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Akbar Novruz

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Former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon has warned that Israel may be winning individual battles while losing the broader war, arguing that its military successes have failed to translate into a strategic victory.

In an interview on Rumble, Ayalon said Israeli forces had achieved significant battlefield gains against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, but argued that none of those victories had delivered the political outcome needed to end the conflict.

“Israel is winning battles, but losing the war,” Ayalon said.

He noted that Hamas and Hezbollah had suffered heavy losses but had not been dismantled and continued to represent strategic threats to Israel.

According to Ayalon, the fundamental problem is that Israel lacks a clear political objective for the war. Without such an objective, he said, military operations risk becoming an end in themselves rather than a means of creating a more secure political reality.

“A war without a political objective does not end in victory,” he said.

The former security chief also warned that Israel is losing the battle for international legitimacy and over the ideas shaping the conflict.

He described the war as being fought simultaneously on two fronts: the conventional military battlefield and a broader struggle over ideas and ideology.

Military force alone cannot defeat an idea or ideology, Ayalon argued, saying that Israel’s continued military campaign without offering Palestinians a credible political horizon could ultimately undermine the country’s long-term future.

“If we continue this war without giving the Palestinians a political horizon, we are heading towards the end of the Zionist project,” he warned.

Ayalon, who served as director of Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency from 2000 to 2002, has repeatedly advocated a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has been critical of approaches that rely primarily on military power.