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Abstract
‘Mowing the Grass’, Israel’s strategy in the twenty-first century against hostile non-state groups, reflects the assumption that Israel finds itself in a protracted intractable conflict. The use of force in such a conflict is not intended to attain impossible political goals, but a strategy of attrition designed primarily to debilitate the enemy capabilities. Only after showing much restraint in its military responses does Israel act forcefully to destroy the capabilities of its foes, hoping that occasional large-scale operations also have a temporary deterrent effect in order to create periods of quiet along its borders. The Israeli approach is substantively different from the current Western strategic thinking on dealing with non-state military challenges.
Acknowledgements
We thank Dima Adamsky, Steven David, Hillel Frisch, Eado Hecht, Avi Kober, Ellie Lieberman and Shmuel Sandler for their useful comments on an earlier draft. Three anonymous reviewers helped refine the manuscript. We also thank Eitan Rapps for his research and editorial assistance.
Notes
1For a typology of Israel’s wars see Stuart A. Cohen and Efraim Inbar, ‘A Taxonomy of Israel’s Use of Military Force’, Comparative Strategy 10/10 (April 1991).
2For the notion of small wars, see Col. C.E. Calwell, Small Wars: Their Principles & Practice, 3rd edition (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press 1996).
3For the state and non-state dimensions of the conflict, see Shmuel Sandler, ‘The Protracted Arab-Israeli Conflict, A Temporal Spatial Analysis’, The Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 10/4 (1988), 54--78. Increased combat against non-state entities is characteristic of other states since the end of the Cold War. See data in ‘Global Conflict Trends’, Center for Systemic Peace, Severn, MD, posted online at <http://www.systemicpeace.org/conflict.htm>. For a review of the recent literature on this phenomenon, see Azar Gat, ‘Is War Declining – and Why?’ Journal of Peace Research 50/2 (2012), 149--57.
4There is vast literature on Israel’s wars against guerrillas and terrorists since 1948. See inter alia Benny Morris, Israel’s Border Wars, 1949--1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1993); Zeev Drory, Israel’s Reprisal Policy, 1953–1956 (London: Frank Cass 2004); Avi Kober, ‘From Blitzkrieg to Attrition: Israel’s Attrition Strategy and Staying Power’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 16/2 (2005), 216--40; Jonathan Shimshoni, Israel and Conventional Deterrence: Border Warfare from 1953 to 1970 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1988); Efraim Inbar, ‘Israel’s Small War: The Military Response to the Intifada’, Armed Forces & Society 18/1 (1991), 29--50; Zeev Schiff and Ehud Yaari, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising – Israel’s Third Front (Tel Aviv: Schocken 1990); Sergio Catignani, Israeli Counter-Insurgency and the Intifadas: Dilemmas of a Conventional Army (New York: Routledge 2008).
5Sergio Catignani, ‘The Strategic Impasse in Low-Intensity Conflicts: The Gap between Israeli Counter-Insurgency Strategy and Tactics during the Al-Aqsa Intifada’, Journal of Strategic Studies 28/1 (2005), 70; Dag Henriksen, ‘Deterrence by Default? Israel’s Military Strategy in the 2006 War against Hizballah’, Journal of Strategic Studies 35/1 (Feb. 2012), 95--120; Raphaelle L. Camilleri, ‘Examining the Paradox of Israel’s Unrealized Power: The Conceptual and Structural Sources of Israel’s “Strategic Deficit”’, Paper presented at the International Study Association 53rd Meeting, San Diego, CA, 2 April 2012.
6Catignani, ‘The Strategic Impasse in Low-Intensity Conflicts’, 72. See also Zeev Maoz, ‘Evaluating Israel’s Strategy of Low-Intensity Warfare, 1949--2006’, Security Studies 16/3 (July 2007); Daniel Byman, ‘Curious Victory: Explaining Israel’s Suppression of the Second Intifada’, Terrorism and Political Violence 24/5 (2012), 837--9.
