Pollard: Israel must defeat its enemies instead of containing them

Israel is repeating the strategic failures that led to October 7, relying on walls, buffer zones and deterrence instead of eliminating the growing threats from Gaza and Lebanon to Syria and Turkey.

By Jonathan Pollard

For the past several weeks, there have been numerous reports describing the IDF’s efforts to increase security along our border with Gaza.

The army’s measures include better-trained and better-equipped community quick-response teams, enhanced border fortifications, and a commitment to the complete disarmament of Hamas before authorizing any withdrawal to the pre-October 7 border.

The fact that so many people consider these measures “reasonable” and appropriate only demonstrates that we have still not learned the most important lesson of October 7.

It seems obvious, but apparently it needs to be said again: You cannot claim to have defeated an enemy while building defensive walls against it and leaving that enemy with the ability to restart hostilities whenever it chooses.

That is not victory. It is threat management.

Indeed, this is precisely the flawed mindset Israelis came to call the “conceptzia”: managing an enemy while assuming that deterrence, intelligence and defensive barriers will keep the threat contained. It was this mindset that helped set the stage for October 7 and allowed Hezbollah to grow into a clear and present danger to our country.

The Failure to Finish the Job in Gaza

With regard to Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unwillingness to define a “day after” that satisfied Israel’s long-term strategic interests was, in my view, simply inexcusable.

Those priorities should have included the total destruction of Hamas, the removal of Gaza’s hostile population from territory Israel intended to annex, Israeli sovereignty over the territory, and its resettlement by Jews.

Had these objectives been achieved, we would not now need to rely on quick-response community forces and enormously expensive new frontier fortifications that, however sophisticated, will do nothing to eliminate Hamas should the organization eventually succeed in rebuilding its ability to invade Israel.

Instead, Netanyahu’s dithering created a vacuum that other countries rushed to fill with arrangements that, in my view, risk preserving Hamas in one form or another.

This failure to protect Israel’s vital postwar strategic interests constitutes a missed vital opportunity, one that I believe should have disqualified Netanyahu from seeking another term as prime minister.

But it is critical to understand that Netanyahu did not operate alone.

He had partners in this strategic failure, particularly within the Kirya, who share responsibility for the thinking that brought us to this point. They include past and present senior commanders, among them former Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, who repeatedly opposed the kind of decisive military solution against Hamas that I believe was necessary.

In my view, Eisenkot’s tenure helped hollow out the army and reinforced a strategic doctrine that placed far too much faith in deterrence and threat management. During the war, I believe he compounded that mistake by placing the rescue of the hostages ahead of the overriding strategic objective of destroying Hamas.

The fact that Eisenkot is now presenting himself as a suitable candidate to lead the country is outrageous.

Repeating the Same Mistake in Lebanon

Unfortunately, the same thinking is evident on our northern front.

Both Netanyahu and our current Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, appear determined to rely on a security zone in southern Lebanon rather than pursue the outright destruction of Hezbollah.

Israel has tried versions of this approach before. There is no reason to assume that a defensive buffer will permanently solve the problem this time. At best, it buys time. At worst, it provides Hezbollah with the opportunity to rearm, reorganize and prepare for the next war.

Our civilian and military leadership also appear to have ruled out moving Israel’s permanent border farther north by annexing Lebanese territory south of the Awali River.

Instead, we seem prepared to remain in our present positions while waiting for Hezbollah to somehow disappear. Exactly when and how that is supposed to happen remains unexplained.

But one thing appears certain: Israel has no intention of annexing the territory.

This might also explain why we used an enormous quantity of high-grade explosives to destroy Hezbollah’s Ali Taher underground fortress complex rather than converting such infrastructure into a hardened Israeli forward-supply and command facility.

I have argued that Israel should annex Lebanese territory along an Awali-Southern Bekaa axis and permanently remove the hostile Shiite population from the area in order to provide our hard-pressed northern communities with the security buffer they desperately need.

Such a move would also send an unmistakable message to Hezbollah and to the so-called Lebanese “government”: Israel will permanently retain territory it captures when necessary to protect its citizens, regardless of how loudly the international community condemns us.

A Far Greater Threat Is Emerging in Syria

Unfortunately, the same strategic mistakes we have made in Gaza and Lebanon are now in danger of being repeated in southwestern Syria.

The future Israel faces on the Syrian front involves two interrelated threats.

The first, and in my view by far the most dangerous, is Turkey’s expanding military influence in Syria.

Israel has already demonstrated how seriously it takes this threat. The recent Israeli strike on the Abu al-Duhur airbase followed Israeli intelligence indicating that Turkey intended to deploy radar, air-defense systems and Turkish personnel there. Israel has made clear that it considers the expansion of Turkish military capabilities in Syria a red line.

