In early September 2024, senior IDF officers were humming the biggest hit by musician Daniel Solomon.
At that time, the military was preparing for a commando operation codenamed “Many Ways” to destroy a secret precision missile factory that Iran had built on Syrian soil. Fighters from the elite Shaldag unit, who were to lead the operation, had already packed their equipment and were ready to fly to the target, which was hidden deep underground not far from the city of Masyaf on Syria's western coast. The plan for the daring operation had been approved by the Israeli Air Force commander, the IDF chief of staff, the defense minister, and the prime minister, and all that remained was the final approval to send the fighters to the helicopters. “It was a jaw-dropping operation,” says a person who was involved in the preparations for it.
At that point in time, the ground maneuver in Rafah was nearing completion, IAF strikes in Lebanon were becoming more efficient, and about a month earlier, Hezbollah's “chief of staff” Fouad Shukr had been eliminated in an impressive targeted killing. The political and military leadership in Israel, which had gained confidence as days passed since October 7, felt that the time was right to also strike the Iranian missile factory. But there was one thing that worried decision-makers in Jerusalem before they would approve the Shaldag operation in the heart of Syria: America.
“A clear no-go”
In fact, America had worried Israeli decision-makers from the very first moment of the war, and vice versa. Throughout the months of fighting, the two countries conducted a complex give-and-take relationship that sometimes spilled over into confrontations both below and above ground.
“It was really like a tug of war,” describes an Israeli source who was deeply involved in the feverish contacts with Washington. “The problem was that by the time of the Shaldag operation in Syria, the rope with the US was stretched to the limit. The main thing the US feared throughout was opening a front against Iran and deteriorating into an all-out war. The key word in this aspect was stability. It was clear to me that if we attack the Iranian missile factory now, the American administration would not like it, to say the least. You can't tell the Americans ‘Listen, we're in trouble in Gaza and Lebanon, war with Iran is about to break out, so we decided to also carry out a raid deep in Syria’. From their perspective it was a clear no-go.”
That source was not the only one who thought so. In the days before the operation, just by chance, a senior Israeli official met IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and whispered words of warning in his ear. That official, who had visited the White House just a few days earlier and sensed which way the winds were blowing there, told the chief of staff privately that in his opinion, if Israel carried out the operation without getting US approval in advance, “it would be the point of no return in relations with them.”
The senior official was preaching to the choir. Halevi also held the position that there was no choice but to coordinate the operation with the Americans. Beyond the fear of severing ties with the White House, the action was to take place deep in Syrian territory. If something went wrong, Halevi knew, the Americans would be the only ones who could help. Halevi's stance also received backing from his superior, then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
However, in the rest of Israel's political leadership, the assumption was that if the White House heard about the operation in advance, the Americans would strongly oppose it, and might even leak its very existence to thwart it. “On the one hand, we needed their help, and on the other hand, we assumed that if we tell them, the operation would get called off,” a source told Israel Hayom. “It was a serious dilemma.”
The solution to the dilemma, as always throughout the Israeli-American roller coaster of the war, focused on presentation: in coordination between the political and military echelons in Israel, it was decided that the one who would inform the Americans about the operation would be the chief of staff. The recipient of the news on the other side would be his good friend, CENTCOM commander General Michael Kurilla.
Reassuring messages
Assigning the sensitive task to Halevi was not coincidental. It stemmed from the assumption that the Israeli chief of staff was perceived in the White House as a moderate and level-headed figure, who acts out of practical motives and himself prefers to avoid escalation with Iran. “The military, and the chief of staff in particular, are perceived by the Americans as the sane element in Israel,” an Israeli source puts it.
But more importantly, a professional relationship developed between Halevi and Kurilla throughout the months of war that evolved into a close friendship. During the war, Kurilla visited Israel 15 times, and often sat down for a heart-to-heart talk with Halevi in the chief of staff's office on the 14th floor of the Kirya, on the couches overlooking Tel Aviv's skyline. The two battle-hardened generals probably will never admit it, but a source who knows both of them describes the friendship between them in a very non-military word – love.
