What is a sufficient victory?

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Speaking to IDF commanders in Judea and Samaria last week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert exhorted the officers tasked with preventing Palestinians from attacking Israel while operating under civilian cover to have sympathy for them. Olmert said "Take all the Palestinians who have been stripped at the roadblocks just because of fear that there may be terrorists and terror operatives among them. Take all those who wait at roadblocks because of fear that a car bomb may drive through the same roadblock. This could be a boiling cauldron, liable to explode and cause horrible burns, and it could be something else, dependent only on your ability to act wisely and forcefully."

Since Olmert knows that IDF soldiers are as courteous as possible to Palestinians at roadblocks, his statement will have two major consequences. First it will cause a loosening of regulations at roadblocks and so impair IDF counterterror capabilities. Second, by insultingly insinuating that IDF forces are cruel, Olmert demoralized his own soldiers and reduced their willingness to accomplish their mission by hinting that they cannot expect the government to back them.

Olmert's message is just the latest action his government has taken in recent weeks that undermine the IDF's ability to maintain its military success since 2002 in defeating Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria and preventing them from reorganizing.

The Olmert-Livni-Barak government's decision to take down roadblocks throughout Judea and Samaria; provide immunity from arrest to wanted terror fugitives; and permit the deployment of US-backed Fatah militias in Jenin all serve to directly undermine the IDF's remarkable achievements in defeating and preventing the reconstitution of the Palestinian terror war machine in Judea and Samaria since Operation Defensive Shield was carried out in 2002. Even more disturbingly, its reported willingness to cede the Jordan Valley to Fatah in the negotiations it is now conducting with Fatah leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qurei indicate that the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is ready to transform Judea and Samaria into a base for global jihadist forces just as occurred when Israel surrendered Gaza's border with Egypt in 2005.

That the government is squandering the IDF's hard-won achievements in Judea and Samaria is made clear in a paper on counterinsurgency warfare authored by Major General (res.) Yaakov Amidror released this week by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Amidror's paper, "Winning Counterinsurgency War: The Israeli Experience," focuses on Israel's military defeat of Palestinian terror forces in Judea and Samaria during and subsequent to Operation Defensive Shield.

AMIDROR IDENTIFIES six components of counterinsurgency warfare which he deems essential for effecting military victory over irregular forces. These components are: a political decision by the government to defeat terrorism; winning and maintaining control of the territory from which terrorists operate; acquiring relevant intelligence; isolating the terror enclaves from outside supporters; multidimensional cooperation between intelligence gatherers and fighting forces; and separating civilians from terrorists. Through its actions, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government it is undermining four of these components.

After identifying what he views as the essential components of successful counterinsurgency campaigns, Amidror identifies and defines three forms of military victory. First, there is "total victory" which involves both a military defeat of insurgent or terror forces and the political reorganization of their societies from terror-supporting societies into terror-combating societies. Second, there is "temporary victory" which involves a one-off military defeat of enemy forces which is not combined with any political transformation of their societies. Finally, Amidror considers what he refers to as "sufficient victory." As he defines it, a sufficient victory involves defeating an irreconcilable foe and then preventing him from rebuilding his capacity to wage war.

Like a temporary victory, a sufficient victory doesn't entail any political transformation of enemy society, and indeed it takes for granted that such a transformation is impossible to enact. But as opposed to a temporary victory, Amidror argues that the effect of a sufficient victory can be longstanding if the victorious side is willing and able to consistently prevent enemy forces from reconstituting themselves. That is, a sufficient victory requires a continuous rather than one-off campaign.

Amidror's definition of sufficient victory leads him to conclude that contrary to the approach of the Israeli and Western Left, there is a military option for victory in counterinsurgency wars devoid of political transformation. From an Israeli perspective, Amidror's vision of counterinsurgency warfare view is reasonable and understandable.

