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POLICY MEMO: ISRAEL MUST DITCH THE POLICY OF DETERRENCE

The need for a fundamental shift in Israeli national security strategy has become increasingly clear following the devastating mass murder attack launched by Hamas on southern Israel on October 7.

The traditional reliance on deterrence, a cornerstone of Israel’s security doctrine, has proven to be an entirely irrelevant concept against the unique threats posed by jihadist organizations.

While defense officials habitually would describe Israeli deterrence in the eyes of its adversaries as a ‘slippery’ and unstable ‘thing’ to measure, a closer examination reveals that it did not exist in the first place vis-à-vis Hamas, or Hezbollah. While these terror armies are certainly capable of calculating their interests and choosing timings that suit their ideological objectives, at no point did they exhibit actual deterrence – a wish to avoid conflict with Israel based on the conclusion that this is not in their interest.

This necessitates a strategic pivot towards a relentless focus on degrading enemy capabilities, and preventing the formation of jihadist armies on Israel’s borders, rather than engaging in fruitless and often unfounded efforts to get into the minds of adversaries whose cultural, religious, and military mindsets and actions are entirely alien to Western decision-making.

As such, one of the key policy lessons going forward needs to be the shift away from the doomed attempt to decipher the intentions of Middle Eastern terror armies, and towards placing the focus on continually degrading their capabilities, to the point where they are no longer organized hierarchical armies in control of their own territory and able to build up force with impunity.

The concept of deterrence, deeply ingrained in Israel’s defense strategy, is predicated on the belief that potential adversaries can be dissuaded from attacking by the threat of overwhelming retaliation, in a manner that would make the cost far outweigh the benefit. However, since jihadist armies will invariably unleash their capabilities at a time that is opportunistically convenient for advancing their totalitarian goals, the concept of deterrence should be discredited in dealing with these actors.

Traditionally, Israel’s classic ‘security triad’ concept, better known as the Ben Gurion doctrine, formulated in the 1950s, was based on the three pillars of deterrence; two of which were early intelligence warning of enemy intentions to attack, and decisive victory when wars broke out. The concept was based on Israel’s lack of strategic depth and relatively small standing army, as well as its rapid ability to call up reserves and take the fight into enemy territory.  Since lengthy conflicts drained Israel’s limited resources, the thinking went, deterrence was a valuable tool to build periods of calm in between rounds of warfare.

In fact, the concept proved relatively successful throughout the decades in which Israel faced state enemies with classical military threats, and Israel did indeed experience significant periods of relative calm and development between wars. But even in the 20th century, deterrence was far from a scientific concept. For example, soon after Israel’s most successful war, the 1967 Six Day War, Egypt, Jordan, and the PLO began a three-year bloody war of attrition against Israel.

The concept of deterrence was also predicated on the assumption that due to its size and resource limitations, Israel was in no position to permanently dismantle the military capabilities of its enemies, but rather, to use wars to land very painful blows, which would ‘top up’ deterrence until the next war.

However,  while the concept had mixed results in the 20th century, in the 21st century, the application of this thinking to jihadist enemy forces has proven disastrous. It allowed Hamas to build up a full-blown Iranian-backed army, whose October 7 mass murder attack will leave a multi-generational trauma on the Israeli national psyche, a setback to the Zionist ethos that Israel can never again afford to absorb.  

When dealing with religious jihadist adversaries, who are impervious to Western cost-benefit calculations, only persistent, sustained degradation of capabilities will lead to results. This approach involves continuous and proactive measures to weaken the operational and logistical capabilities of entities like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the puppet string holder that activates these proxies, the Iranian IRGC.

While non-state terror armies were never subject to deterrence, the question of whether the Islamic Republic of Iran can be deterred is more complex, and deserving of a separate analysis. Essentially, the Iranian regime and its main power brokers, the ayatollahs and the IRGC elite military officers, share the same fanatical jihadist ideology as their proxies, but are interested in handing off as much of the military conflict missions to proxies as they can at this time, until Iran goes nuclear. 

