fronts, the West Bank touches directly on questions of Israeli identity, democracy and the future character of the state. That may make it the most difficult conflict of all to resolve.
Yemen: the front that refuses to disappear
If Ben-Gurion's doctrine sought to keep wars away from Israeli civilians, Yemen has become one of the clearest demonstrations of how difficult that objective has become.
Despite the ceasefire with Iran, the Houthis have continued launching missiles and drones towards Israel. Most have been intercepted, but the attacks repeatedly trigger air-raid sirens across large parts of the country and remind Israelis that geography no longer provides protection from regional conflicts.
The Houthis have also threatened Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea, creating economic and strategic pressure far beyond the battlefield itself. Unlike Gaza or Lebanon, Yemen offers no realistic prospect of territorial control, regime change or negotiated settlement. The Houthis remain entrenched, retain significant military capabilities and can re-enter the conflict whenever regional tensions escalate.
From decisive wars to permanent conflict
Israel's military doctrine was never intended simply to win wars. It was designed to create a strategic environment in which Israel's neighbours would ultimately conclude that military confrontation had become futile and that accommodation with the Jewish state was preferable to continued conflict. Ben-Gurion saw military superiority as a means of achieving political recognition and regional stability, not as a permanent condition requiring endless warfare.
The seven-front war suggests that this strategic logic has fundamentally changed. Israel continues to demonstrate overwhelming military superiority across the region, yet military success has rarely translated into lasting political arrangements. Instead, ceasefires remain fragile, adversaries continue to rearm, and several fronts require continuous military management. The emphasis has shifted from ending conflicts to containing them.
Whether by choice or circumstance, Netanyahu's government has focused on sustaining military pressure, while showing little appetite for broader political agreements with the Palestinians, Lebanon or Iran's regional network. As a consequence, Israel has entered what increasingly resembles an era of permanent conflict, where multiple fronts remain simultaneously active or liable to reignite.
The greatest challenge exposed by October 7 may therefore be neither military nor tactical. It is strategic. If Israel's founding doctrine sought short wars that paved the way for political settlements, today's reality is almost the reverse: long wars, recurring missile attacks on Israeli territory, and a growing number of conflicts that remain open because no political endgame has emerged. That represents perhaps the most profound departure from Ben-Gurion's original vision since the establishment of the state.
Dr Shahar Burla is a Sydney-based researcher, lecturer and Contributing Editor of TJI. Shahar holds a Master’s degree in political science from Hebrew University and a PhD in political science from Bar-Ilan University. He is the author of Political Imagination in the Diaspora: The Construction of a Pro-Israeli Narrative (2013) and co-editor of Australia and Israel: A Diasporic, Cultural and Political Relationship (2015).
Israel realises the Reality and has developed Armed Forces to counter the threats and after the October 7 2023 Hamas massacres with barbarism and atrocities counterattacked with great courage .
The destruction of the Hezbollah missile arsenal threat of 150,000 in September 2024 was Genius followed by the burying of enriched Uranium with the help of the USA in June 2025 with the IDF destroying Iranian ground to air missiles and ballistic and drone missiles.
Nuclear Scientists and IRGC commanders devoted to threaten Israel with Thermonuclear Missiles were eliminated .
The War on Hamas in Gaza presented painful dilemmas risking the lives of IDF troops as they sought out the Hamas terrorists who hid among the civilian population.
Hamas built a huge tunnel network but no bomb shelters for its vulnerable over the seventeen year occupation of Gaza .The Israel Defence Forces were committed to issuing Evacuation Orders sometimes Hamas Terror activists forbade civilians to leave on the pain of execution but one million five hundred thousand found shelter and civilian losses in those areas were much less though Hamas leaders hiding amongst hundreds of civilians were assassinated with high civilian deaths as in the assassination of Mohammad Deif.
Comments1
Mark Ian6 July at 11:09 pm
Israel realises the Reality and has developed Armed Forces to counter the threats and after the October 7 2023 Hamas massacres with barbarism and atrocities counterattacked with great courage .
The destruction of the Hezbollah missile arsenal threat of 150,000 in September 2024 was Genius followed by the burying of enriched Uranium with the help of the USA in June 2025 with the IDF destroying Iranian ground to air missiles and ballistic and drone missiles.
Nuclear Scientists and IRGC commanders devoted to threaten Israel with Thermonuclear Missiles were eliminated .
The War on Hamas in Gaza presented painful dilemmas risking the lives of IDF troops as they sought out the Hamas terrorists who hid among the civilian population.
Hamas built a huge tunnel network but no bomb shelters for its vulnerable over the seventeen year occupation of Gaza .The Israel Defence Forces were committed to issuing Evacuation Orders sometimes Hamas Terror activists forbade civilians to leave on the pain of execution but one million five hundred thousand found shelter and civilian losses in those areas were much less though Hamas leaders hiding amongst hundreds of civilians were assassinated with high civilian deaths as in the assassination of Mohammad Deif.