Israel's options for transforming Palestinian society from a terror-supporting society to a terror-combating society are limited. Influenced by domestic, pan-Arab and pan-Islamic jihadist indoctrination; supported militarily, financially and politically by Arab states, Iran, terror groups and the West, the Palestinians have little reason to transform.

 

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MOREOVER, ISRAEL's strategic and national interests in maintaining control over Judea and Samaria could render sustainable a military strategy with no withdrawal element. This is not the case in other battlefields such as the US counterinsurgency in Iraq.

To a degree, Amidror's view that sufficient victory is possible is echoed in recent statements by US military commanders in Iraq. In a dispatch from Iraq published last month in National Review, Richard Lowry reported, "For all the security gains over the last year, American commanders believe they have hit a plateau." Absent coherent, competent action by the Iraqi government to secure and maintain the loyalty of Iraqis to the Iraqi state, like the IDF in Judea and Samaria, all US forces in Iraq can do is keep violence down to sufferable levels.

Yet in contrast to Israel's success in Judea and Samaria, the success of US counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq is the consequence first and foremost of their politically-transformative guiding principles. As Lowry noted, the 80,000 Iraqi security volunteers who now openly collaborate with US forces in counter-terror operations, "represent more or less a direct transfer of forces from the enemy's side to ours."

In Israel, the basic assumption that guided both the decision by the Rabin-Peres government to embrace the PLO and form the Palestinian Authority in 1993 and the decisions by subsequent governments to leave the PA in place and maintain allegiance to the PLO as a negotiating partner was that like the Iraqi security volunteers, and like the South Lebanese Army which supported IDF operations in South Lebanon from 1985 through 2000, PLO and Fatah forces would act as transformative agents in Palestinian society moving it from a terror-supporting society to a terror-combating society.

This view, always controversial, has been proven wrong again and again. Just last week, the PLO ambassador to Lebanon Abbas Zaki restated the PLO's aim of destroying Israel in an interview with Lebanese television.

In Zaki's words, "The PLO… has not changed its platform even one iota." That platform, to destroy Israel in stages, remains the objective of the PLO. He continued, "In light of the weakness of the Arab nation and the lack of values, and in light of the American control over the world, the PLO proceeds through phases, without changing its strategy. Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to p
rogress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine."

Israel's willingness to maintain its support for the PLO in spite of the PLO and Fatah's obvious rejection of Israel's right to exist and their continuous support and involvement in terror attacks against Israel exposes two flaws inherent in Amidror's view that it is possible to maintain a sufficient victory in counterinsurgency wars over the long term without inducing political transformation of enemy societies.

The first flaw is that it takes as a given that the will of the victorious army's government to maintain counterinsurgency operations will remain constant. The Olmert-Livni-Barak government's maintenance of the inherently adversarial Fatah terror group as a legitimate negotiating partner shows that this is not the case. The government's commitment to Fatah necessarily induces it to undermine IDF achievements in Judea and Samaria. Those achievements are inimical to the interests of Fatah and so, from the government's current perspective, they must be cancelled to please Fatah.

Since 2002, the IDF's military control over Judea and Samaria has not involved any serious efforts to transform Palestinian society on the grassroots level. It has not enhanced security for Palestinian civilians who are terrorized by terror operatives operating in their villages and towns. As Amidror notes, Israel's actions to separate civilians from terrorists in Judea and Samaria are limited to crafting operations that minimize collateral damage. But while Israel does not target Palestinian civilians, it has done nothing to prevent them from being targeted by Palestinian terrorists. And so, it has given them no option to fight those terrorists. As a consequence although militarily the situation in Judea and Samaria has been transformed over the past six years, politically, the only change among Palestinians is that they have become more radicalized.

And here lies the second flaw in his analysis. To be successful, a counterinsurgency war must have a political component that reaches out to enemy populations. While it is true that Israel has limited capacity to change the way that Palestinians think about Israel and the form their society ought to take, Israel does have some capacity. For instance, Israel could launch a hearts and minds campaign among Israeli Arabs who are both politically and demographically linked to the Palestinians.

