In early September, senior IDF officers were humming the biggest hit by Israeli musician Daniel Solomon, “So Many Ways.”
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 Israeli Air Force’s Shaldag commando 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 in Syria’s northwest.
The daring operation had been approved by the IAF 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.
At that point, the ground maneuver against Hamas in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, was nearing completion, IAF strikes in Lebanon were becoming more efficient, and about a month earlier, Hezbollah’s “chief of staff” Fuad Shukr had been eliminated in an impressive targeted killing.
The political and military leadership in Israel, which had gained confidence as days passed since the Oct. 7, 2023, assault on the northwestern Negev, 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: the Biden administration.

‘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 public and private.
“It was really like a tug of war,” an Israeli source who was deeply involved in the feverish contacts with Washington, told Israel Hayom. “The problem was that by the time of the proposed Shaldag operation in Syria, the rope with the U.S. was stretched to the limit.
“The main thing the U.S. feared throughout was opening a front against Iran and deteriorating into an all-out war. The key word in this aspect was stability. …
“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,” said the source.
He 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 Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and whispered words of warning in his ear. That official, who had visited the White House a few days earlier and sensed which way the winds were blowing there, told the chief of staff privately that if Israel carried out the operation without getting U.S. approval in advance, “it would be the point of no return in relations with them.”
Halevi also believed 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.
The solution to the dilemma, as always throughout the Israeli-American roller coaster during 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 Gen. Michael Kurilla.
Reassuring messages
It was not by chance that the sensitive task was assigned to Halevi. It stemmed from the assumption that the IDF 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 important, a professional relationship developed between Halevi and Kurilla throughout the months of the Swords of Iron/Northern Arrows 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 General Staff tower at the Kirya military headquarters, 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 with 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 emphasized that the missiles Iran was producing near Masyaf could reach all parts of the Middle East and one day hit American bases.
Kurilla proved, and not for the first time, his diplomatic abilities. The American general prepared CENTCOM forces for the operation in Syria, and 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 Lloyd 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 persuaded 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 U.S. 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 Israeli Cabinet meetings and General Staff forums, as had not been seen before.
On the other hand, Israel-U.S. 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 U.S 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,” U.S. President Joe Biden said about Netanyahu after Israel entered Rafah by ground, according to an American report.
Despite these disagreements, some of which 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 the Biden administration, 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 U.N. 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 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 took place in a U.S. 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.
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 Yoav Gallant, assuming they could help them exert pressure on Netanyahu and within the Cabinet.
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 U.S. Secretary of State Blinken arrived in the country and the chief of staff asked to brief him, but Netanyahu blocked it,” 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 just before the Biden administration gave way to that of Donald Trump did 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 U.S. as it developed during the war and behind closed doors.
“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,” said an enthusiastic Israeli source who was deeply involved in the ties with Washington.
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 levels 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.
Throughout the Oct. 7 war, 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 Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and White House envoy to the Middle East Brett McGurk, and shuttled between Washington and Jerusalem to grease the squeaky wheels between the capitals, while leveraging his deep familiarity with the American system.
“Dermer knows how to confront the U.S., manage crises with it,” said a senior Israeli source privy to the matters. “Dermer and Netanyahu were not willing to accept any dictates from the Americans, but where possible, they did accommodate them. Israel and the U.S. 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 U.S. shadows all the main events of the war. Already in the evening hours of Oct. 7, 2023, Halevi 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 Sullivan, and later that day also spoke with Biden. “Israel will win the war against Hamas,” Netanyahu told the president, “But Hezbollah needs to get the message from the U.S.: ‘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 men would ultimately speak by phone about 200 times and meet on four occasions. The two former generals would find a common language.
In the first days of the war, the Americans significantly reinforced their forces in the Middle East and sent two aircraft carriers to the region. “The American actions definitely helped,” said a senior Israeli.
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’s “military” wing, and that for this he would need a lot of resources.
As Halevi phrased it, the U.S. was the main factor that would drive the wheels of Israel’s “war economy.” Indeed, during the war, the U.S. 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, this almost happened.

‘We had no partner’
What began on the right foot nearly came to a blow-up very quickly. On Oct. 10, three days after Hamas’s surprise attack, discussions were held in Israel about launching a preemptive strike in Lebanon.
The IDF had already built a plan to inflict extensive damage on 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.
On the afternoon of Oct. 11, 2023, senior Hezbollah officials were scheduled to meet, including Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, his deputy Hashem Safieddine and the commander of the organization’s Southern Lebanon sector Ibrahim Aqil (all of whom would eventually be killed), with three senior officials of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. It was a golden opportunity.
The possibility of eliminating Hezbollah’s leadership appealed to Halevi and Gallant. The two men also estimated that if they launched an 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 Oct. 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 to Gallant to be depressed and pessimistic. “If you attack Hezbollah,” Netanyahu said and pointed beyond the window pane, “all these buildings will collapse from their counter-response.”
Call with Biden
Gallant continued to try, but Netanyahu was not convinced. “Before we do this, I want to talk to the [U.S.] 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 U.S., and its tendency to avoid escalations, to thwart the attack in Lebanon.
While Netanyahu waited for his call with Biden, Gallant and Dermer entered an office, and at one o’clock in the afternoon called from there to 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 a few hours. There was not much time left to make the decision.
In another channel, 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 Mike Pompeo [Trump’s secretary of state] was still in office, I would have told him, ‘Let’s go for this move together,’ and we would have had a partner,” said 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 former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eizenkot, 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.
The one most 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,” he said bitterly in almost every Cabinet meeting throughout the war.
The Democratic primaries
Throughout the first stage of the war in Gaza, the Americans pressed, time after time, to increase humanitarian aid to the Strip, especially due to the growing pressure on Biden from within the Democratic Party ahead of the presidential primaries.
After the IDF moved into Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, 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 should be a ground entry into Rafah in Gaza and in Lebanon.
However, 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,” said 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 U.S. ahead of the entry into Rafah, “Rafah was an excruciating tango dance of several weeks” with the Americans.
“There’s no doubt this was the biggest clash with them during the war,” another senior Israeli said.
Originally published by Israel Hayom.