Israel Needs to Leverage its Military Success  

In a private discussion earlier this week I raised the point that Israel (and by association the US as well) is making a mistake in not capitalizing on our military success by converting it into lasting diplomatic changes as well.

Our government and military, assisted by support from the US, has been able over the last 18 months to eliminate the offensive capabilities of Hezbollah in Lebanon, shut down the defensive capabilities of Iran while simultaneously degrading their nuclear program and setup the proclivities for the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.  No one here would have predicted any of this on October 6^th 2023 and certainly not on the 8^th either.

Yet, recently Knesset Member Avigdor Lieberman said that we need to prepare for war with Iran again in three years or so. Why would he believe that?

One reason is to say simply that this is just how we are destined to live in this region, constantly preparing for the next war with our neighbors. 77 years of history provides a pretty supporting argument for that position, to be sure. But it is not very empowering to adopt that stance.

The truth is that not since June of 1967 has Israel been in as strong a position to change that historical narrative as we are right now. Lebanon, Syria and Iran are all in the weakest position they have been in for years, all because of our actions over the last twenty months. So, we can take the win, as it were, but it we don’t leverage that diplomatically to actually make some sort of peace with these countries Lieberman will be right, we will be at war again in three years.

But it is not only in the diplomatic arena where we need to capitalize on the military success.

Speaking at Calcalist (an Israeli high tech on line publication) and Bank Leumi’s National Economic Conference recently, Hanan Friedman, CEO of Bank Leumi said: “If we fail to translate this security advantage into systematic investment in technology, education, and civilian innovation, we risk wasting this momentum.”

He continued: “Israel is at the beginning of a period with the potential for significant change. We are just a few weeks after the successful operation in Iran. The ongoing war, which began with the events of October 7, and even earlier during the Coronavirus crisis, have taught the Israeli economy a lesson or two in crisis management. There is no doubt that in times like these, experience in managing under uncertainty, resilience, and the ability to adapt have proven themselves invaluable.”

He challenged the government not to depend solely on the business community to address this challenge. Rather that the political echelon needs to invest more in building a growth-supportive environment that enables economic success resulting from the removal of multi-sector threats that have weighed on long-term growth in recent years.

The challenge before us as a country is for our leadership to seize the moment and mount a multi-pronged attack to accomplish the following (permit me to dream):

• Formalize a peace agreement with Lebanon and don’t depend totally on the US Ambassador to Turkey, Thomas Barrack, to represent us. He, as directed by President Trump, is the official US emissary to the Lebanese government on issues relating to how they view Israel. While I have no doubt his intentions are admirable, why isn’t there an Israeli representative in Beirut with him during these discussions? We should insist on that as it is our future that is being discussed. It is time to stop acquiescing to our absence at discussions that will govern our future.
• Similarly with Iran. Yes, we know that the attitude of the Islamic religious leadership there is that it is a sin for us to be here and we need to be removed from the region in any way possible. But I would be willing to bet that the political leadership understands the realpolitik of the situation, knows that we are not going anywhere, knows that we vanquished their military both in Iran as well as those of their proxies, and they would welcome an opportunity to live normal lives. We should take a public position that we desire peace with the Iranians and are ready to travel to Tehran for face-to-face discussions of the issue and, once again, not wait for third parties to handle this for us.
• As for Syria, frankly, we seem to be handling that one a bit better than the other two. With the Syrians there is real benefit to them to make peace with Israel and cooperate with us so they can recover from the years of ruinous Assad leadership. We know how to make that happen and we should do so, again with direct talks.

Note that Contrary to the position taken by President Trump after the successful bombing of Iran, we do need agreements else there is no clarity as to the next steps.

That leaves Hamas, the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria and the Houthis of course, all of whom present their own challenges. I’ve written enough in the last two weeks about the need to end the war in Gaza and get all of the hostages home immediately so my position is clear on that. Yet I also believe if we were to move dramatically as detailed above, these other issues would become easier to solve as well.

Sadly, I am not sure we have the right people in the right places politically to set all of this in motion. I am also not sure our political leadership is willing to look beyond the people sitting around them to find the best and the brightest to do this work.  Nevertheless, I am sure that we have the talent in this country to do so if we are willing to make the right choice of professionals to do this without regard for their political history.

We talk often about the existential threat to our survival. For sure armed militants on our borders with the capability to fire ballistic missiles at us is an existential threat. But truth be told, not successfully leveraging what has been accomplished over the last 20 months by creating permanent alliances may be an even bigger existential threat because our people here want to be able to see, an deserve, some benefits from what we just went through over and above the simple fact of our physical survival.

“Although the business sector drove the economy forward during the crisis, the country cannot afford to keep faltering. A real partnership between the government and the private sector is essential to secure a strong economic future, otherwise, the potential will be lost and opportunities will slip away.”