7Niccolò Petrelli, ‘Deterring Insurgents: Culture, Adaptation and the Evolution of Israeli Counterinsurgency, 1987–2005’, Journal of Strategic Studies 36/5 (Oct. 2013), 744; see also Maoz, ‘Evaluating Israel’s Strategy of Low-Intensity Warfare, 1949--2006’.
8Maoz, ‘Evaluating Israel’s Strategy of Low-Intensity Warfare, 1949--2006’, 346; Emanuel Adler, ‘Dammed if you do, Dammed if you don’t: Performative Power and the Strategy of Conventional and Nuclear Diffusing’, Security Studies 19/2 (April–June 2010), 210.
9Sergio Catignani, ‘Variation on a Theme: Israel’s Operation Cast Lead and the Gaza Strip Missile Conundrum’, RUSI Journal 154/4 (2009), 66--73.
10 Evan Braden Montgomery and Stacie L. Pettyjohn, ‘Democratization, Instability, and War: Israel’s 2006 Conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah’, Security Studies 19/3 (Aug. 2010), 554; Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism (New York: Columbia UP 2009), 186.
11Oded Lowenheim and Gadi Heimann, ‘Revenge in International Politics’, Security Studies 17/4 (Dec. 2008), 710.
12IDF officers often use the phrase ‘mowing the grass’, usually in a tactical sense. A recent example is a briefing for academics by senior officers in the Central Command, 20 Feb. 2013. See also <http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4340652,00.html> and the IDF website: ‘Did We Beat Palestinian Terror?’, <http://www.idf.il/1613-15468-he/Dover.aspx>. The use of this term, nonexistent in any IDF doctrinal document, is typical of the organizational culture in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which allows the use of informal operational and doctrinal concepts. On the IDF’s informal culture, see Dima Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US, and Israel (Stanford UP 2010), 111; Eitan Shamir, Transforming Command: The Pursuit of Mission Command in the US, British, and Israeli Armies (Stanford UP 2011), 83.
13David Ben-Gurion, Uniqueness and Singularity: Discussions on Israel’s Security (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Maarachot 1971), 207, 369.
14For the evolution of Israel’s strategic thinking and culture, see Avner Yaniv, Politics and Strategy in Israel (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Hapoalim 1994); Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation, 110–19.
15The Egyptian decision was due to several factors including the desire to adopt a a pro-American foreign policy orientation and the fact that the 1973 war allowed it to regain its dignity.
16Efraim Inbar, ‘Israel’s Strategic Environment in the 1990s’, Journal of Strategic Studies 25/1 (March 2002), 37--8; Hemda Ben-Yehuda and Shmuel Sandler, The Arab-Israeli Conflict Transformed: Fifty Years of Interstate and Ethnic Crises (Albany, NY: SUNY Press 2002), 167--79.
17On Islamist resistance, see Ehud Yaari, ‘The Muqawama Doctrine’, The Washington Institute, 13 Nov. 2006, <www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-muqawama-doctrine>; Michael Milstein, ‘The Challenge of al-Muqawama (Resistance) to Israel’, Strategic Assessment 12/4 (Feb. 2010). Their behavior is reminiscent of the role assumed by Palestinian terrorist groups after the defeat of the Arab states in 1967. See Yehoshafat Harkabi, Arab Strategies and Israel’s Response (New York: The Free Press 1977), 63--77; Barry Rubin, Revolution until Victory. The Politics and History of the PLO (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP Press 1994), 22--3.
18For Israeli large consensus that conflict resolution is not around the corner, see The Peace Index, <http://en.idi.org.il/tools-and-data/guttman-center-for-surveys/the-peace-index/>; and Yehuda Ben-Meir and Olena Bagno-Moldavsky, The Voice of the People: Israeli Public Opinion on National Security, 2012, Memorandum 126 (Tel Aviv: INSS, March 2013).
19See Colin Kahl, ‘COIN of the Realm’, Foreign Affairs 86/6 (Nov./Dec. 2007), 472–4; John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Univ. of Chicago Press 2002), 27--8; Mark Moyer, A Question of Command, COIN from Civil War to Iraq (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 2009), 2--4.
