By: Yitzhak Klein
Nearly two years of fighting since the outbreak of the War of Redemption (Swords of Iron) have yielded political and military results that are far from satisfactory on Israel’s border fronts – Lebanon and Gaza. In Lebanon, despite the the Israeli Air Force (IAF) hammering of Hezbollah, the organization still maintains a ground military force of sufficient strength to deter the Lebanese state from disarming it, and is working to rebuild its strength. And after two years of fighting in Gaza, Israel was compelled to accept an agreement that, while releasing the hostages, will in all likelihood prevent the realization of two other war objectives – the destruction of Hamas’s military power and the prevention of its return to a governing position in Gaza.
“War,” writes Clausewitz, “is the use of force to compel the enemy to accept our will.” War cannot fulfill this purpose if the army is incapable of stripping its enemies of the military power with which they resist our objectives. The experience of the recent war shows that the IDF’s ground forces are unfamiliar with the doctrine (or art) of operational maneuver – a domain in which the IDF previously excelled.[1] As a result, the IDF failed to destroy the bulk of its enemies’ ground forces. This denied Israel the possibility of achieving the war’s principal strategic objectives, as well as its most important political goals. Fighting cannot serve policy if the fighting force does not know its profession, and is incapable of producing commensurate strategic-military achievements.
The purpose of this essay is not to expound on the entire theory of operational maneuver, but to focus on the relationship between operational maneuver[2] and achieving political-strategic goals.
The following six principles are the most relevant to the Israeli case:
- The military goal is to destroy enemy forces anywhere they are set up or attempting to reach. Any enemy force left will serve to thwart our objectives. If the balance of power excludes total annihilation, maximum destruction should be pursued.
- Ground forces, equipped to physically reach enemy positions and clear them, are the primary medium with which to achieve annihilation. Other branches can assist the mission but not complete it.
- Capture the territory an enemy is in. Holding the territory an enemy is using or dependent on forces it to fight and possibly get defeated. Annihilating an enemy is usually impossible without first capturing the territory it chose to base itself in.[3]
- Time is of the essence! Anything a military force does must be carried out in the shortest time possible. Wasted time or a slow pace give an enemy room to react, regroup and perhaps even preemptively strike. The time in which war objectives must be achieved is a finite resource on multiple levels – social, military and diplomatic.
- A crucial component of operational maneuver is striving to surprise an enemy and attack it in unexpected ways. An operational maneuver therefore necessitates initiative, flexibility and a readiness to make decisions under time pressure and accept calculated risks. Commanders and soldiers must therefore develop these skills and train in their use; writing them down in guides and manuals is not enough.[4]
- Removing the civilian population from the battle-field during fighting – in the words of Mao Zedong in his book “On Guerrilla Warfare”, the civilian population is the sea in which enemy forces swim. There is a military necessity to remove the population to areas outside the battle zones, while creating a security zone empty of both enemy forces and a hostile population.
These principles are the key to destroying an enemy force and creating a safe zone for our forces after fighting. We cannot except any enduring political or strategic achievements without destroying enemy forces.
The Failures of Israeli Ground Forces in the War
Lebanon
The campaign in Lebanon began with Israel’s pager attack on September 17–18, 2024, during which thousands of key figures within Hezbollah’s ranks were killed or disabled. Within a matter of days, the IAF destroyed a significant portion of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal; the entire senior command structure of the Radwan invasion force; and even the organization’s political leadership. The strategic threat posed by Hezbollah’s missiles to the Israeli home-front was eliminated.
The ground fighting, by contrast, proceeded at a terrible pace. The ground offensive did not begin until September 30 – nearly two weeks after the pager operation, and approximately ten days after the decapitation of the Radwan force’s command. Ground forces operated mostly within five kilometers of the international border, despite the fact that the bulk of Hezbollah’s ground force was stationed north of that zone, both to the north and south of the Litani River.[5] The terrorist organization continued to rain down missiles and drones on Israeli communities without any interference from IDF ground forces, which were operating only a few kilometers away.
