Israel's Strategy in the Occupied Territories: Betting on an "Unwinnable War"
Saïda Bédar
Published in Arabies, n° 177, October 2001
Confusion rules in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Blinded by the media campaigns launched by both parties to gain legitimacy with the international community (Israel would settle for the U.S. Congress) and a naive confidence in the diplomatic process and its promises of peace in the near future, most observers have failed to read the conflict strategically. Yet, only a strategic approach can shed light on Israel's "plans for the future" of the occupied territories.
Since the occupation of the territories in 1967, Israel has endeavored to balance a negotiation strategy based on the restitution of the occupied territories in exchange for peace accords (land for peace) with the acquisition of strategic depth[1]. The Oslo peace process illustrates this posture. Oslo is (was?) a round of negotiations intended to foster the emergence of a moderate Palestinian position on the right to return and on Jerusalem and simultaneously a period of strategic repositioning. Israel reshaped the urban geography of the territories to allow permanent informational control, making it easier for its forces to act; new weapon systems and a new doctrine were developed in preparation for an "urban guerrilla warfare" that, the Israelis forecast, will be protracted and more lethal in the long term after the creation of the Palestinian state. Israel's pre-emptive strategy aims both at molding its Arab periphery of tomorrow by diplomatic constraint, impoverishment and economic dependency and at controlling it by protracted low-intensity warfare.
Israel Prepares for Protracted Low-Intensity Warfare
While some Israeli observers maintain that Rabin participated in the Oslo peace process and negotiated with Syria only because the state of readiness of his country's armed forces was poor[2], it is obvious that Israel saw its hasty withdrawal from Beirut in 1982 and the intifada of 1987 as warning signs that a strategic review was required. The lessons learned in Lebanon are that, in urban settings, the shock effect of firepower and maneuverability is limited and that it is impossible to obtain decisive results in a discriminate way (targeting combatants exclusively, with minimal collateral damage). Lebanon has demonstrated that any actor - state or non-state - fighting against a technological power can resist and force the opponent to withdraw by using "asymmetric" means of power avoidance and access denial. Technology dissemination has made it possible to acquire asymmetric means such as ballistic and cruise missiles (potentially armed with nuclear, biological or chemical warheads), informational attacks, concealment, camouflage and deception. These asymmetric means jeopardize both the sanctuarization of a national territory and the protection of forces at the rear. The intifada has raised the specter of protracted guerrilla warfare, an "unwinnable war" where a state army faces a people entirely mobilized to resist with "asymmetric" comparative advantages such as numbers and spread over time and space (guerrilla warfare in the country and cities, etc.), and global transnational ideological, ethnic/cultural or religious reach.
Israel seems willing to rise up to the challenge of the unwinnable war, which all other colonial powers and the United States in Vietnam eventually ran away from. Three categories of strategic assets appear to make the Hebrew State feel strong enough to take up the gauntlet:
1/ Militarily, Israel's new doctrine and new arms systems now make it possible to offset its loss of strategic depth in distance by acquiring "real time" and informational metacontrol, and resorting to asymmetric "criminal" methods;
2/ Politically and ideologically, Israel does not view its fight as a colonial war but as a conflict between a center and its periphery, which must be kept under control; the future Palestinian state will remain a frontline as far as Israel is concerned;
3/ On the international scene, Israel has gained legitimacy by default due to the weakness of international reactions and to its status as an American strategic sub-system.
Israel's Strategic Review to Counter Palestinian Asymmetry
The strategic reform that Israel launched in the 1990s intends to adapt the structure of its forces and its doctrine to the new types of combat induced by the loss of sanctuarization (risks of informational and missile attacks) and by the prospect of a protracted low-intensity conflict with the future Palestinian state. The new strategic doctrine, known as the National Defense Doctrine, or "Grand Strategy", envisions fighting taking place at borders (Syria and Lebanon), beyond borders (Iran and Iraq), within borders and in what will become the Palestinian periphery. The doctrine is based on pre-emptive action to keep the opponents from acquiring arms of massive destruction, and on deterrence, missile defense, early warning, and coercion. This new doctrine goes hand in hand with an ambitious policy of research and development (R&D) and arms purchase. The military R&D budget has doubled since the mid-1990s, with acquisition efforts concentrating on intelligence capabilities, command and control, space, antimissile systems and unmanned aircraft. Make no mistake; the fight against the Palestinian upheaval is anything but a rustic war. Highly sophisticated weapons are used, operational modes have been tested (in Southern Lebanon) and a strategic plan is being implemented.
