Let this week be the beginning of the end of our Hamas nightmare

And yet, Hamas was only one front. Over the past two years, Israel has been engaged in a multifront war. Hezbollah remains weakened and deterred, facing for the first time a Lebanese government willing to move against its stockpiles. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad’s notorious and murderous regime is fading into memory, replaced by Ahmed A-Shara, who is basking in Western legitimacy and even considering a formal security arrangement with Israel.

Above all, Iran remains on the defensive. European-initiated snapback sanctions are soon to take effect, compounding the regime’s economic strain. Israeli and American strikes on Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow left those nuclear sites severely damaged. The IDF continues to vigilantly track the uranium stockpiles that survived the June operation, communicating that it is prepared to act again if needed to preserve that success.

Even in Yemen, where the Houthis continue to harass Israel with drones and ballistic missiles, the group has sustained heavy losses to both its infrastructure and its leadership.

Looking back at the two years since October 7 – the darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust – Israel’s situation resembles a coin with two sides. One side is marred by failure: the catastrophic political, military, and intelligence breakdowns that enabled Hamas’s attack. These demand a thorough reckoning to prevent them from happening again.

But the other side tells a different story: a re-engineered Middle East, in which Israel is safer and more secure than it was on October 6, 2023.

Is Israel more isolated internationally, facing sanctions and criticism across much of the global stage? Possibly. But from a security perspective, Israelis are safer, and that is no small feat.

Still, winning battles is not the same as winning the war. To win the war, Israel must convert its military achievements into long-term strategic gains. That means ensuring not only short-term military security but also building a new regional architecture that can endure.

This will require hard choices. Annexation dreams and settlement expansion fantasies must be put aside – as they seemed to have been during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent visit to the White House. Instead, Israel should focus on leveraging its battlefield success to expand the Abraham Accords, bringing new countries such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and even Indonesia into formal partnerships.

For leaders like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, Trump’s plan – and Netanyahu’s acceptance of a formal Palestinian Authority role in postwar Gaza – is seen as a fatal mistake. Yet what they fail to grasp is that the true answer to Hamas and the war is not another settlement on some hilltop. The answer is to demonstrate to Palestinians and to the region that, even after two years of war, the Arab world seeks to normalise ties with Israel.

That is real victory. And it requires vision and leadership. Trump’s plan, at least on paper, seems to lean in this direction. It preserves Israel’s security needs by allowing the IDF to maintain a perimeter along Gaza, including in the strategic Philadelphi Corridor where smuggling tunnels once thrived. At the same time, it provides Palestinians with a credible path to a different future.

But everything hinges on Hamas. The group must accept the plan. Only then can the war truly end, allowing Israelis and Gazans to heal and rebuild.

Here lies a question that will accompany Israelis for some time: did it really need to take this long? For months, the IDF top brass insisted that Hamas was already sufficiently degraded. They warned that the extended operations in Gaza City were unnecessary. They knew that some form of alternative governance was the only way forward.

Instead, precious months were squandered. Leaders rolled out illusions – a Gaza Riviera or annexation schemes – that were never going to happen. These distractions only delayed the inevitable. Had international, Arab and Israeli leaders accepted earlier that there would be no riviera, no annexation, that Israel would remain in parts of Gaza and that the PA would need to play a role, perhaps lives could have been spared – soldiers, hostages, and civilians alike.

We will never know. But we must acknowledge the cost of delay. The war may now be approaching its end in terms of high-intensity combat, yet the road ahead will not be smooth. Israel must rebuild diplomatic ties frayed by two years of war, it will need to learn and implement the lessons of October 7, and it will need to begin the painful process of healing as a society. And just as that process begins, elections are expected, forcing the nation of Israel once again to confront questions of leadership, accountability, and vision.

Israel has won the battle. But whether it can win the war will depend not only on the setbacks to Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran’s nuclear programme. It will depend on whether Israel’s leaders can rise above politics, embrace the opportunities created by military success, and chart a course toward a new regional architecture.

​Yaakov Katz’s latest book, While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East, co-authored by Amir Bohbot, is published by St Martin’s Press