Israel sought to take advantage of this love. With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's approval, Halevi met privately with Kurilla, updated his American counterpart on the details of the operation in Syria and its necessity, reassured him about opening a front against Iran, and asked him to gently convey the message to his bosses in Washington. Halevi also emphasized that the missiles Iran was producing near Masyaf could reach all parts of the Middle East and one day hit American bases. “Halevi knows the American generals and knows that when there's something that could attack them, they don't see straight,” explains a source who was privy to the contacts. “Beyond that, Kurilla understands Washington perfectly. He knows what language to use with the White House to make an operation of this type go down smoothly.”
At the same time, Defense Minister Gallant, who was perceived among the Americans as the most reliable figure within the volatile Israeli government, also had a conversation with his counterpart, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant did not update Austin on all the details of the operation, but did lay out the groundwork for a significant action Israel was planning soon. “Kurilla already updated me that you're plotting something, but didn't elaborate,” Austin told Gallant. “That's fine. I trust his judgment.”
Kurilla proved, and not for the first time, his diplomatic abilities. The American general prepared CENTCOM forces for the operation in Syria, but did so under Tehran's radar, and to a large extent also under Washington's. Only at the right moment, according to sources in Israel, did Kurilla update Secretary of Defense Austin and the White House on all the details of the operation, while repeating the reassuring messages conveyed to him by IDF Chief of Staff Halevi.
The White House was convinced not to thwart the action in Syria. The rest is history.
Divide and conquer
The case of Operation “Many Ways” is just one expression of how the relationship between Israel and the US was conducted during the war. On the one hand, cooperation between the sides reached the level of unequivocal American support for Israel, meticulous approval of Israeli attack plans by American officials, and personal involvement of senior White House officials in cabinet meetings and General Staff forums, as had not been seen before.
On the other hand, Israel-US relations during the war did not proceed smoothly or in perfect harmony. Far from it. There were also cases where Israel launched critical operations without updating the US in advance – such as in the case of the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah – or carried out moves contrary to the White House's clear position and aroused its anger, such as the entry into Rafah.
More than once, passionate arguments erupted between the sides that escalated to shouting and even cursing. “He's a f- liar,” President Joe Biden said about Netanyahu after Israel entered Rafah by ground, according to an American report.
Despite these disagreements, some of which also delayed war moves, from Netanyahu's perspective, the continued American support for Israel was a priceless gift. Conversations with a long line of sources reveal that the entire Israeli political and security leadership, from the prime minister down, was and remains in agreement that without backing from Washington, Israel would have been forced to stop the war before achieving all its goals.
Beyond the American armaments that crossed the Atlantic Ocean and enabled the continuation of IDF attacks in Gaza and Lebanon, the most important thing from Israel's perspective was America's position in the UN Security Council and its ability to veto any resolution that would effectively end the war. “Contrary to popular opinion in Israel, without the Americans we would have closed this war long ago,” as a senior Israeli official puts it. “That's why we had to tread carefully with them and walk on eggshells.”
Those shells were particularly fragile. The war broke out with Democratic President Joe Biden in the White House, whose interests did not always align with Israel's offensive approach, or as a senior Israeli bluntly puts it – “the Democratic administration is anti-combat.” As fate would have it, the war also took place in an election year, in which Biden was under pressure from elements in the Democratic Party who were shocked by the images of destruction streaming from the Gaza Strip, and called for reducing support for Israel and immediately stopping the war.
Israel, therefore, had to navigate the political thicket of Washington, while stretching the American rope to the limit without breaking it. This juggling act relied on personal connections forged between senior Israelis and Americans, careful listening to the nuances of administration officials, and a deep understanding of the decision-making system in Washington. For example, Israeli officials knew how and when to talk to the US State Department, which influences the current President Biden more than anyone but traditionally takes a more confrontational line towards Israel, and when to activate Pentagon officials, who throughout expressed a more permissive approach to Israeli use of force in Gaza and Lebanon.
