Besides the immediate question of the intelligence failure of October 7—why didn’t the IDF and Shin Bet anticipate the attack and prepare to defend against it—there is also the much broader question of what went wrong with Israel’s strategic thinking. In this 2021 essay, recently made available in English, Omer Dostri criticizes the IDF for losing its appetite for maneuver warfare, i.e., sending substantial ground forces to destroy an enemy and bring about a decisive victory. Dostri argues that, in struggling with the difficulties of confronting enemies like Hamas, Israeli generals erred by focusing on limited warfare and attacks from the air. They developed complex doctrines, influence by French postmodernist philosophers, that lost sight of the basic principles of war.
Perhaps it is too soon to tell, but Dostri’s analysis appears prescient in the wake of October 7. He takes a careful look at other similar cases of conventional armies pitted against guerrillas—such as America in Vietnam and the French in Algeria—to argue that decisive victory is not impossible in such scenarios. He concludes:
War, including one in which the sides are not balanced in terms of power, can be decided only by use of ground forces, deployed as part of the general use of military and non-military capabilities. Clear evidence of this can be seen in past wars between states and guerrilla or terror groups. During such conflicts, enemy insurgents cannot be defeated in “clean” wars from the air alone, and are not impressed by efforts to influence them mentally with the pyrotechnics of smoke and fire.
This is also true of the Israeli case, despite its unique circumstances. The enemy’s military buildup and transformation into a terror army requires the state of Israel, and the IDF especially, to wage a war which will certainly require use of ground maneuver as part of a broad combined-arms effort. Maneuver needs to be aimed at military decisions in stubborn and complex fighting, which will very likely lead to serious losses.
Read more on Hashiloach: https://en.hashiloach.org.il/ground-maneuver-is-the-key/