The Israel–Hamas war one year on

 

One year into the conflict, IISS experts assess the impact of the war on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories and its regional and international reverberations.

Israel’s tactical ground campaign in Gaza

Shortly after the unprecedented Hamas-led attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 and while Tel Aviv weighed its response, the IISS assessed that Israel would have to either garrison Gaza or reinstate a blockade of it. One year later, Israel has chosen to do both. 

Israel has proceeded methodically, isolating large areas and moving from one to the other. Gaza City came first, Rafah last. As of September 2024, three Israel Defense Forces (IDF) divisions were engaged in Gaza. The 98th (now resubordinated to the Northern Command) conducted raids in Gaza to destroy Hamas units. The 252nd currently holds the Netzarim Corridor, and the 162nd secures Rafah and the Philadelphi Corridor. In pursuit of Israel’s strategic goal to eliminate Hamas, the IDF appears intent on controlling these two corridors and presenting a continuous threat of destructive raids. Israeli control of the corridors threatens Hamas’s continuing existence as an effective military force and Gaza’s governing body, and will thus strengthen Israel’s negotiating position.

Despite war, continuity in Palestinian politics

Despite the human cost and the scale of the destruction in Gaza, intra-Palestinian politics has remained largely unchanged in the past year. In July, the main Palestinian factions met in Beijing for talks to forge national unity and agree on post-war governance of Gaza. Their final declaration signalled Hamas’s willingness to compromise with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Hamas, then led by Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in an Israeli strike soon after, agreed to accept the two-state solution it had previously opposed and to form a unity government with 13 other Palestinian factions to resume peace negotiations with Israel. However, the deal does not outline any steps to break Fatah’s control over the Palestinian Authority (PA), except for holding general national elections. Moreover, the implementation of the agreement will face three issues. Firstly, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s new hardline leader, has a different agenda to Haniyeh, a relative pragmatist. Secondly, the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza makes it impossible to hold elections without Israel’s approval, which in any case is highly unlikely at present. Thirdly, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas lacks commitment to cede authority to others.

In the West Bank, the reputation of the PA is in tatters because of its inability to stop mounting Israeli military and settler violence. A total of 6,277 confrontations between the IDF and Palestinians, and 1,334 incidents of settler violence, were recorded in the first six months of 2024. Israeli forces and settlers have killed 158 children and the IDF has conducted raids against Palestinian factions in several West Bank cities. Nevertheless, the PA remains the most convenient and legitimate vehicle for post-war governance scenarios, and the only one that Arab and Western states are willing to invest in.

Israel’s increasing war costs

Israel’s current war is its longest and most complex since its creation in 1948. This has come at a significant economic cost. 

The costs of Israel’s campaign in Gaza have steadily increased over time, with the Bank of Israel (BofI) revising its estimate of the direct costs of the war over the 2023–25 period from USD54 billion in November 2023 to USD69bn in May 2024. In January, the BofI governor, Amir Yaron, put these costs at 10.0% of GDP, with an additional 2.0% of GDP in lost revenue. Over time, he estimated that increased defence spending combined with higher costs of debt and the ‘revitalisation’ of the south would cost a further 1.0% of GDP. Israel’s war costs include large increases in defence spending, compensation for direct and indirect damage, civilian expenses including state-backed loan schemes to support households, businesses and reservists, interest on debt and loss of government revenue.

Hizbullah’s rout leaves Lebanon uncertain

Hizbullah was not involved in the 7 October attacks. It joined the fight out of solidarity with Hamas, hoping for a short war and a political success earned by standing with the Palestinians. Hizbullah linked its rocket-firing to an explicit goal of forcing Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza before implementing one in Lebanon. In doing so, Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah’s late leader, deeply misread Israel’s mood and risk appetite post-7 October. By establishing a linkage between the conflict in Lebanon and a ceasefire in Gaza that he expected, but which never came, he effectively cornered himself. He also discovered that Iran was not willing to stay the course or up the ante because it could not risk a slide toward a direct confrontation with the US.

This was not the war Nasrallah wanted, nor was it one Hizbullah was designed to fight. The group was supposed to be a strategic force to deter Israel and to mentor other Iranian-backed militias in the region. Its warfighting concept in Lebanon and Israel assumed a rapid and violent conflict that started with a massive exchange of missiles, rockets and drones to overwhelm Israeli air defences, followed by intense ground operations. Its displays of technological prowess, such as the flight of a drone over the port of Haifa and other critical facilities, gave a taste of what the movement hoped to achieve. The goal was to stun Israel’s society, which Nasrallah described as weaker than a spider’s web, and force a climbdown that would have inevitably been interpreted as a success.

