The Israeli occupation state currently adopts an excessive security doctrine, which over time has transformed into a permanent functional structure that necessitates the continuous existence of a 'necessary enemy.' This strategic quagmire in which Israel is sinking is not merely a fleeting situation, but a deep manifestation of the settler mentality crisis that conflates actual existence with geographical expansion.
The multiple fronts extending from the Gaza Strip to Tehran demonstrate a comprehensive depletion of the geopolitical, military, and symbolic resources of the occupation. The failure of the cumulative deterrence doctrine turns every operational arena into a spatial and temporal trap, offering no sustainable victory or long-term political investment.
The chasm between mobilizing political discourse and the reality on the ground now represents an existential shift towards a complete collision with geographical facts. The slogan of 'absolute victory' raised by the Israeli leadership in Gaza has become merely a linguistic ritual devoid of content, concealing an inability to translate military might into political achievements.
On the northern front, promises to crush Hezbollah clashed with the geography of entrenched resistance, turning the region into a scene of reverse demographic displacement for settlers. This field failure reflects the army's inability to protect its strategic depth against unconventional threats that exceed the capacity of aerial bombardment.
Iran represents the major knot in the Israeli mind, where decision-makers imagine the possibility of liquidating a geopolitical entity comprising eighty-eight million people through military force. This perception ignores the complex demographic and political reality, and plunges Israel into a fantasy of uprooting that cannot be achieved on the ground.
The geoeconomic cost of these open wars is increasing, causing erosion in the infrastructure of historical Western alliances with the occupation state. Furthermore, the rise in energy prices resulting from regional instability has begun to hit the economies of allies, generating structural discontent within the halls of the US Congress.
Israeli political capital erodes with every new airstrike, accelerating the pace of complete international isolation that has begun to loom. The current leadership embodies a personification of the Zionist project's crisis, where the prime minister reduces political being to media appearances and narrow personal gains.
In this context, the concept of 'investing in calculated loss' emerges as an entry point for redefining victory away from destructive instinct. History confirms that addiction to direct power generates strategic blindness that hastens self-fall, just as happened in the experiences of previous empires that exceeded their capacity limits.
The current situation can be likened to sumo wrestlers, where a temporary withdrawal becomes a means to destabilize the opponent rigid in their positions. Tactical withdrawal in military science is not surrender, but a process of rationalizing the conflict that allows pressure to be transformed into a collapse in the enemy's offensive structure.
Historical memory recalls Menachem Begin's model when he returned Sinai to Egypt according to the Camp David Accords, despite being accused at the time of humiliating concession. Subsequent decades proved that withdrawal was the most profound step in securing the southern front and disengaging between biblical myth and national interest.
The current geopolitical stalemate and adherence to every inch of land as an identity doctrine transforms inflexibility into a self-destructive tool for Israeli society. This hybrid alliance between religious fundamentalism and media populism paralyzes the ability to produce any rational regressive option that protects the entity from a major collision.
In the confrontation with Tehran, a distinction must be made between the actual nuclear threat and the illusion of being able to change the Iranian regime by brute force. Simplistic discourse conflates the necessity of containment through diplomatic tools with daydreams that call for the uprooting of regional powers entrenched in geography and history.
Any future regional system will force parties to coexist with complex actors instead of attempting their failed liquidation, as happened between the major European powers. The principle of comprehensive containment is the procedural model that can spare the region mutual wars of annihilation in which there are no victors.
Recognizing that the 'real enemy' sometimes resides within closed decision-making rooms is the first step out of the dilemma of permanent attrition. The small step backward is what pulls the rug out from under the instigators, and redefines power as the ability to freeze and wisely manage conflict.
The slogan of absolute victory in Gaza has turned into a hollow linguistic ritual that conceals a structural inability to translate military power into political gain.
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The Quagmire of Absolute Power: A Reading in the Psychology of Strategic Defeat and the Rationalization of Israeli Withdrawal