What the critics who warn against "escalation" consistently fail to account for is that the alternative they are defending is not peace. It is a repeat performance.
For twenty years, Israel's enemies have counted on one thing above all others: the international community saving them just before the final blow lands. That pattern is what has kept Hamas and Hezbollah alive. Not their fighters, not their rockets, not their tunnels. The question of whether Israel can eliminate both organizations has a simple answer. It already knows how. The real question is whether it will be permitted to finish. The framing of "can Israel do it" is fundamentally dishonest. It treats the problem as a military one when the military dimension is largely solved.
The IDF has decimated Hamas's senior command structure, destroyed vast stretches of its tunnel network beneath Gaza, and killed more of its fighters than any previous operation. Hezbollah, meanwhile, entered 2025 as a shadow of the force that once pointed 150,000 missiles at northern Israel. Its top leadership is dead. Its supply lines from Iran are severed or severely degraded. Its ability to recruit in a Lebanon that now partially blames it for the destruction of Beirut's southern suburbs is fundamentally compromised. Israel is advancing north daily and pushing Hezbollah farther away from the border while steadily killing terrorists and destroying weaponry and tunnels.
The word "elimination" trips people up because they imagine it means hunting down every last member of a movement. That is not what strategic elimination means. The destruction of an organization's command capacity, its financing infrastructure, its weapons supply, its territorial control, and its political legitimacy constitutes elimination in every meaningful sense. By those metrics, Hamas as a governing entity is finished. Hezbollah as a strategic deterrent is broken.
...The obstacle has never been Israeli capability. It has been the recurring interruption of Israeli operations at the precise moment when irreversible damage becomes possible. In Gaza, that interruption has taken the form of ceasefire pressure from Washington, hostage negotiations that freeze operational momentum, and humanitarian corridors Hamas immediately exploits. In Lebanon, it took the form of a ceasefire agreement that Hezbollah needed far more than Israel did, dressed up as diplomatic achievement. (Read More)