The Houthis: a new regional actor in the Red Sea

Prior to the Hamas-led 7 October attacks against Israel, Ansarullah (also known as the Houthis) in Yemen was at most peripheral to Israeli and Western security considerations, despite belonging to Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’. With the Houthis’ sights set on the consolidation of power within Yemen, the group was primarily seen as a national, rather than a regional actor, and did not present a military threat to Western interests.

The Houthis’ declaration of war on Israel in late October 2023, ostensibly in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, therefore came as a surprise to many. The Houthis have since launched more than 220 aerial attacks on Israel using missiles and uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs), most of which the latter’s air defences intercepted. More successful, at least politically, were Houthi attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, beginning in November 2023. Using a combination of ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as UAVs, uninhabited surface vehicles, and skiffs carrying armed men, the Houthis have carried out more than 300 attacks on merchant ships allegedly linked to Israel and its Western allies. While most attacks either missed their target or did little damage, the Houthis successfully captured one ship and sank two more in a campaign during which four sailors lost their lives. Despite the deployment of several international naval missions to the region, most major shipping lines have rerouted their vessels around the Cape of Good Hope. The economic impact of the Houthi campaign is felt most acutely in Egypt – where revenue from Suez Canal shipping has halved compared to the first quarter of 2023 – and in Israel, because of the reduction of port calls in Eilat, as well as other Red Sea ports.

Israel dominates the air domain

Fabian Hinz

Israel has maintained near-total air superiority over its regional adversaries, leveraging this advantage in both full-scale aerial campaigns and more limited escalations. In Gaza and Lebanon, Israel’s massive use of air power has consistently degraded the military capabilities of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah, while minimising the exposure of Israeli ground forces. Coupled with advanced intelligence gathering, Israel has demonstrated its ability to use precision strikes to neutralise high-value targets, including high-ranking adversary commanders and key capabilities. Despite this, its aerial campaign in Gaza has caused extensive collateral damage and resulted in high civilian casualty numbers, generating criticism of its targeting procedures by legal experts and international non-governmental organisations.

Against Iran and the Houthis, Israel has eschewed large-scale operations in favour of surgical and symbolic strikes. Israel’s strategy of calibrated, tit-for-tat escalation signals its ability and willingness to strike back without provoking a full-scale conflict. 

Iran’s proxy challenges

The past year has been tumultuous for Iran. Despite receiving no forewarning of Hamas’s 7 October attacks, the regime found itself drawn into a wider conflict with Israel, struggling to align its risk appetite with the need to respond to escalating Israeli attacks. It has paid a heavy price, with the IDF systematically eliminating several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hamas and Hizbullah leaders. As a result, its credibility in the eyes of its rivals and – more importantly – its regional partners has suffered.

In response to a lethal attack on senior members of the IRGC leadership in Iranian diplomatic premises in Damascus, Tehran launched on 13–14 April an unprecedented large-scale missile and UAV attack on Israel. Israel’s air defences, bolstered by its allies, held, and the damage was minimal. Iran was keen to stress it was retaliation, not a new level of conflict. Another key moment was the dramatic assassination by the Israelis of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in an IRGC facility in Tehran. Despite the outrage expressed by the leadership, Tehran’s retaliation was even more muted. But on 1 October Iran launched an attack similar to the one in April on Israel in response to Israel’s campaign against Hizbullah, taking tensions to a new height on the eve of the anniversary of the 7 October attacks.

The Arab Gulf States’ stances on the war

Qatar’s longstanding relations with Hamas and Israel have allowed it to play a mediating role in the conflict along with Egypt and the US. As the prospect of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza has remained elusive, Qatar has expressed its frustration with the warring parties’ unyielding stances and Netanyahu’s calls for pressure to be applied on Doha to help bring Hamas to yield, warning it was reconsidering its role as a mediator. The other Arab Gulf states have remained on the margins of the conflict, lending their support to Egypt and Jordan against proposed Israeli war plans.

The Arab Gulf states have remained neutral in the confrontation between Israel and the Iran-led Axis of Resistance. They have adopted a defensive posture, intercepting Houthi missiles and drones that violated their airspace and facilitating US-led efforts to intercept Iran’s drone and missile attacks against Israel in April 2024. With the exception of Bahrain, however, they have avoided sending offensive signals to Iran by staying out of US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea and Operation Poseidon Archer against the Houthis in Yemen, and restricting the United States’ use of their territories to launch attacks against Iran. Not only have the 2020 Abraham Accords signed by the UAE and Bahrain held, but the other Arab Gulf states’ de-escalation with Iran has also endured. Even Bahrain, typically the most hawkish of the Arab Gulf states on Iran, aims to improve relations with Tehran.

Note : Many events are missing in this research analysis, idea is to track political movements & decoding regional political diplomacy.