The Americans also knew how to employ divide-and-conquer tactics. They, for example, drew closer to former minister Benny Gantz, and later to former Defense Minister Gallant, assuming they could help them exert pressure on Netanyahu and within the cabinet. According to a cabinet source, “Gallant ‘softened’ from the moment he started visiting Washington and developing relations with Secretary of Defense Austin. He returned from his first visit to Washington much more American.” Gallant's associates strongly deny this claim and argue that without Gallant, the American rope to Israel would have snapped long ago.
The Americans also knew when to call on senior IDF officers for help, especially the chief of staff, when they lost trust in Israeli politicians. “There were times when Blinken arrived in the country and the chief of staff asked to brief him, but Netanyahu blocked it, for his own reasons,” says an Israeli source. “But Blinken almost always insisted that Herzi come to meet with him, and so it was. He trusted Herzi.” Halevi, in a sense, became the White House's Kurilla.
The Dermer axis
Only now, just before the Biden administration gives way to that of Donald Trump, do those in Israel's political and military system allow themselves to reveal the behind-the-scenes of managing contacts with Washington. This Israel Hayom investigation, based on hours of in-depth conversations with those who were at the center of decision-making in Israel, seeks to map out the complex web of relations between Israel and the US as it developed during the war and behind closed doors.
Throughout these long conversations, we did encounter contradictory descriptions of the same events, and mud-slinging between various officials, but all those interviewed for this article agree on one thing: during the war, proper relations with the US were maintained, and even if they sometimes stood on the brink of collapse, the rope with America never completely torn.
“If you judge it now in retrospect after 15 months, I don't see a single move we wanted to make that didn't happen in the end,” says an enthusiastic Israeli source who was deeply involved in the ties with Washington. “The fact that to this day we haven't reached the ‘end of the runway’ in White House language, and we have time and ability to do what we want in the war, is an extraordinary achievement. In some cases it took time, but in the end, we achieved everything we wanted. We didn't lose America.”
In the test of results, it seems that indeed, Israel managed the fragile relations with big sister America efficiently. An in-depth look at the web of relations between the countries reveals that even if things often slid into ego battles and credit within the Israeli system, the relationship between Jerusalem and Washington was conducted throughout the war in a kind of chaotic synergy that proved its effectiveness.
The central figure in this aspect is Ron Dermer, Netanyahu's ultimate confidant, who is officially defined as minister for strategic affairs but in practice serves as Netanyahu's long arm for American affairs. The experienced Dermer learned well how to stretch the rope with Washington to the limit, especially with Democratic administrations. Particularly memorable is Netanyahu's speech to Congress in 2015, in defiance of President Barack Obama and in the shadow of the emerging nuclear deal with Iran, a speech that Dermer was the architect of as Israel's ambassador to Washington.
Throughout the October 7 war as well, it seems that Dermer was the central axis who managed the relationship with America for Netanyahu, especially with the White House. He spoke regularly with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House envoy to the Middle East Brett McGurk, and shuttled between Washington and Jerusalem in order to grease the squeaky wheels between the capitals, while leveraging his deep familiarity with the American system and the screws that operate it. When Dermer felt his presence might irritate the Americans, he cleared the stage for Gallant, Halevi and others.
More than any other factor, it was Dermer who brought the skill of rope-pulling with Washington to a mastery, while demonstrating how much diplomacy is often a matter of semantics, and doing so with artistry that even the late Jewish former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger could have appreciated.
“Dermer knows how to confront the US, manage crises with it and even reach a rift like in 2015,” says a senior Israeli source privy to the affairs. “But the struggle with the US during the Obama era did not take place during a war. This time there was a real price to any rift with America. Therefore, throughout this period, Dermer and Netanyahu were not willing to accept any dictates from the Americans, but where possible, they did accommodate them. There's an English expression that says ‘to be on the same page’. Israel and the US may not have been on the same paragraph throughout the war, but Dermer made sure they always remained on the same page.”
Message to Hezbollah
The relationship between Israel and the US shadows all the main events of the war. Already in the evening hours of October 7, Halevi first called Kurilla and updated him on what was happening. Halevi did not have to beg for help. Kurilla offered it on his own initiative. “What do you need?” he asked.
