There was never going to be a “winner” of the bloody conflict that has raged in the Middle East for the past 15 months — not considering how the war began or the destruction it has caused. But after a tentative ceasefire went into effect on Sunday, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have largely been able to accomplish their objectives, while conceding far less than seemed possible for much of the course of the war.

“Let’s start with what’s most obvious and tragic: We lost the war on October 7,” Nimrod Novik, a former senior adviser to the late Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, told Vox. “Everything after that was trying to restore our confidence in our strength, in our security, in the fact that Israel is well protected by our security forces. I believe that objective has been accomplished.”

Netanyahu sounded a triumphant note in announcing the ceasefire last week, saying that “all of the objectives of the war” had been accomplished, including “returning all of our hostages, eliminating Hamas’ military and governing capabilities and ensuring that Gaza will never again constitute a threat to our country.”

Following the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, that killed some 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 hostages, Israel’s war in Gaza killed more than 46,000 people, according to local authorities. Thousands more were killed in Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Around 90 percent of Gaza’s population has been displaced, and malnutrition and disease are rampant. Multiple international organizations have accused Israel of genocide and Netanyahu himself has been charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

And yet, in the view of many of the Israeli government’s backers, the campaign since October 7 — in both Gaza and the wider Middle East — succeeded not just in enhancing Israel’s security, but in dealing a massive blow to the regional ambitions of Iran, which prior to the attack was seen by Israeli leaders as the much more serious threat to their security.

Netanyahu, who for months faced protests and calls for his resignation over the security failures that led to October 7, the failure to secure the release of the hostages afterward, and a raft of preexisting personal scandals, has seen a stunning rise in his poll numbers. And despite frequent tension between the US and Israel in recent months over Israeli tactics and the growing civilian toll of the war, the outgoing Biden administration believes its ongoing support for Israel — in the face of widespread criticism and the loss of at least some support during the last presidential election — was ultimately vindicated by the results.

“It is just impossible, and I’m speaking from the Middle East, to overstate how significantly this region has changed,” said a senior Biden administration official, speaking on background shortly after the ceasefire was announced on January 15. “Our adversaries are significantly weaker. Our partners and allies are significantly stronger.”

History has not been kind to previous predictions of regional transformation in the Middle East: Recall former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s infamous 2006 description of a previous Israel-Hezbollah war as the “birth pangs of a new Middle East,” or for that matter Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s assessment, just days before October 7, that the region was “quieter” than it had been for two decades.

The reality is that whatever security Israel may have bought itself with 15 months of brutal fighting may prove to be short-lived. And the number one reason is that Hamas — the militant group responsible for October 7 — is anything but destroyed.

Hamas is down, but not out

Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials had long vowed to continue the war until “Hamas is destroyed.” By that standard, at least, the war effort has not succeeded.

Numbers tell the story: Of the roughly 30,000 fighters in Hamas’s ranks on October 7, the Israeli military believes it has killed around 17,000 — including Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the attack — and detained thousands more. But US officials say the group has managed to recruit nearly as many fighters as it has lost.

The ceasefire deal, which is divided into three phases, largely punted on the question of Gaza’s future governance. Right now, all that’s been formally agreed is phase 1 of the deal, which includes a cessation of........

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