Israel’s next election is unlikely to overturn the security doctrine that has emerged since October 7, 2023. I have long argued that such a shift is broader than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and cannot be reduced to his politics or personality. Now that Israel’s plausible alternative leaders have spoken much more extensively about the country’s future security posture, the evidence for that conclusion is overwhelming. And more portentously, the Israeli security debate has entered a cul-de-sac from which it will be very hard to exit.

Israeli political actors differ over how aggressively this doctrine should be pursued and how much territory Israel should hold. They also differ over whether ethnic cleansing is a priority, a possibility, or a pipe dream, but not over the denial of Palestinian statehood for the foreseeable future. They diverge significantly over how much weight to give diplomacy, but not over subordinating diplomacy to Israel’s startlingly expansive definition of security. They disagree over how much damage Israel has already done to its relationship with the United States. However, the disagreement narrows considerably when the question becomes what is required for Israel to be secure: forward positions, prevention of threatening capabilities, and an overriding Israeli freedom of military action.

Gadi Eisenkot, who places far greater emphasis on diplomacy than Netanyahu, would make greater use of it in Syria and Lebanon, but still retain the Syrian side of Mount Hermon and significant security zones, while preserving Israel’s right to strike perceived strategic threats. Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister, approaches the issue from further to the right but lands in much the same strategic territory. He places greater emphasis than Netanyahu on competent statecraft and managing alliances, but his own security doctrine explicitly preserves Israeli freedom of action in Gaza and proposes striking Iran in response to Hezbollah attacks. The debate is, therefore, increasingly about how Israeli predominance should be exercised, not whether it should be maintained.

There is an odd but striking reversal here of Israel’s old “periphery doctrine.” That strategy grew out of a hostile Arab neighborhood, so that Israeli leaders looked beyond it—toward pre-1979 Iran, Türkiye, Ethiopia, and others—for relationships that could reduce Israel’s isolation. Israel leapfrogged enemies to find friends. Now it does something close to the opposite: it leapfrogs friends to confront enemies. Egypt and Jordan have been at peace with Israel for decades, and most Gulf governments seek accommodation rather than military confrontation. Yet Israeli strategic attention has increasingly jumped over this comparatively quiet Arab environment toward focusing on its enmity with Iran and Türkiye.

The more important change, however, concerns what political relationships are expected to accomplish. Egypt was once Israel’s most formidable military opponent. Its treaty with Israel did not eliminate Egyptian military capabilities or produce a warm peace. However, it changed what those capabilities meant. Generations of Israeli officers could plan without treating another Egyptian war as the organizing problem of Israeli security. The treaty with Jordan had a similar effect.

While in the past diplomacy could change the strategic map, the newer Israeli doctrine sets sharp limits on what diplomacy is expected to accomplish—the differences lie in how much of a supporting role it can take. Egypt has observed its treaty for nearly half a century and can still be discussed as a latent danger because governments change. Türkiye need not attack Israel for Turkish radars, air defenses, or bases in Syria to become targets, as these might constrain Israeli operations. Jordan can be peaceful but strategically discounted because it is weak and potentially unstable.

The shift is not one from diplomacy to the use of force—both have always played a role. It is from a security doctrine in which political relationships could alter the meaning of military capabilities to one in which those relationships no longer reliably remove military capabilities from the security calculus.

Deterrence is an answer to a potential adversary that possesses dangerous capacities by inducing it not to use them. Prevention treats possession itself as the problem. Hezbollah therefore cannot simply be deterred from firing missiles; it must be prevented from rebuilding them, and areas from which it might reconstitute itself can be occupied, depopulated, or denied to returning populations. Hamas cannot merely be contained; its military and governmental capacities must be totally destroyed and barred from reconstituting themselves. Syrian forces need not attack Israel for particular weapons to become an Israeli security concern. Turkish systems in Syria matter because they could make Israeli military action there more difficult.