The Israeli chief of staff explained to his counterpart that he was mainly worried that Hezbollah would raise its head and join Hamas in a ground attack on the northern border. “If you have an aircraft carrier of yours in the Mediterranean, and if American planes take off from their bases in the Middle East and patrol along Lebanon's coastline, that could help,” Halevi said.
Kurilla promised to check what he could do. In parallel, Netanyahu conveyed identical messages to National Security Advisor Sullivan, and later that day also spoke with Biden himself. “Israel will win the war against Hamas,” Netanyahu told the president, “but Hezbollah needs to get the message from the US: Don't enter the war.”
Another figure who maintained telephone contact with Washington is Gallant, who spoke with his counterpart Austin. During the war, these two would ultimately speak by phone about 200 times and meet on four different occasions. The two former generals would find a common language with each other.
In their first conversation, Gallant was particularly concrete: A few months earlier, the US had moved a huge stockpile of 250,000 artillery shells from Israel and transferred most of them to the Ukrainian army fighting the Russian invasion. Gallant knew that out of this enormous number, 50,000 shells still remained on German soil, not yet supplied to Kyiv. “I have one request,” Gallant told Austin on October 7. “Return those shells to Israel.” Austin agreed.
The Americans also delivered the rest of the goods, and in the first days of the war significantly reinforced their forces in the Middle East and sent two aircraft carriers to the region. “The American actions definitely helped,” says a senior Israeli. “In the Middle East, Israeli deterrence is measured in Fahrenheit, not Celsius. When the Iranian leader sees an American aircraft carrier coming here, his policy changes accordingly. That's a fact.”
But even if Hezbollah initially remained on the fence and contented itself with bombarding Israel from afar, in Israel, they knew that one or two aircraft carriers would not suffice in the long run. In the first meetings of the War Cabinet, the chief of staff estimated it would take the IDF about a year to defeat Hamas’ military wing, and that for this he would need a lot of resources. As Halevi phrased it, it was a “war economy” and pointed to the US as the main factor that would drive the wheels of this economy. Indeed, during the war, the US would transfer more precision munitions to Israel than in all the previous 15 years combined, along with many additional systems. The chief of staff knew he could not afford to lose this supply line. At times, it almost happened.
“We had no partner”
What began on the right foot nearly came to a blow-up very quickly. On October 10, three days after Hamas’ surprise attack, discussions were held in Israel about launching a preemptive strike in Lebanon. The IDF had already built a plan for extensive damage to Hezbollah's rocket array (most of the organization's missiles were still in warehouses at the time, which made hitting them en masse easier), and one piece of intelligence that reached military intelligence contributed another coveted target to the attack: In the afternoon hours of October 11, senior Hezbollah officials were scheduled to meet, including Nasrallah, his deputy Safi al-Din and the commander of the organization's southern Lebanon sector Ibrahim Akil (all of whom would eventually be eliminated), with three senior officials of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. It was a golden opportunity.
The possibility of eliminating Hezbollah's leadership appealed to IDF Chief of Staff Halevi and Defense Minister Gallant. The two also estimated that if they launched a extensive attack in Lebanon, about 15,000 Hezbollah operatives would receive orders to move to the front and equip themselves with emergency communication devices, a plan well known to the intelligence community in Israel. Those communication devices, as Gallant and Halevi already knew then, were booby-trapped and could explode on command. Such an order, if given at the right time, could deliver a decisive blow to the organization (in the end, the communication devices would explode about a year later, when most were in warehouses and not on the bodies of Hezbollah members).
On the morning of October 11, Gallant presented the detailed plan in Netanyahu's office in Tel Aviv, and spoke about restoring Israeli deterrence and creating a strategic advantage for the continuation of the war. The prime minister seemed depressed and pessimistic to him. “If you attack Hezbollah,” Netanyahu said and pointed beyond the window pane, “all these buildings will collapse from their counter-response.” Gallant continued to try, but Netanyahu was not convinced. “Before we do this, I want to talk to the president,” the prime minister finally told the defense minister. Gallant knew at that moment that the attack would not go ahead: He felt that Netanyahu was seeking to use the US, and its tendency to avoid escalations, to thwart the attack in Lebanon.
