Despite significant differences in Israeli policy toward the arenas of Gaza, southern Lebanon, and southern Syria, there is a common line of logic unifying Israel’s action steps in all these arenas: denial of enemy capabilities and prevention of military buildup, to ensure that there will never be an organized terrorist army capable of mass invasion into Israeli territory, alongside massive rocket fire.
In recent months, Israel has chosen to apply three different models to the above three arenas. In Gaza, where the IDF already maintains a security perimeter about a kilometer deep along the entire border with the Strip – an area with virtually no structures – and where the IDF has prohibited any Gazan from entering, it appears that Israel has chosen a path of gradual return to direct territorial security control.
Territorial occupation, dismantling of enemy mechanisms and infrastructures (the military and governance arms of Hamas), and the de facto establishment of a temporary military government appear to be realistic objectives for Israel in Gaza.
As of this writing, the IDF’s ground presence in the south, center, and north of the Strip is gradually expanding, with possible temporary pauses in military activity to examine whether a new hostage deal with Hamas is achievable.
The Israeli government has also officially cooperated with the call by U.S. President Donald Trump to allow voluntary emigration of Gazans. On March 30, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced the appointment of Deputy Director General of the Defense Ministry, Col. (res.) Yaakov Blitshtein, as head of the Directorate for Voluntary Departure of Gaza Residents.
According to the Defense Ministry’s statement: “The Directorate will act, among other things, to prepare and enable the safe and controlled departure of Gaza residents for voluntary emigration to third countries, including securing their transit, establishing a transit route and inspection for pedestrians at designated crossings in the Gaza Strip, as well as coordinating the setup of infrastructure to allow passage by land, sea, and air to the destination countries.”
It is unclear what percentage of Gazans will ultimately choose to emigrate, but Israeli determination to assume security control and operational freedom across the Strip is evident. Israeli control over humanitarian aid, to prevent Hamas from seizing it for its own use – a factor that allowed the Hamas regime to survive thus far – also appears to be on the table.
In Lebanon, Israel is currently opting for a very different model: standoff aerial and artillery strikes on Hezbollah targets, aiming to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its infrastructure. This is paired with limited ground presence close to the border, in the form of five military outposts spread across the sector.
In Syria, Israel maintains a ground presence in the form of nine outposts in the buffer zone, selective presence beyond the buffer zone via raids, and it conducts aerial strikes across Syrian territory to prevent the former Assad regime’s capabilities from falling into the hands of Sunni jihadist elements aligned with the new regime, while cultivating an alliance with the Druze population in the south of the country.
What all three arenas share is the principle of capability denial: no more ‘conflict management,’ no more ‘mutual deterrence,’ and no more ‘containment,’ but rather consistent, systematic firepower operations to prevent enemy reconstruction, buildup, and reorganization. The differences relate primarily to the nature of the enemy, size of territory, character of the population, level of sovereignty in the area in question, and the connection to foreign countries. All these, along with the fact that the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust came from Gaza, have led the Israeli government to prioritize Gaza in terms of military resources and to continue extensive ground maneuvering there.
In all arenas, Israel acts to prevent the rehabilitation of forces with extremist ideology, based on the understanding that the concept of ‘deterrence’ does not exist for them. There is no certainty that deterrence will be accepted by them in the future, and no certainty that Israel would even be able to understand their intentions.
The failure of Israel’s defense establishment and intelligence community on October 7, 2023, led Israeli military and political leaders to rethink threat prevention from the roots, committing to the wide-scale elimination of enemy operational capabilities near the border – as reflected in the conclusions of recently completed IDF investigations.
The Gaza Strip is the exceptional arena. Israel has chosen to uproot the Hamas regime as well – a decision manifest since February 21 in a series of aerial strikes targeting Hamas’s political leadership, as part of a concept that all Hamas infrastructures must be dismantled. Elimination of Hamas’s civil-administrative leadership and its internal forces is being carried out alongside attacks on known military targets. Blocking humanitarian aid trucks is part of the dismantling of the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip.
Lebanon, by contrast, represents the other end of the spectrum. Israel is waging a campaign of aerial strikes there – precise, frequent, but with very little presence on the ground as of this writing.
