Israel's No-Win Strategy

DANIEL DORON
March 8, 2008

Jerusalem

The massacre of rabbinical students Thursday at a Jerusalem seminary highlights the failure of the powerful Israeli military to stop the assaults of Palestinian terrorists. It also reveals serious deficiencies in Israel's strategy and tactics.

These have cost Israel dearly. They also harm the world-wide war on terror, of which Israel is on the forefront.You can't stop every suicide bomber of course. But for seven years now, Hamas terrorists have been rocketing southern Israeli towns from Gaza. Israeli governments headed by Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert have all vowed to put an end to the attacks. Despite Israel's overwhelming military superiority, its governments have failed to do so.

Israel has scored some impressive victories in its fight against terrorism, especially from attacks originating in the West Bank. Numerous attempts by Fatah and Hamas to dispatch bombers into Israel were frustrated by a combination of excellent intelligence, daring special operations, and the ability of the army to enter Palestinian-ruled areas in hot pursuit or for preemptive strikes. Not so in Gaza.

There, a radicalized population has elected a Hamas government determined to eliminate Israel. After Israel unconditionally retreated from the northern Gaza strip -- hoping that the Palestinians would concentrate on state building -- the territory was immediately used for attacks on Israel. Why has Israel failed to stop them?

Governments here -- behemoths whose budgets consume about a half the nation's $160 billion GDP -- are generally dysfunctional. They are hamstrung by constant internal squabbles and Byzantine bureaucracies. As became evident as early as the 1973 Yom Kippur War, their dysfunction has infected the Israeli defense establishment. In that year, a totally surprised Israeli cabinet and military leadership reacted with confusion and ineptness that almost led to the country's ruin. The recent Winograd Commission of Inquiry report on the Second Lebanon War indicates that these faults are endemic to the over-centralized yet disorganized Israeli system of governance.

More than in most countries, Israeli politicians are preoccupied with political machinations designed to buy support from powerful interest groups by distributing government largesse. This causes not only the factionalization of politics and growing corruption, but consumes time and energy that leadership should use to address life and death issues. As the Winograd Commission attested, Mr. Olmert's government initiated the Second Lebanon War without proper discussion or preparation. During the relatively long war government and military leaders failed to define their objectives. They issued vague and contradictory directives, causing repeated failures and unnecessary loss of life. Only the exceptional bravery and tenacity of Israel's soldiers and field commanders and of the rocketed Israeli population saved the day.

Israeli governments have done little to stop the massive rearmament of Hamas in Gaza with Iranian weapons, bought with Saudi money and transported into Gaza with the connivance of Egypt. Israel did not even press its great ally, the U.S., to lean on Egypt and put an end to this flagrant violation of its peace agreement with Israel -- a peace agreement for which Egypt is rewarded by billions in U.S. aid.

But the worst failures stem from adoption of a no-win strategy. Many in Israel's top political and military echelons have convinced themselves that terrorism cannot be defeated by force, that to stop it one must compromise and accept some of its demands. But how do you "compromise" with a terrorist organization sworn to destroy you?

The Israeli leadership's lack of determination to win, and its chronic political weakness, have prevented it from resisting pressure from Europe and certain American circles (mostly the State Department and the CIA) to accommodate Hamas and strengthen the allegedly peace-loving Palestinian Authority. Amazingly, Israel keeps supplying Hamas, for "humanitarian reasons," with subsidized electricity and materiel including the steel and chemicals needed to produce the rockets that attack it. It keeps providing money and weapons to prop up the hopelessly corrupt Palestinian Authority.

So what is the one strategy that can win? History has shown time and again that military confrontation does work. Israel could achieve military victory by eliminating or incarcerating Hamas's leadership, not two or three a month (so that they are replaceable) but a few hundred at once. By breaking its command structure and its logistical apparatus, Hamas can be rendered inoperative.

But for this to happen, Israel and Western democracies must treat the terrorists' mortal challenge as a war for survival, not as a series of skirmishes. And in war, you must fight to win, by all traditional means.

Mr. Doron is president of the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress (www.icsep.org.il).

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