Dalia Dassa Kaye, a Senior Fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, who has written widely on Southwest Asia security issues, argues in a Foreign Affairs article, that the assassinations of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut are part of a desperate attempt by Israel to re-establish the deterrence it lost on Oct. 7.
“On a late June visit to Tel Aviv, security experts and former defense and intelligence officials alike repeatedly told me that October 7 had overturned many of Israel’s prior beliefs about its strength,” Kaye reports in the Council on Foreign Relations publication. “Hamas’s attack shattered Israelis’ most basic assumptions: that their military and technological superiority could deter their adversaries, that they could live securely behind walls and fortified borders, and that they could prosper economically without making major advances toward peace with the Palestinians. Now, many in the security establishment are recognizing that ‘Israel is not that strong,’ as one former national security official bluntly told me.”
