By Yaakov Lappin
The ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad appears to be holding stable, creating an opportunity to review the key takeaways from the three-day round of fighting from August 5 to August 7.
The Israeli defense establishment conducted a highly successful and effective short, sharp shock to the Iranian-backed PIJ terror faction. Yet it is the weakest of Israel’s adversaries, and the Israeli public needs to manage its expectations accordingly.
Acting on intelligence of an imminent guided missile attack from Gaza on Israeli targets, the Israeli Air Force, the Shin Bet, the Military Intelligence Directorate, Southern Command, and the IDF Armored Corps integrated their firepower efforts in a coordinated opening strike, which eliminated PIJ’s senior military leadership in northern Gaza, PIJ field attack squads, and PIJ observation towers used to coordinate enemy activity -- all at the same time.
The Israeli operational momentum continued throughout the operation, with precision strikes displaying a marriage of accurate firepower and real-time intelligence superiority.
Meanwhile, on the defensive side, Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system broke its previous records and achieved a 97% successful interception rate of rockets heading for built-up areas. Standing guard over Israeli cities, towns, and villages, the Iron Dome intercepted 380 projectiles.
The conflict was fought entirely as an exchange of standoff firepower, with both sides sending firepower strikes at one another. PIJ directed 1,100 rockets indiscriminately at Israeli targets, while the IAF took the utmost care to reduce harm to noncombatants to the extent possible, including aborting strikes when civilians were spotted in the designated strike zone.
According to IDF figures, 15 Palestinians were killed by failed PIJ rockets, meaning that more Palestinian civilians were killed by PIJ than by Israel in this conflict.
The IDF attacked a total of 170 PIJ targets during the three days of fighting, also going on to eliminate the organization’s southern commander.
It is easy to become deluded by the effective defense of the Israeli home front during this conflict, and easy to forget that should Hamas get involved, with its significantly larger arsenal of rockets, or Hezbollah, which has a monstrous arsenal of 150,000 projectiles – larger than that of most NATO armies -- air defenses will be flooded and will only be partially effective in preventing impacts in Israel.
More importantly, it is important to view Gaza as Iran sees it: One more arena in a multi-arena choke hold that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is trying to wrap around Israel’s neck.
By financing and providing knowhow to Gaza’s terror factions to build rocket arsenals and adding their firepower to that of Hezbollah, together with its entrenchment in Syria where it has ballistic and cruise missile bases, as well as its deployment of missiles and UAVs to Iraq and missile launch sites in Iran itself, the Islamic Republic is building a region-wide multi-front firepower assault staging ground against Israel.
This is the true context in which Gaza should be viewed. The three-day clash with the second largest Gazan terror faction is therefore no indication of the real security challenges faced by Israel.
It is precisely because of this force build-up by the Iranian-led axis, and the alarming progress of Iran’s nuclear program, that Israel’s defense establishment views Gaza as a third-tier priority, and one which must not act as a distraction or drain on Israeli military resources through a large-scale conflict.
Ultimately, however, although it is a mistake to view Gaza in isolation from the wider strategic picture, Israel is still overdue for a more in-depth discussion on its available options regarding the Gaza Strip conundrum.
Israel has two main strategic options when it comes to the Hamas-ruled Islamist enclave: Rounds of fighting designed to create periods of calm and quiet, or re-occupation of the Gaza Strip and a years-long military operation to root out the terrorists that would result in large numbers of casualties and a military regime imposed on 2.2 million Palestinians.
There are no other visible options at this time, and the Israeli defense establishment has repeatedly concluded that limited campaigns to top up Israeli deterrence are the lesser of the two evils.
This is a legitimate and critical debate for Israelis to engage in and those who advocate for toppling the Hamas regime must answer the question of who they think can replace it.
The idea of getting the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority to ‘ride into Gaza on Israeli tanks’ appears to be lacking in credibility, both because of the legitimacy crash that this would cause Fatah, and because of the severe doubts that exist over Fatah’s ability to hold Gaza, after losing the enclave to Hamas in a violent coup in 2007.
If Israel does continue to choose to allow Hamas to rule the Strip, meaning an acceptance of a cycle of enemy force build-up and habitual rounds of fighting, it must also think about ways of strengthening the status of the shaky Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, to avoid giving Palestinians the impression that Hamas’s way of armed conflict and radical Islamism will promote Palestinian interests and national prestige more than the PA’s modus operandi.
The PA’s ‘hybrid’ model of pursuing quiet security coordination with Israel against the common foe of Hamas and PIJ, together with diplomatic assaults on Israel and nods to martyrdom culture and incitement, will be insufficient to compete with Hamas if the PA does not soon begin delivering some political achievements for the Palestinians living under its rule. Those achievements can then act as a lever for Israeli demands for the PA to tone down its incitement.
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.