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'Mowing the Grass': Israel's Strategy for Protracted Intractable Conflict

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Summary

Efraim Inbar and Eitan Shamir, “‘Mowing the Grass’: Israel’s Strategy for Protracted Intractable Conflict” (Journal of Strategic Studies 37:1, 2014, pp.65-90; published online 10 October 2013): a strategic-studies article arguing that much of the academic literature misunderstands Israel’s twenty-first-century use of force against hostile non-state groups, because Israel assumes it is in a protracted intractable conflict that cannot be solved politically or militarily in the near future. On that assumption Israel has adopted Mowing the Grass — a patient strategy of attrition whose use of force is not intended to attain impossible political goals or to change the enemy’s motivation, but to debilitate and periodically destroy the enemy’s capabilities, with only temporary, cumulative Deterrence as a corollary, in order to create periods of quiet along its borders. The article sets this against the two Western counterinsurgency schools (enemy-centric and population-centric, including ‘hearts and minds’), which it says Israel has rejected, and demonstrates the strategy through four case studies — Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank in 2002, the Second Lebanon War of 2006, Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008-09 and Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza in 2012 — concluding that the empirical data clearly indicates Israel’s use of force achieves the temporary quiet that is its main goal, and that ‘Mowing the Grass’ could serve as a model for other armies unless non-state actors acquire statist characteristics or more powerful capabilities.

What the file is

The Routledge / Taylor & Francis publisher’s PDF of the journal article, downloaded by Bar-Ilan University on 27 February 2014, as its first page records. The article proper occupies PDF p.3-28 (printed pp.65-90); PDF p.1-2 are the publisher’s download frame and terms, and the last pages (PDF p.25-28) carry the acknowledgements, contributor notes and bibliography. A BESA Center copy of the same article is the copy Josh’s queue records at besacenter.org; the file saved here is the journal version, whose citation line reads: Efraim Inbar & Eitan Shamir (2014), Journal of Strategic Studies, 37:1, 65-90, DOI 10.1080/01402390.2013.830972. The paired text copy supplied with it carries === PDF p.N === markers for all 28 pages and is clean and readable throughout, with the ligature and hyphenation breaks of the PDF text layer preserved. Slips in the text as printed are recorded under Open questions and kept in quotations.

Section by section

  • Abstract, epigraph and opening (PDF p.3 / printed p.65): The abstract states the thesis (see Summary). An epigraph from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, compares the task to pulling up baobabs regularly, at the first moment they can be distinguished from rosebushes: “A baobab is something you will never, never be able to get rid of if you attend to it too late.” The article opens on Israel’s rich experience of military force: the last conventional large-scale encounter, involving armoured divisions and air duels, took place in 1982 in Lebanon against the Syrian Army, and since then Israel has used force primarily against non-state armed organisations in small wars, reflecting the decline of the inter-state dimension of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel’s approach toward terrorists and irregular forces, “a challenge to the Zionist enterprise from the very beginning”, evolved with transient political and operational challenges (PDF p.3-4).
  • The literature criticised (PDF p.4-6 / printed pp.66-68): The article surveys and rejects the academic criticism of Israel’s twenty-first-century force: that its tactical successes have no corresponding political or strategic dividends; that ignoring the political side of the conflict is its major flaw; that it neglects ‘hearts and minds’ and diplomacy; that its force does not produce deterrence or is doomed to fail because non-state entities are not deterrable; that it fails to attain its goals — an analysis of Operation Cast Lead concluding it achieved nothing but a “shaky ceasefire” is the example given; that the 2006 war failed to foster domestic anger at Hizballah; and, in some accounts, that Israel in 2006 was primarily motivated by revenge, seeking “emotional satisfaction at the suffering of another” (Lowenheim and Heimann, as cited, PDF p.5). Against all of this: “This article argues that the much of this literature misunderstands Israel’s rationale for using military force” (PDF p.5, as printed). The term itself is introduced here: IDF officers often use the phrase ‘mowing the grass’, usually in a tactical sense; it appears in no IDF doctrinal document, which the authors call typical of an IDF organisational culture that allows informal operational and doctrinal concepts (PDF p.5, note 12).
