Eurasia Press & News
Why Have Israel’s Recent Wars Led to Little Terrorism and No Mass Uprising?
The Middle East is in crisis, and Israel is at the center of the storm. Since Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7, 2023, that killed around 1,200 Israelis, the Israeli military has assailed and occupied much of the Gaza Strip, ramped up operations in the West Bank, struck Houthi targets in Yemen, devastated Hezbollah in Lebanon, hit nuclear and military sites in Iran, and bombed parts of Syria. All these adversaries have links to terrorism: in the decades before October 7, Hamas and Hezbollah used terrorism against Israel, killing over 1,000 civilians as well as many soldiers. Through its proxies and on its own, Iran has attacked Israeli and Jewish targets around the world. The Trump administration recently redesignated the Houthis as a terrorist group, while the new ruler of Syria, Ahmed al-Shara, led a group once affiliated with al-Qaeda.
In these circumstances, Israel appears to be courting a new wave of terrorist attacks, maybe even a wider uprising. The war in Gaza has caused tremendous civilian suffering. At the same time, Israel is squeezing the West Bank with raids on suspected terrorist hideouts. Those operations have caused approximately 1,000 deaths and displaced tens of thousands more Palestinians. Along with the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and numerous Jewish settler depredations there, Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel have many reasons to be outraged at Israel.
Despite that anger and despite Israel’s long slate of adversaries, the number of terrorist attacks within Israel since October 7 has been surprisingly low. Israel has not seen high-casualty terrorist attacks or even a sustained series of low-level incidents. A third intifada, in which Palestinians would rise up against the Israeli occupation as they did between 1987 and 1993 and between 2000 and 2005, remains a distant prospect. That is in large part attributable to the success of Israel’s campaigns against its enemies, the disarray of its foes, its vice-like grip on the Palestinian territories, and its stiffened internal defenses. And yet that success comes with deep costs. In addition to killing many civilians, Israel’s aggressive approach threatens to foreclose potential political resolutions to the many conflicts it is embroiled in. By trying to stave off its adversaries and protect itself from terrorist attacks, Israel will in fact be entering a state of permanent war.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Israeli civilians, of course, remain under threat. Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis have used rockets, missiles, and drones to strike Israel in the last two years. But these incidents have more in common with the evolving nature of conventional warfare, as seen in Ukraine, for example, than they do with the suicide bombings, shootings, stabbings, and car rammings that formed the familiar repertoire of terrorists against Israelis in recent decades. The single worst episode of that kind in the last two years occurred in October 2024 when two Hamas-linked militants killed seven people in a shooting and stabbing spree on a light-rail train in Jaffa. According to media reports, terrorists have killed an estimated 20 Israeli civilians within Israel itself since October 2023 and another 14 in the West Bank. The Israeli military has also lost approximately 17 soldiers in Israel and the West Bank. And those numbers are falling: the first three months of 2025 saw only 18 attacks in the West Bank, while the same period in 2024 saw 72 attacks. Terrorists have also not successfully targeted Israeli facilities or Israelis overseas, as they did famously in the twentieth century.
Given Israel’s constant state of war in the last two years, this death toll from terrorism seems like a relatively small number. Indeed, Israel has not suffered anything on the scale of what it endured during past periods of heightened violence. In the 1990s, car bombs, suicide attacks, and kidnappings, such as the 1996 suicide bombing at a bus station in Jerusalem that killed 26 people and another a week later that killed 19, helped derail peace talks. In the second intifada, Israel endured a staggering 138 suicide bombings, including 53 just in 2002, in addition to thousands of shootings and other less lethal forms of attack. Over 1,000 Israelis died during that period.
In addition to substate groups, such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Iran regularly used terrorism against Israel, often working with Hezbollah, its closest proxy. Among other attacks, in 1992, Iran and Hezbollah bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people. In 1994, they killed 84 people when they bombed a Jewish community center in Argentina (Iran and Hezbollah regularly claim that Jewish and Israeli targets are identical). A suspected Hezbollah-linked suicide bomber blew up a bus full of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria in 2012, killing five Israelis and the Bulgarian bus driver. All these attacks, Iran and Hezbollah claimed, were revenge for Israeli offenses, including the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists and the targeting of Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon.
And yet now, amid the ongoing devastation of Gaza and after Israel has acted aggressively and provocatively throughout the Middle East, Israelis both at home and abroad have not faced the same level of threat. Israel’s adversaries certainly should not be short of motivation. In June, Israel conducted a sustained bombing campaign that destroyed much of Iran’s nuclear program. It assassinated numerous Iranian military commanders and nuclear scientists. In addition to the human and technical losses, the Israeli offensive was a humiliation for the Iranian regime, which had defined itself in large part by its dogged defiance of Israel. In September and October 2024, following a sustained low-level war, Israel defanged Hezbollah through a slew of assassinations, including the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s revered longtime leader. Israeli intelligence targeted thousands of Hezbollah operatives in a stunning, bloody bombing spree that rigged pagers and walkie-talkies to explode, and the Israeli military launched a devastating bombing campaign against the group’s leadership and military infrastructure (in the process killing and maiming many civilians). Hezbollah, like Iran, had derived its legitimacy and popular appeal from its fight against Israel. With Hezbollah’s vulnerabilities profoundly exposed, the one-sided conflict in 2024 was an abject humiliation for the once much-vaunted group.
