For three years before World War II, Palestinian Arabs attacked Jews and fought against British rule—leaving roughly 500 Jews and 250 British dead. Oren Kessler, the author of a new book on the episode, explains how it laid the groundwork for much of what has transpired since then:

The Great Revolt of 1936 to 1939 was the crucible in which Palestinian identity coalesced. It united rival families, urban and rural, rich and poor, in a single struggle against a common foe: the Jewish national enterprise—Zionism—and its midwife the British empire. A six-month general strike, one of the longest anywhere in modern history, roused Arabs and Muslims worldwide to the Palestine cause.

Yet the revolt would ultimately turn on itself. A convulsion of infighting and score-settling shred the Arab social fabric, sidelined pragmatists for extremists, and propelled tens of thousands of refugees out of the country. British forces did the rest, seizing arms, occupying cities, and waging a counterinsurgency. . . . When the dust cleared, at least 5,000—perhaps more than 8,000—Arabs were dead, of whom at least 1,500 likely fell at Arab hands. More than 20,000 were seriously wounded. Arab Palestine’s fighting capacity was debilitated, its economy gutted, its leaders—above all, Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini—banished.

The revolt to end Zionism had instead crushed the Arabs themselves, leaving them crippled in facing the Jews’ own drive for statehood a decade on. . . . To the Jews the insurgency would leave a very different inheritance. It was then Zionist leaders began to abandon illusions over Arab acquiescence, to confront the unnerving prospect that fulfilling their dreams of sovereignty might mean forever clinging to the sword.

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.