20Harry G. Summers, ‘A War is War is a War’, in Loren B. Thompson (ed.), Low Intensity Conflict: The Pattern of Warfare in the Modern World (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books 1989).
21See Robert Egnell, ‘Winning “Hearts and Minds”? A Critical Analysis of Counter-Insurgency Operations in Afghanistan’, Civil Wars 12/3 (2010), 282--303.
22Department of the Army, FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5 Counterinsurgency (Washington DC 2006), 51.
23Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, 27--8.
24Israel has refrained from annexing the West Bank and the political power of the ‘Greater Israel’ ideology has greatly diminished. Every poll shows that over two thirds of the Israelis are ready for partition. Moreover, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994 is a de facto partition, albeit a messy one.
25Moshe Dayan, Israel’s defense minister at that time, allowed free movement of goods and people between the West Bank and Jordan, despite the fact that formally a state of war existed between Israel and Jordan. See Eitan Shamir, ‘From Retaliation to Open Bridges: Moshe Dayan’s Evolving Approach toward the Population in Counter Insurgency’, Civil Wars 14/1 (2012), 63--79.
26Hans Delbrück, A History of the Art of War, Vol. 4 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1985), 293--315.
27Avi Kober, Israel’s Wars of Attrition: Attrition Challenges to Democratic States (New York: Routledge 2009).
28For the need of a long term strategy of attrition, see Col. Shay Shabtay, ‘The War after the Next War: The Era of Protracted Conflicts’, Maarachot, No. 440 (Dec. 2011), 4--9.
29Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, Lecture presented at ‘The Limitation of the Use of Military Force: Strategic, Moral and Legal Considerations,’ Joint Conference of the IDC and National Security College, Herzliya, 23 Jan. 2013.
30On the development of military doctrine of these organizations, see Itai Brun, ‘While You’re Busy Making Other Plans – The “Other” RMA’, Journal of Strategic Studies 33/4 (2010), 535--65.
31Uzi Rubin, From Nuisance to Strategic Threat: The Missile Attacks from the Gaza Strip on Southern Israel (Hebrew), Studies in Middle East Security No. 87 (Ramat-Gan: Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Feb. 2011).
32Efraim Inbar, ‘How Israel Bungled the Second Lebanon War,’ Middle East Quarterly 19/3 (Summer 2007), 61; Udi Lebel, ‘Militarism versus Security? The Double-Bind of Israel’s Culture of Bereavement and Hierarchy of Sensitivity to Loss’, Mediterranean Politics 16/3 (Oct. 2011), 365--84.
33For the term ‘escalation dominance’, see Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (Baltimore: Penguin Books 1968), 290.
34Steven R. David, Fatal Choices: Israel’s Policy of Targeted Killing, Mideast Security and Policy Studies, No. 51 (Ramat-Gan: Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Sept. 2002).
35Byman, ‘Curious Victory: Explaining Israel’s Suppression of the Second Intifada’, 838.
36For example Israel attacked from the air in Sudan weapon convoys to Hamas in Feb. 2009 and Oct. 2012; in Syria in Jan. 2013 and May 2013 weapons on their way to Hizballah.
37Interviews with senior IDF officers.
38See Glenn H. Snyder, ‘Deterrence and Defense’, in Robert J. Art and Kenneth N. Waltz (eds), The Use of Force (New York: Lanham 1983), 133–4.
39Col. Eran Ortal ‘Is the IDF Capable of a Conceptual Breakthrough?’ Maarachot, No. 447 (Feb. 2013), 22--8.
40Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP1960) 9.
41Hillel Frisch, ‘Motivation or Capabilities? Israeli Counterterrorism against Palestinian Suicide Bombings and Violence’, Journal of Strategic Studies 29/5 (Oct. 2006), 843–69.
42See inter alia, Alex Mintz and Bruce Russett, ‘The Dual Economy and Arab-Israeli Use of Force: A Transnational System?’ in Steve Chan and Alex Mintz (eds), Defence, Welfare, and Growth (London: Routledge Kegan Paul 1992), 179--96; Christopher Sprecher and Karl DeRouen, Jr, ‘Israeli Military Actions and Internalization-Externalization Processes’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 46/2 (April 2002), 244--59.
