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.