Gaza: Strategy, Tactics, & Underlying Wrong Assumptions (A Round-Up of News & Commentary)

by Damozel |  If Israel wins the war, what does it win? The Center for Strategic International Studies raises the question of the Israeli's strategic purpose in Gaza, after acknowledging that Israel have apparently made significant tactical gains and that Hamas's continuing rocket and mortar attacks were a threat, Anthony M. Cordesman addresses some of the other questions.

The fact remains...that the growing human tragedy in Gaza is steadily raising more serious questions as to whether the kind of tactical gains that Israel now reports are worth the suffering involved. As of the 14th day of the war, nearly 800 Palestinian have died and over 3,000 have been wounded. Fewer and fewer have been Hamas fighters, while more and more have been civilians.....

Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal or at least one it can credibly achieve? Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process?...

To blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes. ..If Israel has a plan that could credibly destroy and replace Hamas, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to help the Gazans and move them back towards peace, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to use US or other friendly influence productively, it not apparent.

As we have seen all too clearly from US mistakes, any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni, and Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends. If there is more, it is time to make such goals public and demonstrate how they can be achieved. The question is not whether the IDF learned the tactical lessons of the fighting in 2006. It is whether Israel's top political leadership has even minimal competence to lead them.  (CSIS).

James Fallows at The Atlantic acknowledges the importance of Cordesman's must-read piece.

Five days ago I mentioned that I did not know enough about Gaza to have a detailed or nuanced judgment about the immediate circumstances of the Israeli effort against Hamas.

But I have seen, read, reported, thought, and written enough over the years about the strategy-tactics tension in many realms, from politics to business to technology to war planning, to recognize a situation in which short-term tactical victories may lead to long-term strategic defeat. This is how the Gaza operation looked early on, and how it looks more starkly with every passing day....

Now someone who knows a lot about the details and nuances of Middle East conflict has stated this concern in blunt and authoritative terms. I am referring of course to Anthony Cordesman of CSIS, he of the unending flow of detailed papers on the military balance in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and elsewhere.

As Fallows says, "[If] only there were a popular saying that conveyed the idea that you could win many battles and still lose the war."

As he also says, the CSIS post is a must-read.

Setting aside the question of Israel's long-term strategy (if any) in Gaza, The New York Times has published a disturbing pieceon the short-term military tactics being used by both sides in the fighting.  Welcome to the brave new world of urban warfare:

The grinding urban battle unfolding in the densely populated Gaza Strip is a war of new tactics, quick adaptation and lethal tricks.

Hamas, with training from Iran and Hezbollah, has used the last two years to turn Gaza into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs. Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the leadership’s war room is a bunker beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, Israeli intelligence officials say....

The Israelis say they are also using new weapons, like a small-diameter smart bomb, the GBU-39, which Israel bought last fall from Washington. The bomb, which is very accurate, has a small explosive, as little as 60 to 80 pounds, to minimize collateral damage in an urban area. But it can also penetrate the earth to hit bunkers or tunnels.

And the Israelis, too, are resorting to tricks.

Israeli intelligence officers are telephoning Gazans and, in good Arabic, pretending to be sympathetic Egyptians, Saudis, Jordanians or Libyans, Gazans say and Israel has confirmed. After expressing horror at the Israeli war and asking about the family, the callers ask about local conditions, whether the family supports Hamas and if there are fighters in the building or the neighborhood....

Interviews last week with senior Israeli intelligence and military officers, both active and retired, as well as with military experts and residents of Gaza itself, made it clear that the battle, waged among civilians and between enemies who had long prepared for this fight, is now a slow, nasty business of asymmetrical urban warfare.

[B]oth sides are evolving tactics to the new battlefield, then adjusting them quickly....(WaPo)

At The Washington Post, Tom Segev, an Israeli, asserts Israel's right to defend itself in what E&P calls a "a hawkish piece":

Like any other country, Israel has a duty to defend its citizens. While the latest operation may never make it into the official count of Arab-Israeli wars, it is already another round in an endless continuum of reciprocal violence. They hit us, we hit them and vice versa; they usually miss, we usually don't...(WaPo)

But he progresses on page 2 to a discussion of all the ways that Israel has failed to factor human nature into its strategies:

For many years, Israel has adhered to a number of basic assumptions that have never proven right. Some of these theories contributed to the operation in Gaza this time. According to one such assumption, inflicting hardship on Palestinian civilians will make the population rise up against its leaders and choose more "moderate" ones. Hence, when Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, after a short, sharp struggle with its secular rivals in Fatah, Israel imposed a blockade on the strip, pushing 1.5 million Palestinians to the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe. But Hamas has only become stronger. And here's another false Israeli assumption: that Hamas is a terrorist organization. In fact, it's also a genuine national and religious movement supported by most of the people in Gaza. It cannot be simply bombed away. (WaPo)

The above-cited CSIS piece also discusses the humanitarian and diplomatic catastrophe that the war has become and raises the question of what Israel ---and the US --- stand to gain and lose if Israel prevails.

