Israel’s decision to go to war against Hamas following the October 7 atrocities elicited not only criticism from rivals and enemies, but also doubt, skepticism, and even opposition from our American friends. They even sent military experts to Israel to “advise” it not to go to war, since in their view it would not be able to decisively defeat Hamas.

You will get bogged down in a futile battle, they warned, and sink into the Gaza quagmire, just as you sank into the Lebanese one four decades ago, and as America itself got entangled in Iraq and Afghanistan and earlier in Vietnam.

Israel did not heed this advice, and rightly so. The war against Hamas brought significant achievements: The IDF now effectively controls most of the strip’s territory and nothing happens without Israel’s approval—no civilian movement, no transfer of equipment and food, and of course no rehabilitation activity. True, individual terrorists and even terror cells are still active in the field, just as they are in Yehuda and Shomron, but Hamas, as an organized army with commands, camps, and weapon caches, and as a governing body managing life in the strip—has been decisively defeated and toppled.

However, every war is designed not only to achieve a military decision but also a diplomatic victory, and this has been delayed considerably due to the Israeli government’s hesitation to make decisions about the future of the strip: whether to establish a military government there and perhaps hand it over to the Palestinian Authority, or perhaps even withdraw from it and leave chaos under which Hamas may regain control of the strip.

This reality underlies the claim that after the fighting phase, we have entered the phase of the Gaza mud. However, Gaza is neither Lebanon nor Vietnam—not only because it is a war of no choice that was imposed on us, but also because the threat is on our border, unlike distant Vietnam thousands of miles away from the U.S. Gaza is a unique case because the strip does not provide depth for terror, unlike Lebanon for example, where Hezbollah can fight us while relying on the country’s expanses, as well as in Syrian, Iraqi and even Iranian territory. But the Gaza of post-October 7 is similar, then, to the Yehuda and Shomron area, which also lacks geographic depth for terror, and therefore poses an ongoing security challenge for us, but not a strategic threat.

None of this has convinced the Americans. Now they oppose action in Rafah and are pinning their hopes on yet another of their peace plans, this time in the format of a ceasefire and ending the war in Gaza, establishing a Palestinian state, and achieving lasting peace in the Middle East.

The devil is in the details, as they say. How exactly can peace be made or the conflict ended when Hamas still rules Rafah, and when the fighting stops it will try to regain control of the entire Strip? And what about Hezbollah and Iran? From distant Washington, everything looks rosy and optimistic.

But one doesn’t need to be a great expert to know that nothing will come of all the American plans, and they will end up being thrown into the dustbin of history, just like previous plans to resolve the conflict that Washington sought to advance. Like the “Alpha Plan” in the 1950s whose principles were tearing the Negev away from Israel and populating it with refugees in exchange for peace, through the Rogers Plan (1969), Jimmy Carter’s plans in the 1970s, the Reagan Plan in the 1980s, and ending with President Barack Obama’s vision and Donald Trump’s plan in the last decade.

The Americans have good intentions, but also naivety and a tendency to view things through rose-colored glasses that make them believe that a bloody religious-ethno conflict of over 100 years can be resolved with goodwill.

But this does not mean that Israel can continue to drag its feet and behave as if it has all the time in the world. For failure to make decisions about the future could rob us of the hard-won fruit of the IDF’s achievements on the battlefield.

Eyal Zisser is a lecturer in the Middle East History Department at Tel Aviv University.