I believe this is part of a much larger neo-Ottoman project under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan has repeatedly employed aggressive rhetoric concerning Jerusalem and Israel, while Turkey has steadily expanded its political and military influence throughout the region. In my assessment, what we are witnessing is not merely aspirational rhetoric.

It is the development of capabilities that could eventually provide Turkey with a forward military platform against Israel.

The second threat involves Syria’s jihadist rulers and the danger they pose to the country’s minority populations, including Alawites, Kurds, Christians and Druze.

The consolidation of Syria into a centralized Islamist state, backed and increasingly influenced by Turkey, could eventually produce a modernized Syrian military capable of contributing to a future Turkish-led confrontation with Israel.

We therefore have to stop treating the possibility of direct conflict with Turkey and its Syrian allies as unthinkable.

If the present trajectory continues, Israel must prepare seriously for that possibility.

Israel Must Reshape the Battlefield Now

What does that mean in practical terms?

First, Israel must hold as much strategically important territory in southwestern Syria as necessary. We must prevent the forward deployment of Turkish ground forces, radar and air-defense systems that could restrict the Israeli Air Force’s freedom of action. We must prevent the Syrian military from developing capabilities that could pose a major threat to Israel.

And we must be prepared to act before those threats become irreversible.

At a minimum, I believe these objectives require Israel to annex the Syrian Hermon together with the Bashan and Dar’a governorates, creating a substantial buffer protecting our communities on the Golan Heights.

Israel should also recognize either a fully autonomous or independent Druze entity in the Suwayda Governorate, with its own army and a significantly enlarged territory.

Recreating a well-armed autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Syria would likewise provide Israel with an important strategic partner while creating pressure on one of Turkey’s most unstable regions. It would give Ankara something to worry about on its own doorstep rather than allowing Erdogan to concentrate his attention exclusively on ours.

The Nuclear Option Cannot Be Taken Off the Table

But we also have to confront a possibility that almost nobody in Israel is willing to discuss openly.

If Turkey continues developing the military infrastructure and regional alliances necessary for a future war against Israel, I believe Israel must be prepared, as a last resort, to launch a preventive nuclear strike before that threat becomes overwhelming.

I understand perfectly well how controversial that statement is.

But controversy is not an argument.

The real question is what Israel is supposed to do if a hostile regional power with one of the largest conventional armies in the world develops the military infrastructure, alliances and forward positions necessary to launch a potentially existential attack against us.

There are obviously measures short of nuclear weapons that Israel must employ first: conventional military strikes against threatening deployments, intelligence operations, support for regional allies, preservation of air superiority, missile defense and diplomatic pressure.

We should use every one of them.

But I do not believe Israel can responsibly assume that these measures will always be sufficient.

Neither the United States nor NATO can be counted upon to restrain Erdogan indefinitely if he decides to pursue what I regard as his revanchist ambitions. Israel therefore has to retain the ability and the willingness to eliminate an existential threat before that threat is fully assembled against us.

In the worst-case scenario, Israel could find itself facing Turkey and its Syrian allies in the north while an Egyptian military threat develops along our southern border and an October 7-style offensive erupts from Judea and Samaria against central Israel, involving both terrorist organizations and elements of the Palestinian Authority security forces.

What exactly are we supposed to do under such circumstances?

Adopt a defensive posture, build higher walls and wait for our enemies to strike first?

October 7 should have ended that way of thinking forever.

Israel Needs Victory, Not Threat Management

Unlike figures such as Eisenkot, whose strategic doctrine I believe places far too much faith in deterrence and the management of threats, I believe Israel owes its children something fundamentally different.

We have an obligation to eliminate as many of the threats facing us as quickly and decisively as circumstances permit.

If Israel someday faces a genuinely existential threat that cannot otherwise be stopped, then I believe even the preventive use of nuclear weapons cannot be taken off the table.

That kind of strategic doctrine requires political leaders and a military high command capable of thinking offensively rather than merely managing one crisis until the next one arrives.

Regrettably, I do not believe we have that leadership today.

Israelis should keep that fact in mind when they go to the polls this October.

And when they do, they should also remember this: As bad as Netanyahu has been, I believe Eisenkot would be far, far worse should he be allowed to join or lead the next government.

But ultimately, Israel needs more than a choice between leaders who have embraced different versions of the same failed doctrine.

We need leaders who understand that walls, buffer zones and deterrence can never substitute for victory.

October 7 should have taught us that lesson once and for all.

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