  • The Strategic Dimension of ‘Mowing the Grass’ (PDF p.6-10 / printed pp.68-72): Israel’s past doctrine, devised by David Ben-Gurion, rested on two assumptions — Arab hostility is likely to continue for decades, and Israel suffers chronic inferiority in territory and demographics — from which Ben-Gurion concluded Israel cannot dictate a peace treaty even by overwhelming force, though force could create enough deterrence to erode the states’ motivation and extend the time between rounds, until eventually Arab states accepted Israel’s permanence: Egypt signed in 1979, Jordan in 1994, and most of the Arab world subscribes to the 2002 Arab League Peace Initiative (PDF p.6-7). The statist dimension has since weakened further — the ‘Arab Spring’ challenged the Arab state and its military capabilities, upheavals since 2010 are conducive to the proliferation of non-state organisations, and the ascendance of political Islam buttresses their ideological opposition; Iran, neither Arab nor a neighbour, is treated as a separate, potential nuclear exception (PDF p.7). Organisations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizballah, by contrast, cling to a radical Islamist ideology denying Israel’s right to exist and to a doctrine of resistance, Muqawama, whose strategic goal is to keep the historic struggle against the Zionist entity alive while the Arab states have given up on destroying the Jewish state, believing time is on their side (PDF p.7-8). Israel has projected its old perspective onto this reality: the organisations are implacable, there is very little Israel can do politically, and while there is a distant hope they may evolve along the PLO trajectory from armed struggle to the political arena, Israel’s military power cannot coerce a change in their basic attitudes in the short term. The Palestinian terror campaign that broke out in September 2000 ended Israeli illusions about having a Palestinian peace partner (PDF p.8). Force can therefore only reduce capabilities: “It just ‘mows the grass’ of the enemy capabilities, with no ambition to solve the conflict.” Periods of tranquility matter because Israel’s mere existence is itself a success over its enemies; and, the authors add, ‘Mowing the Grass’ ironically mirrors the patient Arab Muqawamah strategy (PDF p.8). The section then contrasts the Western academies’ two schools — enemy-centric counterinsurgency, which holds a campaign is fundamentally not different from conventional war, and population-centric counterinsurgency, winning hearts and minds, whose evidence of success the authors call questionable — and states that Israel is not aiming for victory or for ending the conflict, realises radical ideologies cannot be defeated on the battlefield, and has refrained from winning the hearts and minds of the Arab insurgents, the ethno-national, cultural and religious gaps being, in the authors’ words, simply too large (PDF p.9). Israel likewise shied away from a population-centric approach while ruling the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), Gaza and southern Lebanon, viewing its presence as temporary, entertaining no illusion of generating sympathy, and operating instead a stick-and-carrot system — Moshe Dayan’s post-1967 ‘Open Bridges’ policy is the example — and then a policy of disengagement from territories inhabited by hostile populations: unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, the West Bank security barrier in 2002, and the evacuation of Gaza in August 2005, while retaining a military presence, without a civilian administration, in areas regarded as critical such as the West Bank (PDF p.10).
