In a 1923 essay, the Zionist thinker Ze’ev Jabotinsky—the ideological progenitor of today’s Likud—argued that only by building a powerful military force could a prospective Jewish state safeguard itself against destruction, and eventually come to live in peace with its neighbors. Zev Chafets argues that Israel, wittingly or unwittingly, has succeeded by following the prescriptions set forth by Jabotinsky in that essay, titled “The Iron Wall”:

At the time of its publication, the Jews of Palestine were a small, embattled minority. Only three years had passed since the first Arab riots in Jerusalem against them. The Jewish community’s socialist leaders hoped they could appease Arab enmity by offering economic cooperation, progress and, prosperity.

Jabotinsky derided this as both childish and insulting to the Arabs, who would not barter away their homeland for more bread or modern railroads. They would, he said, resist while they had a spark of hope of preventing a Jewish state. “There is only one thing the Zionists want, and that is the one thing the Arabs do not want,” he wrote. Nothing short of abandoning the Zionist project would placate Arab hostility and violence. If the Jews wanted to remain, they would have to come to terms with a harsh reality: this was a zero-sum game. There could be no peace until the Arabs accepted Israel’s right to exist.

Jabotinsky saw that the Arabs (in Palestine and beyond) were far too numerous to be defeated in a single decisive war. The Jews needed to erect an iron wall of self-defense and deterrence—a metaphorical wall built of Jewish determination, immigration, material progress, strong democratic institutions, and a willingness to fight. Gradually, the enemy would be forced to conclude that this wall could not be breached. . . .

In 1953, Ben Gurion essentially adopted this concept (without, of course, crediting his former arch-rival Jabotinsky). . . . Egypt, Jordan, and Syria bounced off the Iron Wall in the Six-Day War of 1967. That was enough for Jordan, which withdrew permanently from armed conflict with Israel. But in 1973, Egypt and Syria tried again, launching a surprise attack that caught the IDF completely unprepared. It was their last best shot, and it failed. . . . Four years later, the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat came to Jerusalem and cut a deal with Prime Minister Menachem Begin. A few years later, King Hussein of Jordan followed. [Most other] Arab states have gradually come to terms with the permanence of Israel.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”