Go back in time 20 years and make better policy decisions that would have prevented such an extremist government from taking power in Gaza. [0].

Or, go back in time several months and back off on the Gaza offensive before Hezbolla felt compelled to get involved.

That might sound like a bunch of hindsight. However, today is 20 years ago in 2044. The decisions Israel is making now are setting the stage for its future security challenges.

Today might also be the several months ago for Iran getting involved directly. Given how constrained they have been up to this point, the way to avoid it is clear: deascalate the conflict; Iran has no desire to start a war with you, stop giving ammunition to the forces that want them to declare war on you [1].

I will grant that policy solutions take time. However, Israel has time. Prior to October 7th, they were in a holding pattern with everyone but Hamas. There were still tensions and security concerns, but no one was interested in poking at it. Further, Israel was building relationships with its neighboors in an anti-Iran block which is critical for its long term security.

This leaves just the question of how to deal with Gaza. Again, a long term solution requires long term policy. In the immediate after math and commision of the October 7 attack, I have no objectification to the responce. An accute military threat requires an accute response.

However, it is important to remember that the only reason the October 7 attack succeeded was a massive on the part of the IDF. This means that once the accute attack was resolved, Israel could have simply fixed its defenses and then would have had time to pursue different policies that would gradually lower tensions and might eventually lead to actual peace.

[0] I’m not going to go over 20 years of policy blunders here. But they include rather explicitly propping up and legitimizing Hamas at the expense of more moderate factions.

[1] Note that one of those forces is Netenyahu, who has been trying to start a war with Iran for years. Although the bigger issue for Iran is loosing the respect of its regional proxies.

I feel like the general consensus is nothing, they deserved it. Not really the most well thought out prediction of how people typically behave.