While Netanyahu waited for his call with the president, Gallant and Dermer entered an office, and at one o'clock in the afternoon called from there to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, the person closest to Biden. When Sullivan heard about the Israeli plan, as expected, he asked the Israeli ministers to wait. “I need to talk about this with the president.” The problem was that the meeting of Hezbollah's leadership was scheduled to take place in just a few hours. There was not much time left to make the decision.
In another channel, IDF Chief of Staff Halevi also tried in his way to convince Biden to support launching an attack in Lebanon. Halevi believed that if he just clearly explained to the president why Israel needed to attack, Biden would accede to the request. Halevi would discover, perhaps for the first time but certainly not the last, that it's not easy to convince Biden to go on the offensive. “If Pompeo (Trump's Secretary of State; A.A.) was still in office I would have told him ‘let's go for this move together’, and we would have had a partner,” says a source who was involved then in cabinet discussions. “But in the Biden administration we had no partner.”
Halevi and Gallant were indeed determined to launch the attack in Lebanon even without approval from Biden – “What do we have an army for if not to use it,” Gallant pounded on the cabinet table – but they did not have a majority. Netanyahu and Dermer, along with Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot who were added to the War Cabinet that evening, voted against the attack and cited their fear of opening another front in the north and the lack of American support. Dermer emphasized that he was willing to go after Lebanon without the White House, but not without Israeli unity – and the preemptive strike was finally taken off the table.
Nine hours in the cabinet
Just as the Americans opposed the preemptive strike in Lebanon, so they opposed the ground entry into Gaza. “In the current administration, diplomacy is a kind of religion,” says a senior Israeli. “Only recently, because of our successes, they changed their tune and understood that sometimes you can also strike with a hammer.”
While the IDF prepared for the ground move and gathered its forces on the Gaza border, Blinken conducted shuttle diplomacy tour between Doha and Jerusalem, in a vain attempt to quickly broker a hostage deal that would prevent the continuation of the war. He also sat for nine hours in a cabinet meeting in the Kirya, while imploring those present to refrain from invading the Strip, to no avail.
Secretary of Defense Austin also tried his luck. On his behalf, three American generals, veterans of the battles to capture Mosul and Fallujah in Iraq, met with Gallant in an attempt to dissuade him from a ground move in the Strip, arguing that it would lead to thousands of dead soldiers. “We know this from Iraq,” they told him. “It will be a disaster.” Biden too, in a phone call, tried in vain to dissuade Netanyahu from a ground entry into Gaza.
Sullivan and Blinken, in turn, exerted heavy pressure on Dermer. But in one of the cabinet meetings held in those days, Dermer asked the chief of staff if he could achieve the goal of toppling Hamas’ rule even without physically entering Gaza, and as expected received a negative answer. “As far as I'm concerned, Herzi's answer is good enough,” Dermer told Sullivan.
If the US was ultimately willing to accept the ground maneuver in Gaza, there was one thing it insisted on firmly – humanitarian aid. “Especially Blinken,” says an Israeli source. “He's the one who pushed the hardest on this issue.”
Blinken may have understood the storm of emotions in Israel following the October 7 massacre, but he made Biden's trip, who was supposed to arrive then for an exceptional support visit to the country, conditional on allowing aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
Netanyahu, who according to sources we spoke with actually supported allowing the aid in, struggled with this issue mainly due to internal politics. In the end, Israel allowed a few lone aid trucks to enter Gaza, just so the American president would deign to board Air Force One and come to Israel.
Throughout all the following months, the Americans would continue to press time after time to increase humanitarian aid to the Strip, according to sources in Israel, especially due to the growing pressure on the president from within the Democratic Party ahead of the primaries. “Administration officials won't admit that ‘we have primaries hanging over our heads’,” says a senior Israeli, “but will say ‘there's pressure from American public opinion’.”
