Whatever decision the Israeli government makes, Michael Oren is confident that it must continue to press its advantage:

Though the terrorists have yet to unleash the full brunt of their most lethal and accurate rockets, their image has been irreparably tarnished. For that reason alone, Israel must not agree to a ceasefire that will allow Hizballah to rearm and rebuild its command structure. . . . A ceasefire that enables Hizballah to remain deployed along [Israel’s] northern border and resume daily firing at our citizens will not enable tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to return to their home.

Oren compares Israel’s current war to the U.S. experience in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II, which began with severe, even humiliating setbacks. The past two weeks in Lebanon, he writes, have begun to resemble the crucial battles that turned those wars around:

This is Israel’s Midway moment. In Lebanon, Israel can have its Gettysburg and its Yorktown. The alternatives are the examples of Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s most recent wars that ended inconclusively with ignominious withdrawals. Israel, fighting an existential war on our own borders, must not go that route. Rather, by resisting pressure for a ceasefire that leaves Hizballah unbowed, Israel can fully restore our deterrence power and regain our regional preeminence.

It’s worth noting that it took the Union nearly two whole years to defeat the Confederacy following its victory at Gettysburg, and the war with Japan dragged on for three years after Midway. The Jewish state may well have a difficult slog ahead.

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.