From where I sit, the war in Israel is nowhere near over. It has simply changed shape. What started as a shock on October 7th has become a long, grinding contest across multiple fronts, and while the headlines may have grown tired, the stakes haven’t shrunk at all.
To understand what’s coming, you have to see the whole board, not just the one square called Gaza.
Five Fronts, One War
Israel is not dealing with a single isolated conflict. It is facing at least five interconnected fronts, each of them fragile and potentially explosive:
Gaza
Judea and Samaria (what the world insists on calling the West Bank)
Lebanon
Syria
Iran and its proxy network
They overlap, feed into one another, and are all being influenced—directly or indirectly—by Tehran. When people talk about a “ceasefire,” they’re usually talking about Gaza. But if you zoom out, you’ll notice there has never really been a ceasefire at all.
Gaza: A “Ceasefire” in Name Only
Let’s start with Gaza, because that’s where most cameras still point, at least when they bother to look.
On paper, there’s been a ceasefire. On the ground, Hamas has been shooting at Israeli troops almost every day. There have been firefights, mortars, IED attacks, and at least a few IDF soldiers killed since that so-called pause went into effect.
The Israelis have divided the Strip into zones: a red zone where Hamas still controls the ground, and a green zone under IDF control. You’d think the green zone would be relatively stable, but in reality Hamas fighters keep emerging from tunnel shafts inside those areas and ambushing Israeli patrols. More than forty of those fighters have been killed in these incidents alone.
So if you’re picturing neat front lines and a quiet truce, erase that image. Gaza is still a warzone, it’s just a slower, dirtier, more subterranean version of the earlier stages.
The map we’re looking at right now will probably define Gaza for the foreseeable future. Israel is unlikely to pull completely out of the green zone anytime soon. If it did, there are at least nine local militias in that territory—tribal groups that hate Hamas—who would instantly start fighting for control. You’d see a civil war inside a war.
On top of that, Hamas still holds weapons, still has command structures, and still has fighters who believe, very sincerely, that Israel has no right to exist. That’s why Israel’s second war aim—after bringing the hostages home—was to dismantle Hamas as a fighting force. They have not finished that job, and they know it.
The Hostages and the Narrative of “Israel is Losing”
A lot of pundits you see online—especially people like Douglas Macgregor, Scott Ritter, and some of the usual talking heads—keep repeating the line that “Israel has lost this war” and is collapsing from within.
That claim doesn’t hold up.
Israel has managed to secure the return of every single hostage except one. When this war began, I honestly didn’t think that was possible. The chaos in Gaza, the tunnel networks, the sheer brutality of Hamas made it seem almost inevitable that many captives would simply disappear—killed, buried, or used as human shields until the end.
Yet here we are: one hostage still unaccounted for, and even his remains may soon be recovered. That is an extraordinary outcome by any military or intelligence standard, and it is a victory no matter what the doom-mongers say.
At the same time, Israel has been quietly preparing for the next phase. Their defensive capabilities are actually stronger now than they were on October 6th. The Iron Beam laser defense system—something the United States and Russia both struggled to make operational—is finally being fielded. It’s not science fiction anymore; it’s an actual working layer in their air-defense umbrella. That’s going to matter a lot if this war expands into a full regional conflict.
So no, Israel is not crumbling. It is bruised, deeply divided internally in some ways, but militarily more ready than at any time since the fighting began.
