At the beginning of the Gaza War, the IDF made a pincer movement into the northern part of the Strip, and by December reached the city of Jabaliya and engaged in an extended confrontation with Hamas units there. Israeli forces then moved south toward the Egyptian border, but returned to Jabaliya in May. In October, they returned to the city once again—this time after evacuating much of the civilian population—and have since been engaged in some of the fiercest of fighting of the war, killing or capturing hundreds of terrorists.

On the one hand, the pace of recent fighting suggests that Israel has successfully cornered a large concentration of jihadists and is defeating them. On the other, the fact that Hamas has managed to regroup and that IDF is fighting a third battle in Jabaliya—especially combined with the length of the war and the lack of progress in freeing the hostages—is demoralizing, and suggests Israeli military successes might be illusory. Enia Krivine and Aaron Goren explain the IDF’s strategic logic, and why this battle is different:

During the two previous campaigns in Jabaliya, one in December of 2023 and another in May of 2024, Hamas operatives could flood southward when the water got too hot—to hide in humanitarian zones, . . . take cover in cities without an IDF presence like Rafah, or make a run for the extensive Hamas tunnel network that crisscrossed underneath Gaza’s border with Egypt along a strip of territory known as the Philadelphi Corridor. . . . Sealing that porous border was a key strategic accomplishment for the IDF, essentially depriving Hamas of its ability to rearm and ensuring that the terror leaders could not escape the enclave.

Another critical geographic corridor that has become a strategic asset in the battle against Hamas is the Netzarim Corridor. Established in the first weeks of the ground invasion as a logistic axis and humanitarian route the corridor effectively bisects Gaza. In the early days of the war, terrorists could traverse the corridor without encountering the IDF. That is no longer the case.

In an ideal scenario, this means that the IDF can stop returning to the same battlefields. This new tactic of laying siege to problem areas, evacuating civilians, and forcing terrorists to surrender will likely be repeated in Gaza City. Now that the Strip is sectioned off by strategic corridors, the IDF has unprecedented operational maneuverability.

That also explains why Benjamin Netanyahu has been so adamant that Israel must not give up control of either the Netzarim or the Philadelphi corridor.

In a recent episode of 60 Minutes, a former State Department official tells the interviewer that U.S. support for Israel following October 7 has “put a target on America’s back” in the Arab world “and beyond the Arab world.” The complaint is a familiar one: Middle Easterners hate the United States because of its closeness to the Jewish state. But this gets things exactly backward. Just look at the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its various Arab proxies: America is the “Great Satan” and Israel is but the “Little Satan.”

Why, then, does Iran see the U.S. as the world’s primary source of evil? The usual answer invokes the shah’s 1953 ouster of his prime minister, but the truth is that this wasn’t the subversion of democracy it’s usually made out to be, and the CIA’s role has been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, Ladan Boroumand points out,

the 1953 coup was welcomed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, [the architect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution], and would not have succeeded without the active complicity of proponents of political Islam. And . . . the United States not only refrained from opposing the Islamic Revolution but inadvertently supported its emergence and empowered its agents. How then could . . . Ayatollah Khomeini’s virulent enmity toward the United States be explained or excused?

Khomeini’s animosity toward the shah and the United States traces back to 1963–64, when the shah initiated sweeping social reforms that included granting women the right to vote and to run for office and extending religious minorities’ political rights. These reforms prompted the pro-shah cleric of 1953 to become his vocal critic. It wasn’t the shah’s autocratic rule that incited Khomeini’s opposition, but rather the liberal nature of his autocratically implemented social reforms.

There is no need for particular interpretive skill to comprehend the substance of Khomeini’s message: as Satan, America embodies the temptation that seduces Iranian citizens into sin and falsehood. “Human rights” and “democracy” are America’s tools for luring sinful and deviant citizens into conspiring against the government of God established by the ayatollah.

Or, as George W. Bush put it, jihadists hate America because “they hate our freedoms.”