  • The Military Dimension of ‘Mowing the Grass’ (PDF p.10-14 / printed pp.72-76): Where Israel’s conventional wars sought battlefield decision — Delbrück’s strategy of annihilation, the blitzkrieg preference — it also waged wars of attrition, designed to wear the enemy down through constant, relentless pressure and the cumulative effect of intermittent actions none of which is decisive; adapting that patient attrition to the new enemies was not out of character, and ‘Mowing the Grass’ is characterised as an anti-Muqawama strategy containing traditional elements such as retaliatory raids and preemptive strikes (PDF p.11). The militias’ own desire, the authors say, is to inflict pain and test Israel’s resolve, hiding among civilians and combining terror, suicide bombings, guerrilla tactics and rockets at population centres, a challenge greatly amplified by state support, primarily Iran’s training and advanced weaponry (PDF p.11). Israel does not respond automatically: timing and scope depend on the provocation, the damage, and political considerations including the international atmosphere, domestic circumstances and fear of casualties. It prefers short responses primarily from the air, where it has overwhelming superiority and escalation dominance; its air force and intelligence agencies have perfected hunting rocket launchers and targeted killing, which the authors call an important element because skilled personnel — bomb makers, trainers, document forgers, recruiters and leaders — are scarce and take months or years to replace, and the more sophisticated the organisation the longer restoration takes; and Israel, the authors say, was successful in decreasing the limited collateral damage of such pinpoint attacks, lowering international criticism (PDF p.11-12). Preventive actions complete the routine between rounds: interdiction of advanced weaponry to Hizballah and Hamas, usually unacknowledged — the note instances air attacks in Sudan in February 2009 and October 2012 and in Syria in January and May 2013 — covert operations against overseas intelligence and financial networks, and preventive arrests, primarily in the West Bank (PDF p.12). Only after a series of aggressions does the IDF commence larger-scale operations, possibly including a ground invasion, with limited political objectives: the main objective is to cripple severely the enemy’s military capabilities, whose elimination buys respite that Israel uses to learn and to deploy systems such as Iron Dome — deterrence by denial, as the security barrier also was — while rearmament is expected and necessitates continuing to mow; ground invasion is reserved for grave provocations or cases only ground troops can resolve, because it increases Israeli casualties, entails friction with a hostile civilian population and causes civilian casualties, and extends the operation and so attracts international criticism, while the threat of it is held to increase deterrence’s credibility (PDF p.12-13). On deterrence itself: the concept in Israel’s thinking is not absolute but Cumulative Deterrence — it aims to postpone each round as much as possible, using force is much like fighting crime and is not a sign of deterrence failure but necessary for maintaining a minimum level of deterrence, and Colin Gray is quoted that the use of force “may not be a sign of failure; it may be a precondition for success” (PDF p.13-14). The calculus changes, the authors argue, when non-state actors take over territory and act as de facto governments — Hizballah and Hamas, after taking control of Lebanon in 2005 and Gaza in 2007 respectively, as the text puts it, face new dilemmas and seem more likely to be deterred — and the authors note the Israeli dilemma over stronger retaliation and record: “So far, Israel refrained from adopting what is called the ‘Dahya concept,’ which advocates the threat and/or use of disproportionate force in order to enhance deterrence.” (PDF p.14)
  • The Twenty-First Century Experience of the IDF — framing (PDF p.15 / printed p.77): The four operations analysed — Defensive Shield (2002), the Second Lebanon War (2006), Cast Lead (2008-09) and Pillar of Defense (2012) — were all conducted in the ‘Mowing the Grass’ mode, their differences reflecting Israel’s learning curve and changing political circumstances; the IDF had internalised the failures of Operations ‘Accountability’ (July 1993) and ‘Grapes of Wrath’ (April 1996) in southern Lebanon, which did not focus on eliminating Hizballah’s military capabilities and hoped heavy fire would create deterrence. The shared logic is disruption and dislocation of capabilities, weakening the rival organisation and buying a period of recuperation; the West Bank is somewhat an exception, because Israel regained control of the entire area and prevented re-armament until the Palestinian leadership decided to embark on a non-violent struggle.