Closer to home, when seen through the lens of capability degradation rather than deterrence, it becomes clear that Israel’s war of self-defense against Hamas must end with the destruction of its status as a terrorist-army – a goal that Israel is past 70% of the way to reaching. This would be the first time in Israel’s military history that it would commit itself to permanently dismantling enemy capabilities, although smaller-scale precedents for this already exist, such as Israel’s dismantling of the PLO in Lebanon, and its five-year counter-terror offensive in the West Bank, which began in 2002.

This definition of victory does not rely on topping up deterrence, since the concept is irrelevant for Islamist decision-makers whose value systems and worldview stray far beyond what Western logic is capable of perceiving.

Israel’s focus must shift towards continuous military pressure and the strategic control of key areas to prevent enemy reorganization and resupply. This means Israel cannot, in the foreseeable future, give up control of the Philadelphi Corridor between Gaza and Egypt – a major tunnel network smuggling zone. Israeli control over the Netzarim Corridor separating northern Gaza from the rest of the Strip is also critical to preventing a resurgence of enemy capabilities that would threaten the western Negev and beyond.

Furthermore, the civilian aspect of terror armies like Hamas cannot be ignored. The civilian social dimension of Hamas and Hezbollah act as supporting elements for the formation of terror armies, and in Gaza’s case, Israel must quickly define civilian alternatives to Hamas’s regime as a result.

Ultimately, only a relentless focus on degrading enemy capabilities, coupled with strategic military freedom of maneuver in areas bordering Israel, based on precise intelligence, and a commitment to developing civilian alternatives to replace Islamist social-political frameworks that sprout terror armies, will be essential to Israel’s continuity in the Middle East.

To address the regional challenges of the 21st century, we must replace the discredited concept of deterrence with a proactive, capabilities-focused strategy.

Yaakov Lappin is an Israel-based military affairs correspondent and analyst. He provides insight and analysis for a number of media outlets, including Jane's Defense Weekly, a leading global military affairs magazine, and JNS.org, a news agency with wide distribution among Jewish communities in the U.S. Read full bio here.

Jerusalem Post OP-ED: Egypt must reap what it sowed to prevent another October 7th

Egypt must reap what they sowed to prevent another October 7 from happening - opinion

By BENJAMIN ANTHONY

FEBRUARY 18, 2024 01:16

Updated: FEBRUARY 18, 2024 15:09

Following Israel’s rescue mission of two hostages carried out in Rafah, the IDF is poised to launch a ground incursion into the same city. Rafah is Hamas’s last remaining stronghold; it must be purged from that area for Israel to realize its war aims. 

Preventing a repeat of the horrors of October 7 will require Israel to maintain control of the Rafah crossing in perpetuity. 

If ordered, the IDF will operate in an area where approximately 1.2 million Gazans are currently located. They are there as a result of Israel’s largely successful efforts to move Gazans out of harm’s way as the IDF battles a brutal enemy.

Egypt's responsibility 

Gazans are hemmed in between Israel’s military offensive in Khan Yunis and Egypt, whose president refuses to allow the Gazan population into the Sinai Peninsula, the huge land expanse that abuts the Gaza Strip. 

Egypt bears massive responsibility for the unfolding crisis. For years, it turned a blind eye to the smuggling of personnel, material, and terrorist know-how into Gaza through Sinai.

It is from Egyptian territory, via Sinai, that terrorists returned to Gaza after undergoing military training in Syria, Iraq, and Iran. October 7 happened when the seeping complicity of Egypt burst forth in the bloodiest rampage against Jews since the Holocaust. 

Egypt now invokes the potential for regional upheaval to demand that the IDF not operate in Rafah. Having failed to uphold its obligations in territory over which it is sovereign, Egypt now seeks to dictate the terms of activities in areas over which it has no sovereignty.

If only Egypt had been as judicious in the past in preventing what crossed from Sinai into Gaza as it now is about what crosses from Gaza into Sinai. Jordan, the UAE, France, and Britain are echoing Egypt’s demands. Where does the hypocrisy end?