Evidently, Israel intends to demonstrate its ability to sustain a protracted low-intensity war with a view to deterring its enemies. But the demonstration will also help it to sell abroad its know-how and its arm systems specially designed for asymmetric threats. Amos Yaron, director-general of the Israeli ministry of defense, has admitted without qualms that the fighting in the occupied territories and in Southern Lebanon is an opportunity to test exportable arm systems:
"Sorrowfully, we have had too many opportunities to demonstrate our military products in battle. We wish this were not the case but since it is a fact of life in this part of the world, at least we can pass on the benefits of our experience to our customers."[3]
With US $2.5 billion of orders last year, Israel is the fifth arms exporter in the world. The Israelis are well placed to corner the equipment market for Apache AH-64A helicopters and F16 fighter jets (sophisticated systems, both embarked and for simulation and training), as well as the markets for drones (unmanned aircraft for surveillance and reconnaissance missions), radar systems, standoff precisely guided ammunition (Modular Standoff Vehicle), and high-penetration munitions (Runway Attack Munition, which can be launched at middle altitude and pierce 2-meter thick concrete).
The strategic plan now implemented in the occupied territories was initiated by Barak at the beginning of Intifada Al Aqsa. Inspired by the lessons learned against Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, or what Ephraim Sneh, Barak's vice-minister of defense, has called "sophisticated counter-guerrilla operations", the new measures are framed for preemption and no longer for reaction[4]. Sharon has carried on with the three-phase plan. Phase 1 is preemption, meaning the bombing of the buildings of the Palestinian Authority's security services and, after observing the Authority's "lack of co-operation", the murdering of Palestinian leaders and the application of economic pressure. Phase 2 contemplates surrounding villages, searching houses for arms and enforcing an economic blockade that would only let through medicine and food. Phase 3 would declare the Palestinian Authority an "enemy" and therefore consider all Authority buildings and officials as targets.
This strategic plan makes resorting to "criminal" asymmetric means - which states do not usually use overtly even when fighting against rebels - an institutionalized option. The elimination by way of murder of heads of insurgent networks was used by France in Algeria and by the United States in Vietnam (the CIA's "Operation Phoenix" reportedly killed 60,000 people); yet, it did not put an end to those conflicts. But, precisely, the Israelis do not wish to end the war or to obtain final victory. As far as they are concerned, the conflict is a method of protracted social control. They contain the conflict by keeping the Palestinian resistance from rising in power by: wiping out its leaders; constant surveillance and movement restriction by enclosing and slicing up the territories-with trenches, by-pass roads and road blocks; and deploying and re-deploying troops unpredictably. Other "unlawful" (in violation of agreements) asymmetric means include the destruction of real estate belonging to non-combatant Palestinians - houses, crops and orchards - and encouraging Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Time depth (surveillance/targeting in real time and preemption) and the production of a space of containment offset Israel's lack of spatial strategic depth. At the same time, thanks to the peace process Israel has succeeded in wiping out the strategic depth of its opponent by concentrating Fatah's elite forces and the majority of Palestinian leaders in the territories, which the Israelis themselves have shaped to facilitate control. In time, Israel contemplates enforcing flexible physical separation by deploying barriers equipped with sophisticated surveillance systems and patrolling paramilitary units. A network of antennas that allow the Shin-Bet to filter cellular telephone calls now crisscrosses the occupied territories. Likewise, drones carry out regular flight missions over the territories, monitoring the movements of Palestinian leaders in real time and, if the need arises, transmitting the information to marksmen in charge of physical elimination. While the Shin Bet has drawn a list of 100 Palestinian leaders, members of the Shaldag or Shayetet 13 commando units are deployed in permanence. The Israelis also like to resort to Palestinian informants because the data thus obtained can occasionally be important, but above all because informants generate an atmosphere of suspicion among the Palestinians, which contributes to demoralize their fighters.
