Since the brutal Hamas attack on October 7 nearly a year ago, Israel has consistently demonstrated a willingness to take greater risks in its fight against Hamas’s regional backers, including Iran and Hezbollah. Over the last year, Israel has targeted leaders in both Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), systematically killing hundreds of top operatives. It steadily degraded Hezbollah and Iran, judging that although both would maintain low-level conflict, neither wanted a full-scale war with Israel. Domestic dynamics encouraged Israel’s operations, too. Many Israelis feel that a return to the pre–October 7 status quo would be unacceptable. A key lesson from the attacks was that Israel could no longer afford merely to manage and contain the threats on its borders. It would need decisive military wins—regardless of the costs.

Israeli leaders thus became highly motivated to restore the country’s shattered deterrence and the aura of invincibility punctured by Hamas’s attack. Unable to definitively defeat Hamas in Gaza, Israel may see more opportunity in the fight against Hezbollah and Iran. Its military has spent years preparing for a fight on the northern front and, as recent Israeli attacks in Iran and Lebanon have demonstrated, its intelligence services have extensively penetrated both Iranian and Hezbollah networks.

In the current escalatory environment, U.S. and international efforts to encourage a diplomatic settlement to the war in Lebanon or Gaza are unlikely to succeed, even as calls for a cease-fire have become still more urgent in the face of the new direct confrontation between Israel and Iran. But at the moment Israel is not seeking a diplomatic off-ramp; it is looking for total victory. Adding to the strategic calculations are political considerations that link Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political survival to continued wars that seem only to boost his popularity and the stability of his governing coalition.

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After a year of war, there is a real possibility of no better “day after” in Gaza or the rest of the region. Talk in Washington of capitalizing on Nasrallah’s death and Iran’s weakness to “reshape” the Middle East harks back to the misguided beliefs that drove the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 to disastrous effect. Continued military conflict harms the region, and it harms U.S. interests. Without a change in the current Israeli government, Israel and its neighbors could be moving toward a very different day after: Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and potentially even of southern Lebanon, as well as reinforced control over, if not annexation of, the West Bank. This is a recipe not for victory but for perpetual war.

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The other potential path toward full-scale war was a change in strategic calculus—that one of the powers involved would see greater value in waging a war than in avoiding one. This is the mindset that led Israel to scale up its attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Although Iran and Hezbollah appeared to believe that a low-grade conflict with Israel was manageable as long as Israel was preoccupied in Gaza, Israel’s calculus had already shifted as its attention increasingly turned north during the summer.

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Israel has been willing to go to great lengths to weaken Hezbollah and Iran, and it has already made significant strides on those fronts. But the war in Gaza and increased militarization in the West Bank raises the question of how far Israel is prepared to go in the Palestinian territories. The past year suggests that Netanyahu’s government is aiming for nothing less than the creation of a new reality on all of Israel’s borders.

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If these operations continue, Israel could, by design or by default, end up reoccupying parts or all of Gaza, the West Bank, and even southern Lebanon. Needless to say, this is a far darker day after than many envisioned. But it is a real possibility with potentially dire repercussions. Reoccupations would threaten Israel’s longer-term security, quash Palestinian aspirations for independence and dignity, and destabilize the entire region.

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Such an endgame appears more likely by the day. But it cannot bring the long-term security Israel seeks. Instead, it would leave Israel locked in a cycle of war and global isolation, dragging the United States with it.

Vir: Dalia Dassa Kaye, Foreign Affairs