In a paper published at the end of September 2024 – which had almost certainly been brought to the attention of the IDF’s senior command even before its publication – INSS authors Guy Hazut and Ofer Shelah recommended limiting the IDF’s ground activity in Lebanon to the area close to the border.[6] Their argument was that the IDF was worn down from a year of fighting, in which it had sustained heavy casualties, and that it lacked the combat means necessary for a broader mission.[7] On the other hand, they noted that the IDF had thoroughly rehearsed the mission of penetrating deep into Lebanon and eliminating the bulk of Hezbollah’s forces.[8]
In early spring 2024, this author participated in a tour of the Lebanese border alongside a group of national security experts, where it became clear that the IDF had deployed a very substantial ground force along the Lebanese border, trained – as Hazut and Shelah also attested – for the mission of penetrating deep into Lebanon. This force had not fought previously or been worn down in the fighting in Gaza, though it did include reservists who had served on that front for an extended period. Had this force been prepared to act offensively with short warning and great speed – not at the end of September, but within seventy-two hours of the pager strike and in parallel with the elimination of Hezbollah’s senior command – it is possible it could have successfully carried out the mission of destroying the bulk of Hezbollah’s force south of Beirut. But the ground forces were not mentally prepared for this, and more critically – their commanders were not ready.
In Lebanon, the IDF conducted two separate and disconnected military campaigns: on the one hand, a brilliant offensive by the intelligence and air force branches; on the other, a limited and uninspired ground offensive in the few kilometers near the border. The two campaigns were never unified into a combined strategic operation. As a result, the IDF lost the opportunity to exploit the intelligence and air forces’ brilliant opening performance in order to destroy the entirety of Hezbollah’s ground defense array, seize the territory on which its forces were based, and achieve a decisive victory. The opportunities opened by the campaign’s brilliant first strike were squandered. Israel hoped that the blows it had dealt Hezbollah would create an opening for the Lebanese government to disarm the organization, but since the core of the terrorist organization’s ground force remained intact, this hope is not expected to be realized.
Gaza
In Gaza, two years of war do not seem to have brought the IDF any closer to destroying Hamas’ fighting forces than it was in October 2023. Up until January 2025, it was possible to attribute the IDF’s failure to win a decisive victory to the Biden administration’s restrictions, but this excuse no longer applies.
The key to victory over Hamas was to separate the terrorist organization from the logistical “oxygen” that enabled it to function and impose its terror on the unarmed population of Gaza. Yet throughout the fighting, the IDF made no attempt to sever Hamas from its supply sources. To accomplish this, the IDF would have needed to concentrate the civilian population in protected areas isolated from Hamas fighters, so that the humanitarian aid distributed to the former would not reach the latter. Secondly, the IDF would have had to adopt the third operational principle mentioned above; namely, to remove Hamas gradually and permanently from every area of Gaza, both from the zones where non-combatants were concentrated and all other areas, until the organization had no sanctuary remaining above ground or below.
The IDF’s failure to grasp the importance of concluding military operations swiftly was clearly evident in the fighting in Gaza. An operation that could have been completed within three to six months had it been conducted properly is still ongoing today, two years after October 7. The IDF refused until only recently to take responsibility for managing the aid distribution to the civilian population. Instead, it was the IDF itself that confined its presence to defined areas within the Gaza Strip, venturing out to conduct raids against Hamas concentrations. Naturally, Hamas returned to occupy every area the IDF vacated, forcing the IDF to fight – and take casualties – in those same areas, over and over and over again. Israel’s political leaders spoke extensively about destroying Hamas as a governing entity, but the IDF never attempted to realize this objective. Various leadership figures were eliminated at different points in time, but without occupying the entirety of Gaza and dismantling all of Hamas’s systems within it, the goal articulated by the political echelon could not be achieved.