Palestinian Periphery under Control
The Israelis are not waging a colonial war; their objective is social control-controlling their Arab peripheries (Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians living in the territories) through economic dependency (welfare and co-optation within Israel, blockades and, in time, maquiladoras in the territories) and police/military repression. While Israel was recently complimented by the IMF for the good standing of its economy (5.9% growth; low inflation; strong shekel), the economy of the territories is on the verge of collapse: it lost more than $1.5 billion since the beginning of Intifada Al Aqsa and the unemployment rate has reached 60%, reportedly. When requesting the release of the Palestinian tax revenue withheld by Israel, European commissioner Chris Patten noted that the Israeli policy could only push the Palestinian resistance to become more radical and the conflict to become protracted:
"We understand Israel has security problems. But what on earth does wrecking the Palestinian economy and increasing poverty have to do with security? … You don't have to be a genius to understand that if people lose their work and livelihood and see no hope, it will make them more extreme."[5]
Usually, the aim of counter-insurgency is the political (and not necessarily physical) destruction of an adversary guerrilla movement and the creation of conditions for decisive political action. In the case of an inter-community and territorial conflict, military intervention is meant to achieve protracted peacekeeping or curb violence. The Israelis think in the long term of their own nation building and they are willing to face protracted warfare. As Prime Minister Ariel Sharon puts it:
"My conclusion is that time is not against us and, therefore, that it is important to imagine solutions in the long run. (…) I would propose a series of major national objectives: incite an extra one million Jews to come here over twelve years so that by 2020 the majority of the Jewish people would live in Israel; develop the Neguev desert, which is the last territory where Jewish colonies can be established; review education according to Zionist principles."[6]
Legitimacy by Default?
The war waged by Israel in the occupied territories has been unanimously condemned internationally and calls to resume the negotiations are getting increasingly insistent. Yet, no concrete step has been taken, for instance sending an interposition force or applying economic sanctions. The international community's lack of reaction is a strategic gain for Israel, which perhaps hopes to enjoy the same benevolence as the Russians in Chechnya or the Chinese in Tibet. More cynically still, Israel feels that it is at the vanguard of the global fight against asymmetric threats such as "international terrorism", the "proliferation of weapons of mass-destruction" or the general insurrection of those excluded from the benefits of globalization. Israel's strategic vision is in tune with the globalizing vision of the United States:
"The global routinization of violence has spawned entire generations for whom protracted conflict is normal. Whether Lebanon, Gaza, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Colombia, Liberia or the inner cities of the United States, youth see violence not as an aberration but as an intrinsic aspect of their life. It takes little to spark insurgency in such a context."[7]
In all likelihood, Israel will become increasingly integrated in the American strategic system for geopolitical reasons-Israel remains the region's dissuasive power; and for military reasons-Israel's technological military power continues to rely on American support. The strategic links between Israel and the United States have grown stronger since the beginning of the 1980s, with the signature of memoranda; the setting up of a consultative group meeting every six months; the use of Israeli ports by the U.S. Sixth Fleet; common military training; the pre-positioning of American material on Israeli soil; intelligence sharing; and technological partnerships, especially in missile defense. With American financial aid reaching $3 billion a year (for fiscal year 2001: $840 million in economic aid; $1.98 billion in military aid; $60 million in assistance to immigrants), Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of American aid since World War II. The operational experience shared by Israeli and American soldiers is anything but negligible. If nowadays the Israelis can launch attacks so precise that they can cut the heads of two Hamas leaders through the window of a building with a Hellfire missile fired from a helicopter, it is because they have benefited from, and have helped improve, the doctrinal, operational and technological skills of the U.S. military. In Panama twelve years ago, General Stiner, the commander in chief of Operation Just Cause, marveled: "You could fire that Hellfire missile through a window four miles away at night."[8]
The State Department may condemn the use of excessive force; but the United States will continue to support Israel unconditionally as long as both countries agree on the need to create a Palestinian state in Gaza and "the vast majority" of the West Bank. It is to be feared that the growing americanization of Israel's strategy will not bring peace to the Palestinians, who are doomed to permanent violent social control, or to Israel, which is destined to become a garrison-state and a showcase of the technological military Israeli-American know-how.
Saïda Bédar
[1] - The distance between two opponents.
[2] - See the point of view of Israeli writer Hillel Halkin in Commentary, October 1998, "The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force".
[3] - Barbara Opall-Rome, "Israeli Defense Industry Has a Perennial Proving Ground for Products", Defense News, June 11-17 2001.
[4] - "Israel's Unwinnable War", The Economist, November 4th 2000.
[5] - Aluf Benn, "Impoverishing People doesn't Create Security", Ha'aretz, 14 March 2001.
[6] - Interview with Ha'aretz, 13 April 2001 reproduced in L'Intelligent, N° 2102-2103, 24 April/7 May 2001.
[7] - Steven Metz, Counterinsurgency: Strategy and the Phoenix of American Capabilities, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, February 28, 1995, p. 16.
[8] - Operation Just Cause-Panama, Joint History Office, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1995, Washington DC, p. 40.
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