An American Commander’s Case for Israeli Strategic Depth After October 7
Hamas’s massacre in Israel’s southern communities on October 7, 2023, settled an old strategic argument. Israel, about the size of Maryland, is bordered almost entirely by adversaries intent on its destruction. Defending Israel requires strategic depth. The country lacked buffers in Gaza, southern Lebanon, and on the Syrian Golan front. The result was the worst single day for Jews since the Holocaust. Hizbullah also attacked from the north, and with better coordination from Tehran and Hamas, the disaster could have been far worse. The case for defensible borders is no longer theoretical. It is the operational lesson of an ongoing war.
Most Americans have little sense of these distances. Israel covers about 8,800 square miles, smaller than New Jersey. Its population and industry cluster on a coastal strip that, before 1967, was just nine miles wide at its narrowest. Hizbullah’s estimated 150,000 to 200,000 rockets and missiles are in Lebanon, north of Israel, comparable to Northern Virginia relative to the U.S. The Iranian regime built this arsenal, armed Hamas, and has spent 40 years declaring its intent to eliminate Israel. Iran operates about 1,000 miles away—the equivalent, for Americans, of a hostile power in Havana able to strike Chicago.
Strategic depth, in this environment, is not a luxury. It is achieved simultaneously on three lines, and Israel must pursue all three. The first is physical control of key terrain that prevents an adversary from massing on the border. The second is the elimination of the near-end threat, the enemy capability that can reach out and strike. The third is layered defense: Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Iron Beam, and Arrow, integrated with U.S. and allied systems. None of the three is sufficient on its own. The first, the territorial line, is the most controversial and resource-intensive. It is also the most decisive, and it is the one that was missing on October 7.
The IDF holds vital territory about 30 kilometers north of the Israeli border in southern Lebanon, up to the Litani River. The recent discovery of more Hizbullah tunnels three to four kilometers from the border shows the scale of invasion infrastructure being built as the international community urged restraint. Israel must not withdraw from the area until the threat is clearly and consistently neutralized. The same logic applies on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, where Israeli forces now provide depth and buffer zones absent on October 7. The new Damascus leadership may be an improvement, but no responsible military assessment would advise Israeli withdrawal for that reason. The lessons of withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005 were paid for in Israeli lives. They do not need to be paid again.
A familiar argument says precision rockets, cruise missiles, and one-way attack drones make terrain obsolete. But this claim does not survive operational reality. Rockets and drones are lethal, but not war-winning. Hizbullah, Hamas, and the Iranian regime do not aim to harass Israel—they seek its elimination. That requires a ground invasion like Hamas executed in the south on October 7. Buffer zones, demilitarized areas, and topographical control prevent such invasions. Layered air defense can blunt missile barrages, but cannot stop infantry from entering through tunnels.
The recent record of American military operations reinforces the same conclusion. The Taliban were defeated in roughly five weeks after October 2001. Saddam’s regular forces collapsed in three. The American error in both theaters was not in the conduct of the initial campaign. It was on the assumption that follow-on political reconstruction could remake those societies in a Western democratic image. It could not. The applicable lesson for Israel is operational, not political: defeat the adversary’s capability to threaten and to invade, do not attempt to remake his worldview, and return to dismantle the capability whenever it begins to reconstitute. This is the logic the IDF has applied to Lebanon, to Gaza, and most consequentially to the Iranian regime itself.
Israel’s Operation Rising Lion in June 2025 showed what that logic achieves at scale. In under two weeks, Israel crippled Iran’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs, dismantled its air defenses, decapitated command and control, and eliminated key scientific and military leaders. Israeli pilots first cleared a path for U.S. B-2 bombers at the Pentagon’s request. The operation should have lasted another two or three weeks: every remaining missile, air-defense radar, IRGC headquarters, and command-and-control node should have been struck. The campaign should resume as soon as signs of reconstitution appear. The IRGC is now degraded, isolated, and bleeding cash. Its proxies are starved, its population exhausted, and the regime’s grip weakened. Patience and continued pressure will finish what Rising Lion began.
Within this picture, the regional architecture matters as much as the territorial one. The Abraham Accords were the political and economic opening. The next required step is what Prime Minister Netanyahu, in his August 2024 address to a joint session of Congress, termed an Abraham Security Alliance. The word “security” distinguishes the next phase from the last. It commits the resources of partner states and the credibility of partner governments to a shared regional defense—a formal, integrated air and missile defense capability that binds Israel, the United States, and willing Gulf partners into a single architecture, with a serious ground component. The strategic conditions for such an arrangement have not been better at any point in the past quarter-century. When the air chiefs of the GCC states first met one another, during this author’s service as commander of U.S. Air Forces in the Middle East, the foundation for that architecture did not yet exist. It does now.
One element of the strategic picture remains underdeveloped: Israel’s case is not being presented effectively to the American and Western publics. Polls and direct experience show that most Americans cannot locate the Litani River on a map, envision a 30-kilometer buffer zone in a country the size of Maryland, or grasp the significance of 150,000 rockets aimed at it.
Meanwhile, adversaries with less military capability still conduct more disciplined, sustained information operations than the West’s strongest democracies. Although the IDF is the region’s most operationally proficient military by a wide margin—and arguably the world’s most precise urban warfare force—military excellence does not speak for itself. This underscores the need for a sustained, joint U.S.–Israeli strategic communications effort focused on clear, factual presentations of geography, threat, and capability. Without legitimacy abroad, even the most advanced military tools cannot be used to full effect.
This is the work the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs undertakes in its Defensible Borders Initiative. The project does what governments rarely do well. It makes clear to Western audiences why Israel cannot be defended from within the pre-1967 lines. It shows why buffer zones in southern Lebanon and the Syrian Golan are self-protection, not aggression. It explains why a security architecture anchored by Israel and the United States serves direct U.S. strategic interests.
Israel has a right to exist. Its citizens have a right to live in safety within defensible borders. October 7 showed what happens when geography is left undefended and threats are allowed to grow. Defensible borders are not a maximalist demand or a negotiating position. They are the minimum required for a small state’s survival in a hostile neighborhood, and the precondition for any lasting peace.
