Israel has inflicted catastrophic damage on Hamas. Yet the war’s larger effect may be the opposite of victory: a more fearful, more exposed Jewish diaspora and a weakened strategic position for Israel.
Israel is not just another state at war. It is the Jewish state, and its strategic position is intertwined with the safety and civic standing of Jews far beyond its borders.
In past wars, that bond often strengthened diaspora solidarity and legitimacy. This war has done the opposite. It has left Israel more isolated and Jews abroad more exposed. The shockwave is landing not only on a country, but on a people.
This is not accidental. Hamas’s doctrine rejects negotiated peace and frames the conflict as permanent. Its charter defines the destruction of Israel through jihad as the objective and treats diplomacy as futile. That objective must be defeated.
On the battlefield, Israel has done much of that military work. Hamas’s command structure has been degraded. Its tunnel network has been exposed and dismantled. Its ability to launch coordinated attacks has been sharply reduced. By most estimates, Hamas’s fighting force is now a fraction of its pre–October 7 strength.
Political outcome of the Israel-Hamas War
But wars are judged by what they produce. The hard question is whether this campaign is producing a political outcome that makes Israel safer, preserves freedom of action, and protects Jewish communities worldwide. For the Jewish state, diaspora security is not a side effect.
It is part of what the state exists to secure. I fear that the answer is no. Worse, the strategy and conduct of Israel’s current government have accelerated Hamas’s intended second front: the global struggle over legitimacy, law, and identity. The aim is to convert Gaza’s devastation into diplomatic isolation for Israel and social liability for Jews abroad.
Victory, in the only sense that matters, requires a stable end-state, alliances that endure, legitimacy sufficient to deter the next war, and a fourth test unique to the Jewish state: safer Jewish life outside Israel. Hamas can lose ground and fighters and still claim “victory” if it survives and can point to Israel’s isolation and diaspora vulnerability as the war’s enduring outcome.
The evidence of alliance erosion is visible. Public support in key Western countries has weakened. Diplomatic cover has thinned. Legal exposure has grown. These shifts are not abstract. They shape whether allies stand with Israel when the next crisis comes–or stand aside.
The same direction is visible in diplomacy. Regional normalization has stalled. Prospective Arab partners have pulled back. European governments have hardened their tone or taken punitive steps. Each move narrows Israel’s strategic room and reinforces the perception that Israel is isolated rather than embedded in a regional order.
The war has also moved into courtrooms. Proceedings at international tribunals, however flawed or politicized, have become tools in a broader campaign to redefine Israel as a permanent violator rather than a state acting in self-defense. Even when such efforts fail legally, they succeed politically by sustaining doubt and stigma.
All of this would be grave even if it affected only Israel. It is worse because it does not. Antisemitic incidents worldwide have surged since October 7. In many places, hostility toward Israel has metastasized into hostility toward Jews, their institutions, and their public presence. Jewish communities are paying a price for strategic choices made thousands of miles away.
This is where critique of Israel’s current government becomes increasingly necessary and completely unavoidable.
Over recent years, its method has been consistent: preserve power through a narrow coalition, accept dependence on ideologues, and treat external blowback as manageable.
That pattern has carried into the war itself: repeated postponement of a credible “day after” framework, substitution of slogans for an implementable plan, and coalition maintenance as the overriding constraint on strategy.
In that geometry, diaspora needs are not absent, but they are treated as secondary costs to be absorbed or shifted onto Jewish communities abroad.
Israel had every right–indeed an obligation–to destroy Hamas’s military capacity. But it also had a strategic obligation to fight in a way that denies Hamas its preferred victory conditions: isolation for Israel, a fractured US relationship, permanent legal drag, and a surge of hostility that rebounds onto Jews.
Too often, the government has behaved as if force alone is strategy–without a credible governance plan for Gaza, without a diplomatic runway for allies to stand on, and without coalition management commensurate with the stakes.
What must change is not Israel’s determination to defeat Hamas. What must change is the theory of victory. Israel must define victory broadly enough to include diplomacy, governance, and regional integration.
That means committing to a credible postwar plan that excludes Hamas, involves regional partners, and creates a serious political horizon for Palestinians under strict security conditions.
A regional framework–such as the 20-point plan now on the table–can help rebuild a durable Arab and Western coalition, integrate Israel more deeply into the region, and isolate jihadist movements by denying them perpetual war as a cause.
This is not a concession. It is a security requirement. And diaspora security must be treated as a strategic theater: coordinated protection, legal response, and public leadership against antisemitism are now part of the war’s real cost.
Hamas can be shattered militarily and still win its larger wager if Israel exits the war isolated, delegitimized, and estranged from its partners while Jews abroad carry the burden.
Israel’s task is to convert battlefield success into a durable political end-state: credible governance in Gaza without Hamas, restored alliances, and a regional architecture that reduces the odds of the next war. Otherwise, Israel risks tactical success and strategic failure, which is not victory.
The writer is the former CEO of TEVA Pharmaceuticals.