The fighting that dragged on in Gaza without achieving the strategic goals set by the political leadership gradually and severely eroded international support of Israel’s efforts in Gaza. This battle may yet end with an Israeli defeat – in other words, with Hamas remaining in one form or another in the Strip, capable of returning to power while Israel is unable to block its rearmament. The reason for this is not that the IDF field units are incapable; the weaponry lacking; or the commanders unskilled, but that the highest echelons have failed to properly administer the battle, wasting the necessary diplomatic oxygen to continue fighting until victory.
As of this writing, these deficiencies in IDF training and field operations have not been amended. Doing so is a critical national mission, especially in light of the growing threat of an attack from Egypt.[9] To defend against such an attack – which, should it occur, would be carried out by a well-armed and well-trained conventional army – urgent action must be taken to establish a ground army that is both large enough and properly trained in the doctrine of operational maneuver.
Dr. Klein is a Senior Fellow at Kohelet Policy Forum.
[1] Among the sources that addressed this subject in the past, written mostly before the war broke out, are Yair Ansbacher, Awakening The Lion: Fixing the Modern Israeli Way of War (2023); Guy Hazut, The Hi-Tech Army and the Cavalry Army [Hebrew](2024) (Addressing the neglect of ground army training and equipment); Naveh Dromi Flowers in the Gun Barrel [Hebrew] (2022) especially the first chapter; and many of Dr. Hanan Shai’s essays, available on his website [Hebrew] or here. Recently, Ran Baratz published a critical review of the IDF’s combat methods “What’s Wrong with the Postmodern Military?” in Mosaic, Tikvah Ideas (2025) (Hebrew edition: “The Doctrinal Failure in Israel’s Security – Small and Clever,” Ha’Shiloach journal 41, 51 (2025)).
[2] The best way to learn more about modern-era methods of operational maneuvers is to study the history of operations led by William T. Sherman, Heinz Guderian, Georgy Zhukov, William Slim, and Douglas MacArthur; and for defense – Robert E. Lee and Walter Model.
[3] This doesn’t necessarily mean that the main campaign should be conducted over that territory, but rather that it should be designated as a strategic objective the operational maneuver is intended to seize.
[4] This point and the preceding one attempt to summarize Colonel John Boyd’s insight of the OODA loop. The loop is often presented as a simplistic four-stage cycle: Observe–Orient–Decide–Act, which one should strive to complete in the shortest time possible, or at least faster than the enemy. All of this is true, but incomplete. The critical factor is precision, and a depth of situational understanding at the orientation stage: one’s grasp of the strategic situation must be superior to that of the enemy. The best results of the “Boyd process” are achieved when one side brings to the battlefield an operational conceptualization that the other side has not yet attained. Examples of this include the German Blitzkrieg in 1940, when the French army was still mired in the battlefield concepts of 1917, or Mao Zedong’s doctrine of guerrilla warfare. Good sources on John Boyd’s theory are Frans P.B. Osinga, Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd (2007); Grant T. Hammond, The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security (2001).
[5] Reported to the author by attendees of a briefing held for reserve commanders prior to the ground invasion of Lebanon 30.9.2024.
[6] Guy Hazut, Ofer Shelah, “The IDF Ground Operation in Lebanon — Goals, Alternatives and Consequences”, Policy Paper INSS (2024) https://www.inss.org.il/publication/ground-maneuver/ .
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] James Genn, “Egypt’s Sisi refers to Israel as ‘enemy’ for first time since before 1977 Sadat visit to Jerusalem”, The Jerusalem Post, 18.9.2025 https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-867891 ; Barak Ravid, ” Netanyahu asked U.S. to press Egypt on military build up in Sinai”, Axios, 20.9.2025 https://www.axios.com/2025/09/20/egypt-military-build-up-sinai-israel-us ; Ariel Kahana ” US stops Egypt oversight, Israeli official: ‘Serious breach of peace treaty'”, Israel Hayom 14.7.2025 https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/07/14/us-stops-egypt-oversight-israeli-official-serious-breach-of-peace-treaty/ – these are but three examples of many articles on the issue.
