israel has reversed and is changing policies it brought in about 20 years ago and going back to policies it had before that, which means a more aggressive occupation zone surrounding israel in order to better protect it's borders. the first phase was a re-occupation of gaza that is unlikely to end in the near future, and should not end in the near future; the fundamental condition for the occupation to end is that the international community needs to find a way to deradicalize the population in gaza via aggressive education initiatives, which the united nations needs to be doing the day-to-day work on from a legitimately neutral perspective, and not be acting as "free palestine" proxies in regards to. morally speaking, israel cannot be expected to withdraw, otherwise. this is going to be a diplomatic fight that could take a generation to enforce.

gaza cannot be a country and the idea that it can is retarded. it should be annexed by egypt when the conditions allow for it, which could be 50 years from now. for the foreseeable future, it will need to be occupied by israel to prevent further violence.

if they don't like that, they should have thought about it before they carried out the october 7th attack. the consequences need to be deep, longlasting and real to creative a disincentive for further attacks. in the short term, they will need to get used to occupation, and they will need to find a way to change who they are as a culture and as a people if they want to end it. this has to be the end of this barbaric terrorist bullshit; there can be no further tolerance of it.

and, no, gaza is not like afghanistan. the comparison is moronic. afghanistan is a mountainous region with a gigantic surface area that, if laid out flat, would be one of the biggest countries in the world. gaza is an enclosed space that is smaller than most cities. the tunnels will slow the process down, but they have a finite number of exit points that can be mapped and controlled with enough effort. it's a challenge that is surmountable. the challenges present in afghanistan mostly don't exist at all in gaza and to the extent that they do, the comparison requires the acknowledgement of a substantive difference of scale. israel should be able to get hamas under control and pacify gaza at least as well as it has in the west bank.

a policy change is also in process in regards to the west bank that will likely lead to annexation, which has been in process for decades. opposition to this process is properly dated to c. 1995. it cannot be reversed at this point, and i frankly don't think it should be. instead, israel should offer full citizenship rights to the existing inhabitants of the west bank and tell them to take it or leave it. jordan and saudi arabia should absorb the remnant population.

the next phase is lebanon.

tersely, there is a river flowing through southern lebanon. under international law, the lebanese state is not supposed to have militias south of the river, but it has ignored this (and hezbollah has especially ignored it). this region was previously occupied by israel; the iranians moved in to the vacuum when israel withdrew, which was not what was supposed to happen. the region was supposed to remain a dmz. 

if the un won't enforce the dmz and push the iranians out, the israelis are justified in pushing the iranians out themselves by force and occupying the region and that may be in the process of materializing. this is, however, a dangerous activity by israel, and it may result in an all out war between israel and hezbollah. while israel would be morally and legally justified to carry out this operation, it may be strategically foolish. this is in many ways a judgement call, as they need to do something to push the iranians out, and the united nations is of no utility to israel. nor are the iranians rational actors willing to negotiate in good faith.

it was clearly a mistake to withdraw. that doesn't mean reoccupying is the right thing to do, strategically, even if it is the right thing to do legally and morally.

worse, it is an open question, of which the legalities are less clear, if israel intends to occupy areas north of the river. i have previously argued that israel has a convincing, but convoluted, territorial claim to most if not all of lebanon. i would nonetheless advise against doing that, at least right now, if they intend to push to the river at all.

israel's better option is to seek for a political revolution in lebanon, or perhaps even organize a coup. lebanon is 40-45% christian, and the christian areas are the more urban areas. muslim arabs are invaders to lebanon and largely live in the rural areas; the christians are the indigenous canaanites, a sister people to the hebrew jews. if tel aviv can get hezbollah pushed out of power, it may find a much more friendly government in lebanon that doesn't require attacking and may seek to act jointly to eradicate the terrorist group, perhaps with nato help. they may seek to demilitarize the zone south of the river voluntarily, which is the preferred outcome.

israel has a problem here that it needs to deal with, but it is not invincible and it may be in the process of making a mistake that it should think carefully about. israel will probably defeat hezbollah in the end, but it must seek to avoid a pyrrhic outcome.

israel needs an ally in lebanon if it is to do this with seriousness and with serious likelihood of longlasting victory.