Israel's Real Problem: It Has No Strategy

Israel's Real Problem: It Has No Strategy

07/18/14

Brent E. Sasley

Security, Defense, Military Strategy, Israel, Palestinian territories

"Israeli leaders today speak of a return to 'quiet,' but that is not a strategic goal. In part, that’s because it is so difficult to operationalize—how do you measure quiet?"

As the fighting in Gaza and Israel shows no sign of abating—and may already be getting worse—analysts have wondered about the eventual outcome. That both Israel and Hamas engaged in escalation without any clear strategic objective is obvious. But in Israel’s case, this isn’t a problem in Operation Protective Edge; nor is it a problem with Benjamin Netanyahu, as critics contend. It’s a problem with Israel’s overall policy toward Hamas and Gaza.

Israel has never fully articulated its own goals regarding Hamas, particularly since Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian general election. Israeli leaders today speak of a return to “quiet,” but that is not a strategic goal. In part, that’s because it is so difficult to operationalize—how do you measure quiet? Only a couple rockets per month? Rockets fired by breakaway factions? In part, it’s because quiet is not a long-term goal, since Israeli defense officials contend that short of prolonged occupation of Gaza, military force alone cannot defeat Hamas, only contain it.

This leads to a third, bigger problem: an imbalance between the goal of quiet and the tactics and policies used to achieve it. Because the goal is vague and open-ended, the tactics used to achieve it are only stopgap measures. This contributes to the regular outbreak of rounds of violence between Israel and Hamas, which put millions of Israelis and Palestinians at risk.

Read full articlehttp://nationalinterest.org/feature/israels-real-problem-it-has-no-strategy-10907