The fact remains, however, that the growing human tragedy in Gaza is steadily raising more serious questions as to whether the kind of tactical gains that Israel now reports are worth the suffering involved. As of the 14th day of the war, nearly 800 Palestinian have died and over 3,000 have been wounded. Fewer and fewer have been Hamas fighters, while more and more have been civilians.

These direct costs are also only part of the story. Gaza’s economy had already collapsed long before the current fighting began and now has far greater problems. Its infrastructure is crippled in critical areas like power and water. This war has compounded the impact of a struggle that has gone on since 2000. It has reduced living standards in basic ways like food, education, as well as medical supplies and services. It has also left most Gazans without a productive form of employment. The current war has consequences more far-reaching than casualties. It involves a legacy of greatly increased suffering for the 1.5 million people who will survive this current conflict.

It is also far from clear that the tactical gains are worth the political and strategic cost to Israel. At least to date, the reporting from within Gaza indicates that each new Israeli air strike or advance on the ground has increased popular support for Hamas and anger against Israel in Gaza. The same is true in the West Bank and the Islamic world. Iran and Hezbollah are capitalizing on the conflict. Anti-American demonstrations over the fighting have taken place in areas as “remote” as Kabul. Even friends of Israel like Turkey see the war as unjust. The Egyptian government comes under greater pressure with every casualty. The US is seen as having done virtually nothing, focusing only on the threat from Hamas, and the President elect is getting as much blame as the President who still serves.  (CSIS; emphasis added)

As Larry Johnson says, "[t]he fact that Hamas continues to fire rockets and is now gaining support across the spectrum in the Middle East–i.e, from Turkey to Saudi Arabia–is consequential and should not be dismissed as meaningless."  (No Quarter)  "Consequential" in the sense that should worry those whose support of Israel is unquestioning and unswerving, in the sense of "certain to have long-term consequences which may be inimical to Israel's long-term interests."

As to what's actually happening in Gaza....does anyone really know or fully understand?  Editor and Publisher says:

[F]rom Israel itself, in Haaretz, we get this editorial call: "In the Gaza War, journalists are being held in modest media facilities on the border of the coastal territory. Their positions have been filled, reporters and photographers alike, by troops of the IDF Spokesman's Office. The move is meant to present a sterile picture of war, to prevent Israeli media outlets from showing images of death, destruction and horror coming out of Gaza. But this is a shortsighted approach, one driven by the 'ostrich policy' of planting our heads firmly in the sand.

"In the age of the information superhighway, Israel and the world still see the same images and hear the same voices broadcast on most of the foreign television stations. The IDF's manipulations of the media, which willingly cooperates, may be good for the army, but it's very bad for Israeli democracy."

Tom Segev muses in his op-ed piece on the religious foundation of the dispute, the bedrock of assumptions which no diplomatic process or merely rational push for peace on the part of nations who do not share those assumptions:

The latest violence has once again brought reporters from all over the world to the region. Many of them wonder why Israelis and Palestinians don't simply agree to divide the land between them. Indeed, Israeli leaders support a two-state solution, which had previously been advocated only by the extreme left. Palestinian leaders, though not the heads of Hamas, have agreed to accept this solution. Apparently, only the details of the agreement have to be worked out. If only it were that simple.

This conflict is not merely about land and water and mutual recognition. It is about national identity. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians define themselves by the Holy Land -- all of it. Any territorial compromise would compel both sides to relinquish part of their identity.

In recent years, with the rise of Hamas and the increasing militance of some Jewish settlers, this precariously irrational conflict has also assumed a more religious character -- and thereby become even more difficult to solve. Islamic fundamentalists, as well as Jewish ones, have made control of the land part of their faith, and that faith is dearer to them than human life. (WaPo)

"Dearer to them than human life":  not just their own lives ---which they have the right to sacrifice --- but also the lives of others, which they do not.  Yes, that's got the hallmark of truth on it.  And it applies to fundamentalists on both sides of the dispute.

Such is the continuing danger to peace among various people of religious fundamentalism, which holds that God takes sides.

And this is a point on which I do feel tempted to express an opinion.  My own religion teaches otherwise, that God does not take sides:  that God is either everything or in everything, so that everything --- including other humans, however fallen --- is equally sacred.  So I'm not going to pretend to understand those who make "control of the land part of their faith."