Hamas, of course, has faced an all-out assault from Israel, losing almost its entire leadership and thousands of fighters. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to destroy the group. Hamas, in contrast to Iran and Hezbollah, has little incentive to refrain from attacks: Israel’s campaign is relentless, and old forms of terrorism may be the best way to get revenge and demonstrate Hamas’s continued relevance. Israel has also greatly expanded operations in the West Bank, targeting Hamas and other Palestinian militants there, as well as allowing Israeli settlers to run amok and harass, assault, and even kill Palestinians. Settler attacks in the first few months of 2025 increased 30 percent over the previous year.
These attacks on Palestinians could easily engender large-scale retaliatory violence. And yet they have not, despite all the anger and horror that Israeli behavior has inspired among Palestinians and in the wider region in recent years.
Deadly Deterrence
Several factors explain why Israel has not suffered a spate of more traditional terrorist attacks. Israel has devastated, and then devastated again, the leadership of Hamas, Hezbollah, and now Iran. As Israeli campaigns against Hamas in the past have demonstrated, killing terrorist group leaders, especially at a rapid pace, can undermine the overall effectiveness and capacity of these outfits. The constant churn of senior figures creates confusion among the rank and file and makes it difficult to stage operations. Guarding against Israeli strikes also creates its own logistical problems. Leaders must avoid phones, email, and other forms of communication for fear of having their locations revealed. They must trust few people and meet with fewer. In short, they cannot perform the functions of leadership if they want to stay alive.
To be sure, disrupting the leadership of terrorist groups does not stop all terrorism. Moreover, uncoordinated attacks, often by motivated individuals acting on their own, can still occur, as has happened in Israel since 2023. But without structures of coordination and direction, terrorists will struggle to pull off more complex operations that have a better chance of success and can kill large numbers of people.
Israel’s military and intelligence activities in the West Bank have also constrained Hamas and other militant groups even as they have hurt Palestinians. Israeli forces have flooded into the West Bank, arresting suspected terrorists and killing others. Operation Iron Wall, for instance, conducted in January right after the announcement of a cease-fire in Gaza, saw Israeli troops and tanks swarm into Jenin as well as over 100 air and drone strikes on Palestinian targets. Israeli officials insist that they are simply seeking to snuff out launch points for attacks into Israel, but the Israeli military appears to be preparing for a long-term presence in Jenin, Tulkarm, and other areas in the West Bank that it considers hot spots of Palestinian militancy.
Israel has also greatly expanded its use of administrative detention in the West Bank and cut off some parts of the territory from others, hindering militants—and ordinary Palestinians—from moving back and forth. Such a heavy-handed approach has, at least according to Israeli official statistics, yielded positive results: compared with 2024, terrorist plots originating in the West Bank are down significantly.
Israel has also blocked many Palestinians from entering Israel itself. In addition to cutting off Gaza, Israel suspended around 150,000 work permits for Palestinians in the West Bank, preventing them from crossing into Israel. These movement restrictions, both within the West Bank and between the West Bank and Israel, will no doubt have made it harder for militants to stage operations in Israel proper. Israeli authorities have claimed that it foiled over 1,000 significant plots in 2024 in the West Bank.
In addition, Israel has hardened its internal defenses and borders. After the October 7 attacks, Israel quickly repaired the breached security barrier along its border with Gaza. The Israeli military has also established buffer zones inside Gaza itself and maintained forces at several posts inside Lebanon. It has deployed troops along Egypt’s border with Gaza and Jordan’s border with the West Bank to clamp down on weapons smuggling into Palestinian territories. And it has bolstered its forces along its borders with Lebanon and Syria. These steps make it harder for Hamas, Hezbollah, and other militant groups to infiltrate operatives into Israel.
Israeli authorities have stepped up monitoring of Palestinian citizens of Israel; Arabs constitute roughly a fifth of the total Israeli population (excluding the West Bank and Gaza Strip). Members of this community were among the victims of October 7, but the scale of Israel’s retaliation in Gaza and the West Bank has no doubt radicalized some Israeli Arabs against the country. The Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security and counterintelligence service, has increased its surveillance of neighborhoods with high proportions of Arabs and has arrested hundreds.
With Israel on the front foot in military campaigns in Gaza and the West Bank and with settlers on the rampage, Palestinian militants are focusing on operations in these areas rather than finding targets within Israel. Palestinian militants, for instance, frequently use roadside bombs against Israeli forces in the West Bank. But the vast majority of militant attacks on Israeli troops have not resulted in casualties.
