Gaza conflict: deterrence and other missed points.

• Author: DeAtkine, Norvell B.

GAZA CONFLICT: Deterrence and Other Missed Points

http://www.fpri.org/enotes/200901.radu.gazaconflict.html

By Dr. Michael Radu, Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)

Michael Radu's article, written while the Gaza conflict was ongoing, makes a number of points relevant not only to the temporarily suspended operations in Gaza but the entire issue of asymmetric warfare. The author--co-chair of FPRI's Center on Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Homeland Security--is highly critical of the strategic concepts employed by Israel in operation "Cast Lead." He castigates its leadership as "misguided and misleading the public" and charges it with needlessly sacrificing its soldiers for an "illusory" goal.

According to Radu, Israel aimed to deter Hamas from launching missiles and rockets into Israel, even though traditional deterrence rests on premises inapplicable to Hamas. Its leaders, for example, do not care for their own safety or that of their families. Indeed the whole concept of "civilian" is meaningless to the Hamas leadership, which regards civilian casualties as a boon that aids manipulation of a Western media naively accepting of Palestinian reports about Israeli destruction. To Radu even the idea of women and children being ipso facto innocent victims is difficult to accept in a Middle Eastern world where children and women blow themselves up among civilians.

Because the Gaza population is solidly behind Hamas, including its aims and Islamist ideology, Israel had no hope, according to Radu, that its carnage would drive a wedge between the people and Hamas. A "Stalinist" totalitarian group, Hamas has the guns, and whatever the populace may think is of little consequence.

Radu states emphatically that Israel's "only solution ... is the physical destruction of Hamas in Gaza by killing most of its militants and leaders, be they 'political' or 'military.'" Seeing an asserted difference as a purely...