43Israel Tal, National Security: The Few Against the Many (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Dvir 1996), 61--88.
44Doron Almog, ‘Cumulative Deterrence and the War on Terrorism,’ Parameters 34/4 (Winter 2004--05), 8.
45Robert Pape, Bombing to Win: Airpower and Coercion in War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1996).
46Thomas Rid, ‘Deterrence beyond the State: The Israeli Experience’, Contemporary Security Policy 33/1 (2012), 126--9.
47Colin Gray, ‘Deterrence and the Nature of Strategy’, in Max G. Manwarning (ed.), Deterrence in the 21st Century (London: Routledge 2001), 19.
48Giora Eiland, ‘The Third Lebanon War: Target Lebanon’, Strategic Assessment 11/2 (Nov. 2008), 9--17; Ron Tira, ‘Breaking the Amoeba’s Bones’, Strategic Assessment 9/3 (Nov. 2006).
49For the debate, see Jean-Loup Saman, ‘The Dahya Concept and Israeli Military Posture vis-à-vis Hezbollah Since 2006’, Comparative Strategy 32 (2013), 146--59.
50Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet), Palestinian Terrorism in 2007 – Statistics and Trends. ‘Terrorist attacks’ include the following: throwing of Molotov cocktails, stabbing, running over by car, torching, hurling grenades, abduction, anti-tank fire, stone throwing, mortar fire, rocket fire, suicide attack, blowing up of cars laden with explosives, infiltration, laying of explosive charge, and assault.
51Gal Hirsh, ‘From “Solid Lid” to “Other Way”: Campaign Development in Central Command 2000--2003’, in Haggai Golan and Shaul Shay (eds), Low Intensity Conflict (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Maarachot 2004), 246. Hirsh, the Operations Officer (G3) of Central Command at that time, named the operation ‘Defensive Shield’, evoking the need to create a shield between the terrorists and population. See Gal Hirsh, War Story – Love Story (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot 2009),174.
52Ibid. See also Sergio Catignani, ‘The Security Imperative in Counterterror Operations: The Israeli Fight against Suicidal Terror’, Terrorism and Political Violence 17/1–2 (2005), 256.
53Moshe Ya’alon, The Longer Shorter Way (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot 2008), 137.
54Palestinian terrorism during the second Intifada was a turning point in Israel’s public opinion on the Palestinian issue.
55Frisch, ‘Motivation or Capabilities?’, 849, 852; Byman, ‘Curious Victory’, 830.
56Frisch, ‘Motivation or Capabilities?,’ 860–864.
57For example, Maj. Gen. Amram Mitzna (res.), GOC Central Command at the outbreak of the first Intifada, said on a few occasions that it was impossible to arrive at a military decision in a confrontation with ‘terrorist organizations’; see quotes in Zaki Shalom and Yoaz Hendel, ‘The Unique Features of the Second Intifada’, Military and Strategic Affairs 3/1 (May 2011), 22--3 and note 5. Former head of the Israel Security Agency Ami Ayalon (1996–2000), argued that ‘War against terrorism is…not a fleeting battle that ends in either victory or defeat.’ Quoted in Catignani, ‘The Security Imperative in Counterterror Operations’, 257. Col. Yehuda Vagman quotes a similar opinion expressed by Likud Party Member of the Knesset Yuval Steinitz in ‘The Trap of Low Intensity Conflict’, Ariel Center for Policy Research, White Paper No. 149 (2003), 11. For the debate within the military over the issue; see response to Vagman in Col. Shmuel (Semo) Nir, ‘There is No Trap’, Maarachot, No. 387 (Jan. 2003), 68--70.
58Itai Brun, ‘The Second Lebanon War, 2006’, in John Andreas Olsen (ed.), A History of Air Warfare (Washington DC: Potomac Books 2010), 302-3. See also Dani Haloutz, Straightforward (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot 2010), 364--5. The IDF often defines the concrete objectives of the war as a result of ambiguous civilian directives. See Kobi Michael, ‘The Israel Defense Forces as an Epistemic Authority: An Intellectual Challenge in the Reality of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 30/3 (May 2007), 421-46.