The political force of this doctrine is not difficult to understand. Years of disappointment with diplomacy had already weakened arguments that political arrangements could transform Israel’s security environment. The attacks of October 7 dealt a devastating blow to confidence in deterrence and containment. The consequences of the resulting turn have already been horrific, and there are strong reasons to think that a strategy of permanent prevention and military predominance will end badly. But the experiences that produced it have also deprived many of the counterarguments of much of their purchase in Israeli political debate. From afar, I detect signs of disquiet in some circles but hardly robust debate on the shift.

Part of the reason lies in the self-reinforcing logic of the doctrine—it makes its own failures difficult to recognize as such; instead those failures can provoke calls for doubling down. If a weakened adversary rebuilds, the lesson can be that it was not weakened enough. If a neighboring state develops capabilities that constrain Israeli action, that can confirm the danger of allowing such capabilities to emerge. If Israeli military action produces new hostility, the hostility itself can become evidence of the threatening environment against which further action is required. A strategy intended to prevent insecurity can therefore help reproduce both the threats and the arguments for continuing the strategy.

Once security is defined that way, success has no natural endpoint. Destroyed capabilities can be rebuilt, weak states can grow stronger, governments can change, friendly governments can develop interests of their own, and military action can generate reactions that create new security concerns. Dealing with one threat, therefore, does not end the problem; it simply brings the next potentially threatening capability or constraint into view. Failure need not produce reconsideration. It can just as easily produce a demand to act earlier, farther away, and more decisively the next time.

And wars undertaken as wars of defense can turn into wars of conquest. This does not require conquest to have been the original objective, or even require annexation to be intended. But Gaza is now the site of indefinite security corridors and zones in which Israel insists on freedom of action. In Lebanon, what began as military penetration has now been described by Israeli leaders as a consolidated security zone, with withdrawal tied to preventing Hezbollah from rebuilding its capabilities. Temporary positions in Syria become security assets because relinquishing them would create a possible vulnerability. Security comes to require some degree of control not merely over attacks on Israel but over territory, airspace, military capacity, and the choices available to neighboring states.

On the Israeli right, some figures speak openly of territorial expansion, Palestinian displacement, and the permanent destruction of Palestinian national aspirations. Much of the center rejects both that language and some of the policies. But the centrist alternative shares much of the strategic structure. It does promise to use diplomacy more seriously, cultivate allies rather than antagonize them, restore Palestinian administration where useful and convert battlefield achievements into arrangements others can support—but it fully retains security zones, strategic positions, and Israel’s ultimate freedom of action.

What much of the opposition offers, in that sense, is kinder, gentler conquest. Diplomacy then becomes less an alternative to military predominance than one means of organizing it. The main question is how.

The same internal divide in Israel appears in understandings of the relationship with the United States. One view sees an unusually favorable moment: regional enemies are weakened, Washington remains supportive, and gains once thought impossible may be obtainable. Another sees an increasingly dangerous contradiction in relying heavily on U.S. support while alienating parts of the political system and public that sustain it. The argument is consequential, but it is often about how much political capital Israel should spend rather than about the objectives for which it is being spent.

The Palestinian arena exposes the issue most starkly because Israel is not seeking superiority over another sovereign state. It already exercises overriding power between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. A less extreme government could reject forced displacement, restrain settlements, restore Palestinian administrative functions, improve movement and economic life, and speak again of a political horizon. But while meaningful Palestinian sovereignty remains unacceptable and equal political membership in a single state remains equally unacceptable, the underlying order changes much less. Palestinians may administer more of their affairs, and under considerably better conditions, while Israel retains ultimate authority over territory, security, movement, and political possibility.

A different government could, therefore, matter greatly without challenging the security doctrine that has taken hold. It could reject ethnic cleansing, value the relationship with the United States, make far greater use of diplomacy, and govern Palestinians less brutally while still insisting on Israeli territorial control, military predominance, and freedom to strike whenever another actor’s capabilities are judged intolerable. Israel’s election may change the management of Israeli predominance far more than the premise that predominance itself represents security.