Israel’s Wars of Choice: 1956, 1982, 2026

Nearly every war Israel has fought has been reactive and mostly unplanned. It had to fend off armed attack from other states in 1948, 1973, and 1991. It was dragged into conflict initiated by non-state guerrilla actors in 2006 and 2023. It has been engaged in counterinsurgency or counterterrorism of one kind or another too many times to count. Even when its forces did fire the first shot, it was nearly always in wars that Israel did not seek and did not adequately plan for, most notably in 1967. At other times, Israel took advantage of opportunities to degrade and destroy nuclear-weapons programs in enemy states, as in 1981, 2007, and 2025.

But on three occasions, Israel has initiated major wars that were carefully planned as part of a complex and sweeping attempt to rearrange the regional order. And these plans each produced results that diverged considerably from what their respective planners, strategists, and decision-makers anticipated. In 1956, Israeli forces made a rapid thrust into the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, ostensibly to stop Egypt from blocking the passage of Israeli shipping through the Strait of Tiran and the Suez Canal. But the war, and the collusion with Britain and France, had larger aims. In the minds of its planners, toppling Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime in Egypt would refashion the region in a dramatic and positive way at a critical moment of both the Cold War and the inter-Arab conflict between revolutionary regimes and conservative monarchies.

In 1982, Israeli forces again breached a border and invaded a neighbouring country with the goal of remaking its government and—hopefully, as an aftereffect—those of at least one if not two other states. The proximate cause of the war in Lebanon related to the belligerent presence of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in the country’s south, but it was conceived as a much broader strategic initiative that would (if all went well) reshape a region that was in diplomatic flux following the shocks of Egypt’s peace with Israel and the Islamist revolution in Iran.

And now, in 2026, Israel has once again initiated a war that was thought-out and planned as part of a bold strategic initiative and not just as a reaction to an exogenous shock or fleeting moment of opportunity. Like the previous two conflicts, regime change was sought as an opening salvo in remaking the region and fundamentally altering the alliance structure and the balance of power.

While it is still too early to make a comprehensive assessment of the 2026 war, which is still ongoing, it is possible to examine it through the lens of the two earlier wars and draw some tentative conclusions and raise some questions for further inquiry.