59Brun, ‘The Second Lebanon War’, 305.
60Ibid.
61Gur Laish, ‘The Second Lebanon War – A Strategic Reappraisal’, Infinity Journal 4 (Fall 2011), 23.
62Hirsh, War Story – Love Story, 240.
63See Avi Kober, ‘The Israel Defense Forces in the Second Lebanon War: Why the Poor Performance?’, Journal of Strategic Studies 31/1 (Feb. 2008), 4--6; Inbar, ‘How Israel Bungled the Second Lebanon War’; Benjamin S. Lambeth, ‘Israel’s War in Gaza: A Paradigm of Effective Military Learning and Adaptation’, International Security 37/2 (Fall 2012), 85--91.
64United Nations Environment Program Lebanon Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment, <http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications.php?prog=lebanon>.
65‘Hizballah chief revisits raid,’ Washington Post, 28 Aug. 2006.
66Lambeth, ‘Israel’s War in Gaza: A Paradigm of Effective Military Learning and Adaptation’, 85–91.
67Rubin, ‘From Nuisance to Strategic Threat’, 20.
68For an evaluation, see Lambeth, ‘Israel’s War in Gaza: A Paradigm of Effective Military Learning and Adaptation’, 96--118; and David E. Johnson, Hard Fighting: Israel in Lebanon and Gaza (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 2011), 111--12.
69Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant, at the time the Chief of Southern Command, Lecture at the IDF Staff & Command College, 15 April 2009.
70See Shai Fogelman, Haaretz, 24 Oct. 2010.
71Quoted in Johnson, ‘Hard Fighting’, 113.
72Shai Fogelman, ‘Made in Israel’, Haaretz, 24 Dec. 2011.
73Catignani, ‘Variation on a Theme’, 68.
74Interview with IAF Lt. Col. R, who took part in the planning of the operation, Tel Aviv, 25 Dec. 2010.
75Gabriel Siboni, ‘War and Victory’ (Hebrew), Military and Strategy 1/3 (Dec. 2009).
76Johnson, Hard Fighting, 120.
77United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, <www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/FactFindingMission.htm>. For a refutation of these findings, see Dore Gold, ‘The Dangerous Bias of the United Nations Goldstone Report’, US News, 24 March 2010, <http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2010/03/24/the-dangerous-bias-of-the-united-nations-goldstone-report>. Goldstone himself retracted the findings of his report on 2 April 2011, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/reconsidering-the-goldstone-report-on-israel-and-war-crimes/2011/04/01/AFg111JC_story.html>.
78Benjamin S. Lambeth, ‘Second Lebanon War – a Reassessment’, Military and Strategy 4/3 (Dec. 2012), note 47.
79Giora Eiland, ‘Operation Pillar of Defense, Strategic Perspectives’, in Shlomo Brom (ed.), In the Aftermath of Operation Pillar of Defense: The Gaza Strip, November 2012 (Tel Aviv: INSS 2012), Memorandum 124, 12.
80Zvi Zinger, The Political Echelon is hoping for a quick ending but preparing for a ground operation’,< http://megafon-news.co.il/asys/archives/98500>.
81Amir Rapaport, ‘100% Precision Munitions from the Air’, Israel Defense 11 (Nov.-Dec. 2012),
82According to IDF, it mobilized between 60,000 to 70,000 reservists – a greater number than in Cast Lead and similar to the figure in the last stage of the 2006 Lebanon War. Or Heler, ‘The Reserve in Pillar of Defense,’ Israel Defense, 19 Jan. 2013.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Efraim Inbar
Efraim Inbar is Professor of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University and Director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies.
Eitan Shamir is Lecturer in Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University and Senior Researcher at the BESA Center.
Eitan Shamir
Efraim Inbar is Professor of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University and Director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies.
Eitan Shamir is Lecturer in Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University and Senior Researcher at the BESA Center.