The international community typically reacts to displaced populations with the inventiveness of a middling pugilist. Their diplomatic one-two leads with a call for neighboring and non-neighboring countries to accept them as refugees and then follows up by championing the countries that do so. 

Egypt's refusal to accept Gazan refugees

SINCE THE beginning of the Syrian civil war, bordering Turkey is estimated to have absorbed more than 3.5 million Syrians. Non-bordering Germany accepted 1.2 million Syrians. Both countries were implored to do so and applauded thereafter.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, responsibility for absorbing displaced Ukrainians again fell upon bordering states, including Poland, and non-bordering countries, such as Britain, America, and Israel. Again, the international community implored those countries to do so and applauded them thereafter. The old one-two. 

But in a move away from international norms, the countries that typically urge population absorption now assign no absorption responsibility to Egypt and insist that where other displaced populations may seek to emigrate, no such notion has ever crossed the minds of the Gazans.

Not only has Egypt refused to open its border, but it has deployed some 40 tanks to the area, presumably in readiness to gun down any of the Gazans whom it and the world claim to care for so deeply in the event that they cross into its territory.

Shifting to an unorthodox stance, the international community is now violating its own standards because this war features an unfamiliar regional contender – an Israel that is actually seeking a conclusive victory!

Desperate to prevent that outcome, the world now flails to tie Israel up using techniques of astounding illogic. They assert that Syrians may want to flee their brutal reality. So might Ukrainians. But Palestinians? No! Uniquely, Palestinians want to stay where they are, immiserated by the Hamas regime that they voted into power, displaced by Israel’s legitimate response to the attack launched against it. 

Some 250,000 Israelis have been driven from their homes by Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Iranian-backed Hamas in Gaza. In the latter case, Egypt was the bridge that connected murderous intent with murderous deeds.

Israel must advance. Asked to choose between a displacement crisis in Gaza or perpetuating the worsening displacement crisis unfolding within its own borders, it must first safely repatriate Israelis who are living as evacuees within their own country, beginning with those from Israel’s south. For that to be achieved, Hamas can and must be cleared from Rafah.

WHILE EGYPT is centrally responsible for the displacement of the Gazans and eminently equipped to resolve the issue, primary responsibility rests with the Gazan people themselves. 

Many distinctions exist between the crises in Syria and Ukraine and the events taking place in Gaza. The most telling of those is that while Syrians did not elect President Bashar Al-Assad and Ukrainians did not elect President Vladimir Putin, Gazan voters willfully cast their ballot in support of the regime that launched the war in which they are now entangled – Hamas!

Gazans lent an electoral mandate to the known genocidal intentions that are at the heart of the Hamas charter. That genocide was attempted on October 7. When dead IDF soldiers and elderly abductees were dragged into Gaza, mass civilian celebration erupted on the streets. Jew hatred, violence, and murderous intent still coarse through the veins of too many Gazans. Now Israel is responding. 

For too long, the cooperation between Egypt and Hamas has remained hidden; whispered about but rarely spoken aloud.

The future of Egypt and Hamas

But it’s time for their partnership to be outed. Whether Gazans and Egyptians want each other or not, the international community should consummate a union between them. Egypt should be pressed to allow Gazans into the Sinai - against its preference - with at least the same vigor that Israel was compelled to funnel aid into the Strip against the Israeli will. The result should also be the same. 

Israel must press forward, undeterred by bluster, in pursuit of its highest calling - the defense of its own people and the return of its hostages.

Israelis were murdered and abducted during the holiest, most festive period of the Jewish calendar. If it does not protect that which is sacred to it, others will trample upon and desecrate those values. Perhaps an IDF armed with the determination exhibited to this point can return the children of Israel to their homes in time for this year’s Passover. They’ve been in the wilderness of displacement, torment, and kidnap for far too long.

The writer is a co-founder and CEO of The MirYam Institute and an IDF combat veteran.