From Syria and Lebanon to Gaza and the West Bank, Israeli troops are establishing positions they are unlikely to abandon anytime soon.

Quietly, as a result of the Hamas attack in October 2023, Israel has changed its defense policy. At the time, the Gaza border was assumed secure thanks to a small group of soldiers standing guard and high-tech fencing. The intelligence assessment was that the Palestinian militant group didn’t have the ability or intention to cross over.

Under the new policy, military deterrence now outweighs assessments of enemy capability and intent. The Israel Defense Forces is stationing troops beyond national borders and preemptively bombing suspicious installations and movements to cripple adversaries away from home.

It’s a high-risk policy that could embolden militants in the wider region and spark further wars, especially if Iran enters the fray. It makes a Palestinian state far less likely, making it difficult for Israel to forge new alliances with regional states. But Israel says the 2023 failure forced this approach upon it.

“I asked our military commanders, what’s the main lesson of Oct. 7?” Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a speech last month. “They said we can’t allow radical organizations to exist close to Israel’s border, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, near the settlements,” in the West Bank.

“And that is now our policy,” he said.

Israel’s shift in strategy became more pronounced since December, shortly after Donald Trump’s reelection as U.S. president. He’s freed up weapons and ammunition for Israel that had been held back by the previous administration, out of fear of a regional war.

Israel’s former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a podcast last month that he was berated by his U.S. counterpart, Lloyd Austin, for Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

In comparison, Trump’s administration gave Israel the green light for building fortifications in Lebanon where the IDF is planning to station forces indefinitely, according to the Israeli government.

To some extent, this is a return to a previous policy. Israel occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, annexed the Syrian Golan Heights and it still occupies the West Bank where the Palestinians want to build a state.

Diplomacy had begun to shape Israel’s regional ties, however. Now, military force has taken priority.

All of the Israeli military’s new positions are in areas where there’s no central authority or a very weak one, which was the case even before Oct. 7, when thousands of Hamas militants stormed southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 250 others.

But until then, Israel maintained what military experts usually called a “mowing the grass” approach.

It meant Israel needed to closely observe and occasionally attack enemies like Hamas, while assuming that they didn’t pose an existential danger.

It was widely believed in Israel that its military was so superior to that of its opponents that they wouldn’t attempt a war they knew they’d lose.

Under that assumption, Israel overlooked the Iran-backed militia — designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and others — as it built an extensive tunnel network and missile production facilities.

Hamas watched Israel carefully and misled it about its goals.

At the same time, Israel believed the militant group was aware of its limitations and would never launch an attack that would lead to its own destruction.

Israeli intelligence gathered during the Gaza war — which has killed 48,000 people, according to Hamas health officials — suggests Hamas believed it could conquer Israel with support from other Iran-backed groups, including Hezbollah.

The intelligence agencies assured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Hamas wasn’t planning to attack.

They’re now facing intense criticism, and are rethinking their core assumptions.

One of them is that Hamas lacks the support of the Palestinians of Gaza.

Eyal Tsir-Cohen, who retired from Israel’s intelligence agencies last August after 35 years, said, “We didn’t understand how deeply Hamas is rooted in the social fabric of Gaza and how connected it is to the people.”

It was assumed that Palestinians would welcome being freed of Hamas, Tsir-Cohen said. That turned out to be incorrect.

As a result, intelligence assessments now matter less.

The new policy relies more on deterrence, with soldiers, tanks, drones and jets preventing any possible risk to Israelis living in border areas.

Last month, Netanyahu vowed that Israel would demilitarize southern Syria and keep it that way with the IDF remaining there indefinitely.

Meanwhile, it’s supporting the Druze community in Syria to create an area of influence against the provisional central government in Damascus following the fall of Bashar Assad.

Since late January, Israeli forces in the northern West Bank refugee camps have been operating with tanks for the first time in two decades. Some 40,000 Palestinians have left their homes and likely won’t be able to return.

The troops now inside the camps? “I told them they won’t leave for at least a year,” Katz said.

In Gaza, war may break out again as Israel presses Hamas to release more hostages and give up its arms.

Those policies run the risk of emboldening radical forces across the region and isolating Israel, making it less likely that it can forge close ties with countries like Saudi Arabia and create a much-anticipated security framework in the region.

In Israel, the Oct. 7 trauma overrides those considerations. Tens of thousands of residents in border areas were evacuated to temporary housing at government expense, and getting them to return home has been a challenge.

In truth, there is fear across Israel that an October 7-style attack will be repeated. Israel Gantz, who heads the Jewish settlement council in the West Bank, said a poll carried out by his group showed that 80% of Israelis fear a similar attack.

This fear is shaping Israel’s new military doctrine.

A close associate of Netanyahu’s speaking on condition of anonymity, said he recently went on a tour with foreign visitors. On the way, he pointed out the West Bank was virtually adjacent to major Israeli towns. Militants on motorcycles could make that trip in minutes, just as Hamas did on Oct. 7 — and that, he said, mustn’t ever be permitted to happen again.

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