Show me where God signed the deed --- and I mean an actual, signed, dated, and notarized document, not someone's ancient holy text --- and I'll tell you which side should get to control the land.  In default of documentation that the rest of us can believe in, both sides are wrong about that.  Whatever God may or may not have decided for the benefit of the various people who lived in the so-called "Holy Land" in ages past, it's pretty clear that he, she, or it (whichever you like) is no longer prepared to take sides.

Religious fundamentalism may be a greater threat to the planet even than global warming.

According to The Guardian, the Israelis has dropped leaflets warning civilians in Gaza that it is going to escalate its offensive against Hamas.

The tens of thousands of leaflets, dropped on parts of Gaza City, the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya and the south of the territory, warned residents: "The Israeli Defence Force will soon escalate its operations against tunnels, weapons warehouses, terrorist infrastructure and terrorists all over the Gaza Strip. To keep yourself and your families safe, you are ordered not to be close to terrorists, weapons warehouses and the places where the terrorists operate."

As one United Nations worker ---requesting anonymity --- told The New York Times,   "Gaza’s civilians, who cannot flee because the borders are closed, are “the meat in the sandwich."" 

Meanwhile, Hamas has refused to allow in international monitors:

Hamas remained defiant today in the face of a European diplomatic initiative to deploy international monitors inside the Gaza Strip to verify any ceasefire agreement. The Hamas political leader, Khaled Mashaal, who is in exile in Syria, rejected the proposal and said that his organisation would not agree to any arrangement that infringed on its "right of resistance against Israeli occupation".

Mohammed Nazzal, a Hamas official, told al-Jazeera television: "We cannot accept international forces in the Gaza Strip, because the presence of international forces would be for the protection of the Israelis, and not the protection of the Palestinian people."

Mashaal's statement came shortly after the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, called on Hamas to agree to a ceasefire. (Guardian)

And Egypt has struck "a further blow to diplomatic efforts to end the conflict":

Egypt ruled out deployment of foreign troops on its side of the border with Gaza. "There will be no international troops of any kind on the Egyptian side," the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, told a news conference. (Guardian)

Memeorandum has blogger commentary here.

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Comments

[P Smith]

Why do people assume that Israel is in any way targeting Hamas? Just as the US used "the war on terror" to attack and occupy Iraq, so it Israel attacking Palestinian civilians in the same way it attacked Lebanese civilians in 2006.

These are acts of collective punishment intended to either kill the civilian targets or to make their lives so unbearable that they leave of their own volition. Israel's intent is revenge: 2000 years of Palestinans wandering the world in search of a homeland. Anything less than pure jew-only state in unacceptable to them.

[Karin]

"Show me where God signed the deed --- and I mean an actual, signed, dated, and notarized document, not someone's ancient holy text --- and I'll tell you which side should get to control the land. In default of documentation that the rest of us can believe in, both sides are wrong about that."

You are a bit confused. The Palestinians are not claiming a religious right to the land. That's something the Jewish settlers are saying, although it was not used as a justification by the original Zionists, who were secular. The Palestinian Arabs(both Muslim & Christian) claim a historical and political right to the land, because their ancestors lived on it for generations, built houses on it, farmed it, paid taxes for it, and have land deeds in many cases dating back to the British Mandate and the Ottoman Empire. Is that the kind of documentation you can believe in?

[Buck Naked Politics]

FROM DAMOZEL

KARIN:

If you look back at my piece, you will see that I was responding to a particular quote from a particular Israeli writer. That writer was discussing the views of fundamentalists. He wrote:

"This conflict is not merely about land and water and mutual recognition. It is about national identity. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians define themselves by the Holy Land -- all of it. Any territorial compromise would compel both sides to relinquish part of their identity.

"In recent years, with the rise of Hamas and the increasing militance of some Jewish settlers, this precariously irrational conflict has also assumed a more religious character -- and thereby become even more difficult to solve. Islamic fundamentalists, as well as Jewish ones, have made control of the land part of their faith, and that faith is dearer to them than human life."

"God signing the deed" was intended more as a response to fundamentalist belief in "holy land" than as a specific comment on the Palestinians legal claim to the land. Yes, legal documentation is documentation I "believe" in.

Though the real question is whether I think anyone has a right to use violent means to recover lost land. The answer is that I do not, even if that's the only way to recover it.

But my beliefs about war and violence arise out of my background with the Quakers. As I see it, anything you gain by resorting to violence is disproportionately small compared to what you lose. As I tried to make clear, I was speaking from that standpoint. Human history shows that those who consider themselves deprived of an entitlement seldom see it that way.

I think both sides are wrong to be fighting. It simply delays the moment when they will finally be forced to sit down together and negotiate a compromise.