Fatigue and disillusionment may be setting in among the Palestinians. Polling in May indicated that 75 percent of West Bank Palestinians fear the war will spread into the West Bank, leading to the kind of destruction seen in Gaza. Although approximately half of Palestinians across Gaza and the West Bank still support Hamas’s decision to attack on October 7, this support has fallen from a high of 72 percent in December 2023. Many Palestinians still believe that fighting Israel is appropriate, but the devastation of Gaza is causing many to think twice about the costs of violence.
For Hezbollah and perhaps Iran, another factor is in play: deterrence. Both before and after the 2024 Israeli campaigns, Hezbollah did not want to escalate the war, worried that it would lose, as indeed happened. Iran, too, sought to walk a fine line before the 12-day war in June, using missiles and drones to attack Israel but signaling that it sought to avoid escalation, even alerting Israeli officials in advance so that civilians could reach shelters and that Israel could ready its defenses.
It is probable that, today, Israel has succeeded in deterring both Iran and Hezbollah from attacking it, at least for a little while. Iran has little interest in renewing an all-out war with Israel. Iranian-supported terrorist attacks would disrupt the fragile cease-fire and any negotiations toward a peace deal, leading to a resumption in fighting, possibly with further American involvement. Hezbollah, reeling from the blows it received last year, was unable to support Iran militarily in its ill-fated war with Israel.
The Cost of Success
Israel’s devastating campaigns against a wide array of groups and its efforts to subdue Palestinians have, so far, been effective, but sustaining these efforts requires a high operational tempo that is draining the country. Its military, which relies heavily on reserves, is not designed for long, grinding campaigns, such as what it is conducting in Gaza. Israel has had to raise taxes to finance the war, and constant fighting has created labor shortages as well as an uncertain environment for investors. Weary Israeli reservists are exhausted by repeated deployments and increasingly bitter toward ultra-Orthodox Israelis, who are exempt from mandatory service in the armed forces, an exception that is fostering social and political divisions.
The Israeli military’s death toll is also considerable. Over 400 Israeli soldiers have died fighting in Gaza, and another 80 have died on the northern front fighting Hezbollah. Twenty-eight Israelis died from missile attacks in the latest exchanges with Iran. These numbers pale in comparison with the military losses suffered by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, but they are still large numbers for a small, casualty-sensitive state.
The number of Israeli dead is dwarfed by the number of people killed by Israel across the region in the last two years. Some estimates place the casualties Iran suffered during the 12-day war close to 1,000, with hundreds of civilians slain. Israeli strikes in Lebanon left almost 4,000 dead, many of whom were civilians, while Israel has killed dozens of Yemenis and approximately 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7. Civilian deaths in Gaza are far higher, with tens of thousands dying (in total, close to 60,000 Gazans have perished, a figure that includes Hamas fighters).
Beyond the carnage, Israeli authorities also appear to be pursuing an expansionist ideological agenda long harbored by the country’s far right. Actions in Gaza and the West Bank have led to the mass displacement of Palestinians. In the West Bank, counterterrorism operations in refugee camps dovetail with the goal of extreme right-wing politicians to dislodge their residents and to divide the West Bank into isolated enclaves, preventing Palestinians from establishing a contiguous state. Many Israelis may not care or may see their country’s conduct as a necessary evil in a fundamentally just campaign against terrorist groups and the governments that support them. Israel’s reputation, however, has plummeted around the world, including in the United States. That fall does not hinder Israeli operations today, but it may shape them tomorrow.
Nor is the threat of international terrorism necessarily diminished. Hamas has not hit Israeli targets outside Israel or the Palestinian territories, but the risk of attacks from Iran and Hezbollah remains high. A suspected Iranian operative was arrested this year in Denmark for scouting Jewish sites in Berlin, including the German-Israeli Society.
Israel’s military-heavy approach also reduces the feasibility of other options. Although the October 7 terrorist attacks raised some hopes that a two-state solution or other negotiated settlement might be the final outcome of Israel’s destruction of Hamas, Israeli leaders and the public have little faith that peace talks could work. On the other side, Israel’s demolition and occupation of much of Gaza has made Palestinians all the less willing to reconcile with and forgive Israel. Israel’s actions in the West Bank have further undermined the officials of the Palestinian Authority and others who have sought to negotiate with Israel.
With no political solution in sight, Israel will likely continue its “mow the grass” approach to Gaza and the wider region. It will focus on reducing the capacities of its enemies, acknowledging that any military campaign will have only temporary effects and that Israel will eventually need to do it again and again to keep the threat from growing back. Such a strategy may succeed in protecting Israelis from terrorist violence. But it will invariably harm civilians and reduce the chances of a political settlement in the long term. In seeking to protect itself from terrorism, Israel will be creating costly occupations and forever wars that will drain its economy, worsen social divisions, and deepen the country’s international isolation.