Hezbollah, which before the war led the Iranian axis in the region, remains quiet and does not respond to a series of eliminations and bombings against its targets – including two in Dahiya, Beirut in recent days. On March 28, a building linked to Hezbollah’s Unit 127 (the aerial unit) was struck in response to rocket fire on Kiryat Shmona (Hezbollah denied involvement in that incident), and on April 1, a senior Hezbollah operative from Unit 3900, responsible for planning attacks against Israeli civilians in cooperation with Hamas, was eliminated.
The situation in Lebanon prior to October 7, 2023 – in which Israel hesitated to uproot Hezbollah’s offensive capabilities and even hesitated to do less than that (see the case of Hezbollah tents crossing the Blue Line in the Mount Dov area) in places like southern Lebanon and Beirut – no longer exists. While the IDF’s military presence on the Lebanese border remains limited, it is significant, as it constitutes a narrow security strip and an immediate response to the threat of a broad invasion into the Galilee.
Will Israel reach the point where it must carry out ground raids in southern Lebanon, similar to those it executes in Area A of Judea and Samaria or in southern Syria? Over time, the answer may be yes.
The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) are currently struggling to enforce the ceasefire agreement, which obligates Hezbollah to stay away of all areas south fo the Litani River. The UNIFIL international force is entirely powerless and ineffective in assisting enforcement of Resolution 1701, just as it was before the war.
If this mission fails, Israel will likely need to apply the ‘repeated raids’ model as it does in Judea and Samaria and Syria. However, Israel likely will not occupy territory or expand its control into a security zone as it did in the 1980s and 1990s. It will prefer to focus large-scale ground efforts on Gaza, where there is no sovereign state, and the territory is much smaller than in Lebanon. Simultaneously, Israel prefers to give the Lebanese sovereign state and new government a chance to generate and develop internal pressure on Hezbollah.
Southern Syria represents a third model. Following the collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024 and the rise of the new regime led by Ahmad al-Sharaa, Israel began a mixed policy: a combination of intensive aerial activity, ground presence at nine outposts on the Syrian side of the demilitarized zone, selective raids, and building ties with local actors.
A March 2025 report by the Alma Center.
it was noted that “at this stage there is no responsible party on the Syrian side acting to maintain security in the border area with Israel.” Consequently, Israel established nine outposts in southern Syria and is simultaneously working to locate and destroy weaponry and military equipment from the former regime before it reaches hostile elements.
“Israel is not acting to destabilize or weaken the new Syrian regime, but is closely monitoring developments and maintaining ties with the Druze community in southern Syria. In February 2025, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel would protect Druze civilians in Syria from any threat, and in that month Defense Minister Israel Katz reiterated this commitment in several public statements,” the report said.
The aid includes delivery of humanitarian assistance and even a first visit to Israel by around 100 Druze religious leaders from Syria. It appears this is an attempt to build a strategic alliance, under which – in exchange for physical protection and economic opportunities for Syria’s Druze – Israel will gain a population that helps repel encroaching Islamist extremist elements, some of whom operate with Turkish backing.
Will the Druze of southern Syria become like the Christians of southern Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s – an allied population supported by Israel against a common enemy? Is the current situation in the three arenas permanent or temporary?
There are no definitive answers to these questions yet. But one thing is clear: Israel no longer operates according to the outdated and irrelevant principle of ‘deterrence.’ In each arena, it acts to eliminate the foundation of enemy capability – directly, continuously, and daily.
In Gaza – total dismantling of Hamas sovereignty and restoration of Israeli security control.
In Lebanon – continuous denial of Hezbollah’s rebuilding, while so far avoiding territorial occupation in southern Lebanon, but with a real option for future ground raids.
In Syria – action on Syrian soil, while building cooperation with threatened minorities.
These are not contradictory approaches – but three versions of the same strategic goal: eliminating the enemy’s ability to operate and invade Israel, as a direct lesson from the 7.10.23 disaster.
The main lesson from October 7 has translated into the following directive: no more strategic neglect of seemingly quiet borders. No more preservation of the ‘status quo.’ What matters is the enemy’s ability to build itself – and that must be uprooted in advance, in every arena, and by varying means.
