Israel Has No Good Options
Georgetown University professor Daniel Byman, one of the world’s leading researchers on terrorism, counterterrorism, and Israel’s military, joins to discuss the failings of Israel’s current strategy
Two things seem true: First, Israel has a profound moral right to defend itself from terrorism. Second, its current strategy could kill thousands of civilians, destroy its international reputation, breed even more terrorist cells, and obliterate any chance for peace in our lifetime. Is it possible to keep both ideas in our head? Today’s guest is Georgetown University professor Daniel Byman, one of the world’s leading researchers on terrorism, counterterrorism, and Israel’s military.
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In the following excerpt, Derek speaks with Daniel Byman about which parts of the Israel-Hamas conflict he anticipated and what Israel’s strategy appears to be.
Derek Thompson: Before we talk about what Israel should do right now and what it may do in the next few days and weeks, I want to get your reaction to this moment. In February this year, you wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs journal, and the title and subtitle of that essay was: “The Third Intifada? Why the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Might Boil Over Again.” This was just in February this year.
In the article itself, you mentioned that Israel and Hamas are in a tentative truce. Those are your words, and I think that’s a term that a lot of people might’ve used to describe relations between Israel and Hamas and the Gaza Strip. How did you see something like this coming, and are you surprised by the fact that indeed it was Hamas that succeeded in carrying out this terrorist attack after this period of, as you called it, tentative truce?
Daniel Byman: I would say I got it half right and half wrong. So let me start with where I feel my work was accurate, which was: There were a lot of signs that Israeli-Palestinian relations were getting significantly worse and only headed in the wrong direction. You had the election of a much more right-wing Israeli government. Even before then, you had growing violence on the West Bank. 2021 was a bad year. 2022 was worse. And 2023, even before the October 7 attack, looked even more dangerous. You also had increased harassment of Palestinians by settlers and, in general, a sense among Palestinians that this government was never going to be serious about advancing Palestinian claims to nationhood or independence. So a sense of despair and growing violence.
Where I got it wrong was: I thought Hamas might do some limited attacks. I thought we might see a return to some of the, I’ll say, small-scale rocket attacks we’ve seen in the past. I did not anticipate the large-scale operation Hamas launched, both in terms of rockets and missiles, but especially smashing through the security barrier and killing 1,400 Israelis, kidnapping and bringing back to Gaza well over 200. So I was focused more on the West Bank, and while I did see that there was tension and problems with Hamas, I didn’t anticipate the scale or scope of Hamas’s operations.
Thompson: I’m going to talk to you about Israel’s strategy and the degree to which its strategy is feasible. I think it’s probably best to begin by defining what we understand that strategy to be. To the best of your understanding, what do you think Israel is trying to accomplish with both its air attack [Monday] and over the last few weeks and its forthcoming ground invasion of Gaza?
Byman: So Israeli leaders have said they want to destroy Hamas, and they use different words and phrases, but you hear the word “destroy” a lot. I think, however, that they know that that’s beyond their reach, at least in a fundamental sense. Hamas is deeply rooted in Gaza. In addition to effectively having been the government of Gaza since seizing power there in 2007, it also has extensive networks through educational institutions, through mosques, through charities. So even if Israel were to kill 50 percent, 75 percent of Hamas leaders, Hamas has a very deep presence, and it’d be very hard to eliminate the group.
So I think a more realistic goal for Israel would be to hit the Hamas leadership hard and to shake its hold on power in Gaza. And military operations are designed in part to kill Hamas leaders, but they’re also designed in part to try to make Hamas come and fight and make Hamas vulnerable and to discredit Hamas.
One of the Israeli goals in past military operations was to say to Palestinians in general, “Look, if you use violence”—and we’re talking far more limited violence than what we saw on October 7—“the Palestinians will pay a heavy price, and therefore don’t.” To restore that form of deterrence is an Israeli goal, and that’s going to be exceptionally difficult given the scale of the Hamas attack.
In the past, Israel has usually afflicted somewhere between 10 times to 100 times as many casualties on Palestinians as it [has] suffered itself. And if you say there are 1,400 Israelis dead, you do the math; those are very big numbers.
This excerpt was edited for clarity. Listen to the rest of the episode here and follow the Plain English feed on Spotify.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Daniel Byman
Producer: Devon Manze
Subscribe: Spotify
