The Earthquake

Part 3 of A Research Visit to Israel

(Image: @IDFOnline at Twitter / X)

Israel only sees its own pain. It does not see the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Quote from discussion.

From 11 to 19 December 2023, I visited Israel with colleagues from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. Over the week, we were able to speak to a wide range of serving and retired senior military, intelligence and government officials, journalists, think tank personnel and Israeli citizens. Discussions were conducted on background. As with the previous two parts of this series, I do not identify individuals in this report.

This is the third and final part of my observations from the visit. Part 1 examined the lead up to 7 October, and Part 2 explored the day of 7 October. 

As I made clear at the beginning of both previous parts of this series, two key issues should be noted. First, we were unable to visit Gaza and did not hold discussions with Palestinians. This is important to understand because it means we were exposed to one side of the story. That said, the Israeli story is very important to understand. Second, the observations here are mine, and mine alone. I expect there will be aspects where I lack context or background on certain issues.

Today’s final part of this series is an examination of the many issues which have resulted from the Hamas attacks conducted on 7 October. In many respects, what has occurred since then, and will continue to occur for some time to come, represent the aftershocks of a tremendous earthquake in Middle East affairs.

This is a longer piece than the previous two parts in this series. For that I apologize. But there are many aspects of Middle East, and indeed global, security affairs that are impacted by the events of 7 October.  I can’t possibly hope to cover them all, but I hope this article provides some insights into the post-7 October Middle East security environment. The following subjects are covered:

• The Earthquake in Middle East Security.

• The Existential Threat to Israel.

• Strategy.

• Strategic Empathy.

• Civil-Military Relations.

• Strategic Influence.

• Deterrence.

• The Long War.

• Military Issues.

Each of these topics by themselves are likely to be the subject of extensive investigation from this point forwar. My observations below represent only very early insights into these subjects.