Under the watchful eye of the US, and especially the State Department for whom the humanitarian aid issue was top priority, humanitarian aid entered the Strip, first hesitantly and then in a flood. By the way, according to sources who were at the center of decision-making in Israel, the maneuver in Gaza was limited throughout not only because of the humanitarian issue, but also due to the need to keep reserves of manpower and munitions in case war breaks out in the north.
The one who was mainly disappointed by this was Gallant. “I told you we should have attacked Lebanon first, finished the war against the stronger Hezbollah, and only then moved on to the weaker enemy, Hamas,” Gallant said bitterly in almost every cabinet meeting throughout the war.
Shakespearean expression
From the get-go, the Israelis claimed the move in Gaza would end by Christmas, a kind of Christmas gift to the Democratic administration. But Christmas approached, and the enormous number of tunnels the IDF surprisingly discovered in the Strip pushed back the end of the maneuver further and further. Meanwhile, the presidential elections drew closer to their date, and Dermer held difficult conversations with Blinken and Sullivan, whose patience for the Israeli move inside Gaza was running out. “Finish the operation in Gaza, Hamas is an idea that cannot be defeated,” Blinken told Dermer with the start of the new year. “Tony,” Dermer replied, “Nazism is also an idea. So yes, there are Nazis in various places, but they don't have a state. Hamas still does.”
As the maneuver continued, and also reached Khan Yunis, American pressure intensified. Dermer had to explain to Blinken and Sullivan again and again that the maneuver was nearing its end, and that the IDF claimed it would only last another two weeks. Sometimes, but not always, this was indeed the assessment the IDF provided in cabinet meetings. At some point Dermer could no longer use the words “two weeks” and switched to the Shakespearean expression “fortnight,” hoping the linguistic hair-splitting would buy him a little more time.
Dermer's maneuvers worked, and the American rope remained slack, except for the ongoing pressure on the humanitarian aid issue. But the images from Gaza flooded social networks and television channels in the US, and the approaching presidential elections weighed on the Democrats more and more.
Throughout all the following months, the Americans would continue to press time after time to increase humanitarian aid to the Strip, according to sources in Israel, especially due to the growing pressure on the president from within the Democratic Party ahead of the primaries. “Administration officials won't admit that ‘we have primaries hanging over our heads’,” says a senior Israeli, “but will say ‘there's pressure from American public opinion’.”
In early December, towards Christmas and with Israel's entry into Khan Yunis, again contrary to the Americans’ opinion, Israel noticed that the pace of munition supply from the US was dwindling. “In the first months the White House told the Pentagon ‘give Israel what they ask for’,” says an Israeli source, “but the moment the Pentagon stopped receiving a phone call every day, they were less quick. In fact, a kind of informal embargo began on us.”
During that period, Gallant left one of the cabinet meetings in the Kirya, entered the office of the head of the IDF Operations Directorate, and held a scheduled phone call from there with Blinken. “There's an unclear slowdown in granting approvals and the pace of transferring munitions,” he told him. The Secretary of State answered honestly: “It's not simple here… What do you intend to do with our bombs?” Gallant replied that Israel would do what it needs to with them. “That could be a problem,” Blinken said.
Gallant returned to the cabinet room and reported that the US was effectively imposing a partial embargo on Israel. “From that moment on, everything was conducted in fear that the Americans would turn off the tap,” says a senior Israeli. “In March 2024 the Americans are already telling us ‘don't take us for granted’.”
“Excruciating tango dance”
After the move in Khan Yunis, and while American patience was running out and even threatening the continuation of the fighting, Israel had to make a decision: It was clear to the IDF that the next move in the war should be a ground entry into Rafah and Lebanon. But various considerations caused the military to recommend to the cabinet to choose only one of the two arenas. “It wasn't possible to enter Rafah and Lebanon with full force simultaneously,” says an Israeli source. “In the end, the decision was to go to Rafah.”
This was not going to be simple. According to a source who was involved in contacts with the US ahead of the entry into Rafah, “Rafah was an excruciating tango dance of several weeks,” with the Americans. Another senior Israeli says that “there's no doubt this was the biggest clash with them during the war.”
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