Israel ‘Trapped’ in Gaza, Can’t Kill Its Way Out, Veteran Israeli Journalist Says

Israel’s war in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria is increasingly starting to resemble the “trap” of the 1982 Lebanon invasion, which engaged the military in a costly 18-year-long war and occupation it ultimately could not sustain, Israeli investigative reporter Alon Ben-David argues in an explosive analysis for Hebrew-language daily newspaper Maariv.

“Israel entered 2025 as a country that remains wounded, with some of its wounds still gaping and bleeding,” Ben-David, a senior defense correspondent who served as an IDF reporter during the 1982 Lebanon War, wrote.

“The country ended 2024 with impressive military achievements, but these achievements have not been translated into creating a better reality and making Israel a better country to live in. On the contrary, things are getting worse day by day as we sink into and dig in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria,” the columnist wrote.

As the conflict continues, Israelis from the north and south of Israel remain uncertain when or whether they will be able to ever return to their destroyed homes, and an “oppressive silence” hangs over communities in areas affected by fighting, particularly in the north, where a shaky ceasefire with Hezbollah is yet to return a sense of normalcy, Ben-David highlighted.

Recounting a recent visit to the town of Metula, northern Israel, the journalist pointed out that “only tens of residents, most of them elderly, have returned” to the town “since the ceasefire was announced,” with a sense of “abandonment evident everywhere.”

On the Gaza front, Ben-David wrote, “skepticism is audible even in the voices of IDF commanders as they explain the vital importance of the mission,” with the raining of powerful bombs down on the strip by warplanes, the steady sounds of tank and machine gun fire, and the capture of “another street, another neighborhood,” and the killing of more Hamas fighters bringing Israel no closer to victory, and instead threatening it with being “swallowed up in the war in Gaza forever.”

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“Almost the entire surface area of the northern Gaza Strip has already been cleared of civilians and Hamas. The towers of the neighborhoods of Beit Lahiya where officers and doctors lived have been flattened. Not one house remains overlooking the courtyards of Netiv HaAsara or the rail line to Sderot. Jabalia has become a wasteland, where only dogs roam, feeding on the garbage left behind by the IDF,” the columnist detailed.

“In the meantime, every day spent there extracts its own pound of blood, and the IDF is now preparing to throw another division, its fourth, into action in Gaza,” he added.

“It’s worth repeating: we will never be able to kill everyone identifying with Hamas. Their numbers in Gaza are an infinite reservoir. Nor will we ever destroy the last rocket or the last RPG. If we don’t seize on what has been achieved right now, we will find ourselves wallowing and bleeding in Gaza for years, without hope, and without the hostages, the few of whom are still alive,” Ben-David argued.

“Without any strategy or systemic thought” by Israel’s political leadership, the veteran journalist warned, the IDF will find itself trapped in a forever war bleeding wound in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.

“As in 1982, after we expelled the Palestinians from Lebanon and were drawn into 18 bloody years of fighting there, the same is true today: the IDF is looking for explanations that will justify the continued stay, and the bleeding.”

In this Sept. 28, 1982 file photo, Israeli tanks rumble through West Beirut streets, having just left the West Beirut port area.

“An officer from Northern Command explained to me this week in all seriousness that ‘we will not be able to protect the Golan settlements from the Golan Heights and it’s essential that we remain on Syrian soil.’ ‘I wish’, he added, ‘that we could occupy a security strip along the length of our borders to protect the settlements.’”

“To some, this simplistic idea may sound tempting, but our history has proven time and time again that conquering foreign territory comes at a high price, and that usually, the conqueror who enters with great fanfare, leaves with his tail between his legs,” Ben-David warned.

Israeli soldiers ride atop their armored vehicle holding an Israeli flag as they withdraw from south Lebanon into Israel, at the Israeli-Lebanese border near Metulla, early Wednesday, May 24, 2000.

“Israel, whose population crossed the 10 million mark this year, does not need more territory. It needs healing and recovery. A necessary condition for recovery will be to return those who have been kidnapped, and this is within our reach. Our war will not end this year, but it can be scaled back to the dimensions necessary to stop the unnecessary bleeding. The biggest task we will have in the new year will be to fix what's broken, so that we have something to keep fighting for," the observer concluded.