Such a campaign would be two-pronged. First it would involve a concentrated law and order campaign whose aim would be to reassert Israel's sovereign authority in Israeli Arab areas. Second, it would secure law-abiding Israeli Arabs while delegitimizing the current anti-Israel, pro-terror leadership now in charge of Israeli Arab society and so cultivate the conditions necessary to replace that leadership with Israeli Arabs who embrace their identity as Israelis and oppose terrorism. The impact of such a campaign on the Palestinians in both Judea and Samaria would no doubt be dramatic.

Amidror makes the important point that there is no empirical data that proves the oft-repeated contention that terror-supporting societies are more willing to sacrifice for victory than terror-combating societies. As the Israeli public has shown since the Palestinians began their terror war in 2000, Israelis are just as willing, if not more willing, to make sacrifices for victory than the Palestinians. But for victory to be accomplished and secured, a military campaign needs to be complimented by a political campaign led by a political leadership that explains reality to its own public and is able to give terror-supporting societies another option.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

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8 Comments

  • Sid Cohen 04/15/2008 at 7:51

    I wish that Netanyahu was a better leader. Where is he in all of this?

    Reply
  • Dave Smith 04/15/2008 at 7:53

    Where did you learn so much about military science? I don’t remember ever learning about war from a woman before. Wow.

    Reply
  • Israeli officers 04/15/2008 at 7:54

    Why are Israeli officers afraid to think? Here’s Amidror trying to think but he can’t say what is obvious. The Palestinian Authority has to be destroyed and the Olmert government has to fall. This is no longer simply a political question. It’s a military question and a survival question.

    Reply
  • Erez 04/15/2008 at 7:56

    Actually, to give you a sense of how bad Israeli officers are, a lot of them are pleased with Olmert because they say that he acts “decisively.”

    Reply
  • Donald Braun 04/15/2008 at 13:33

    Caroline, you very thoroughly expose the miserable failure of secular/progressives like olmert to combat the evil which threatens our existence. Maybe we need to look to the religious sector for help. As a 58 year old jew I haven’t found very many occasions to look to rome for leadership during my life but this Benedict XVI has been doing some very laudable things lately. Do you see him, as I do, as a very signifigant emerging leader in the war against islamo-fascism, and in fact, at this stage in history, very good for the jews? Could you comment? Thanks as always! You’re the best!

    Reply
  • Matt Peterson 04/16/2008 at 14:52

    I am intrigued that you think Israeli Arabs can be persuaded to embrace their Israeli identity when Israel is explicitly a Jewish state for the Jewish people and most Israeli Arabs are Muslim.
    This problem goes to the heart of the whole matter of Israel’s legitimacy.

    Reply
  • Saul Goldman 04/16/2008 at 16:38

    1200 years ago Joshua understood the flaws in any negotiated settlements. For military power to have a deterrent capacity, it must first demonstrate its lethality. The Biblical narrative of the conquest of Canaan tells us two important facts. First, there were others living there at the time and secondly, our victory had to be complete. While scholars may not agree about the facts on the ground during this period, one thing is clear there is no compromise with the forces of darkness. I agree with those who urge that the Palestinian Authority must be destroyed.

    Reply
  • Henry Davis 04/17/2008 at 10:34

    There had been many attempts to find a permanent solution to the problem. Here is novel idea : Establishing a confederacy based on the principles of individual rights: total seperation of State and economics, similiar to USA in it’s beginning. The government’s only legitimate goal would be to protect the individuals from the initiation of force;domestic or foreign. No favours for the rich , not favours for the poor. No favours for an idividual , no favours for tribes. Taxes only for defensive purposes. All property privately owned. One would see investment in the thrillion of dollars;beneficial both for Arabs and Jews. …I think I’m awakening–oh, it was only a dream.

    Reply

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