  • Operation ‘Defensive Shield’ (PDF p.15-17 / printed pp.77-79): Launched 29 March-21 April 2002 after a long Palestinian campaign of terror against civilians, particularly suicide attacks from the end of September 2000; by the start of 2002, 244 Israelis had been killed and hundreds more injured in nearly 7,000 terrorist attacks, the note’s Shin Bet definition of attacks including stone throwing and Molotov cocktails among much else. Israel’s initial response was very restrained, the authors say, because it regarded the Palestinian Authority as a peace partner and because of the international community’s instinct to call for restraint. The trigger was the Park Hotel attack of 27 March 2002, which killed 30 Israelis and wounded 140. The IDF invaded almost all the major West Bank cities under PA control since the Oslo Accords. Its political objective was, in Gal Hirsh’s words as cited, ‘to create a different security reality for Israel’; the IDF aimed at gaining security control of the West Bank without administering the population, and Moshe Ya’alon, then Deputy Chief of Staff, is quoted: “The military rationale for the operation was to regain the security responsibility in the West Bank…in order to stop the terror attacks.” There were no plans to change the PA or its leadership. The military goal was to dismantle the terror infrastructure — weapons caches, bomb-making laboratories, headquarters, training camps, capturing and killing militants; the IDF killed almost 500 terrorists and arrested 7,000, of whom 1,500 remained in detention. The offensive combined with defensive measures such as the security barrier proved, the authors argue, very effective in eliminating the suicide bombing threat, the number of successful attacks falling dramatically by 2004; because of the West Bank’s proximity to the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv-Haifa triangle Israel could not disengage totally, retained military control over large parts, and continues ‘Mowing the Grass’ there primarily by preventive arrests, though, the authors add, the motivation of parts of Palestinian society to attack Israel is still very strong. The lessons drawn: terrorists and insurgents can be overpowered by conventional armies, and the level of terror was only gradually diminished, so mowing was needed to keep the challenge at a bearable level.
  • The Second Lebanon War (PDF p.17-20 / printed pp.79-82): Hizballah provocations since May 2000 included several crossings to abduct Israeli soldiers, and Hizballah had built a missile arsenal capable of covering most of Israel. The war of 12 July-14 August 2006 was a reaction to a rocket barrage used as a diversion for the abduction of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of three others, 19 days after Palestinian militants’ cross-border raid from Gaza in which Gilad Shalit was kidnapped, signalling to many in Israel a serious deterrence failure. The enunciated strategic goals were, the authors say, not very modest — Ehud Olmert mentioned driving Hizballah out of southern Lebanon, deploying the Lebanese army there, restoring deterrence and returning the kidnapped soldiers — and the military suggested exerting strong pressure on the Lebanese government by extensively damaging Lebanese infrastructure from the air; but for reasons including US support for the Fouad Siniora government Israel limited its attacks to Hizballah targets, effectively adopting a modest goal. The IDF’s orders, as quoted from Itai Brun, were to destroy Hizballah’s long-range rocket launchers and launch capability, attack its soldiers, commands and infrastructure, strike its symbols and assets, and destroy its infrastructures next to the border to establish a special security zone; Col. Gur Laish is quoted summarising the strategy as a heavy assault against Hizballah — its military assets, the center of the government and its deployment in Beirut, and its communal infrastructure in south Lebanon — and Brig. Gen. Gal Hirsh that the aim was not to eliminate rocket launches but to hit Hizballah directly, make it pay a high price and shake its foundations. The authors then state: “In contrast to the criticism voiced, Israel’s strategy was neither attempting to target civilian infrastructure, nor planning to pressure the population to rise against Hizballah.” The war began with a massive and successful air attack on the long-range missiles; subsequent limited ground incursions appeared ineffective, and the failure to halt short- and mid-range rocket fire, hesitation over a large ground offensive and the indecisive ending fed the perception that Israel was ill-prepared and botched the war. The costs as the article gives them: a UN report’s figures of 1,191 Lebanese civilians killed, 4,405 wounded, about 900,000 fled, nearly 30,000 residential units destroyed or extensively damaged; Israel’s evaluation of 700 Hizballah fighters killed and over 1,000 wounded, a high price for a militia of 3,000-4,000 professionally trained fighters; Hizballah’s Beirut headquarters severely damaged, most border positions and a large part of the rocket arsenal destroyed, Shi’ite villages where Hizballah built strongholds severely damaged, and Hassan Nasrallah in hiding for two years, admitting he would not have ordered the abduction had he known its price. Israel’s price was moderate: 144 killed (121 of them soldiers) and about 2,000 wounded (660 of them soldiers), bearable economic damage, a bullish stock market, and clarified vulnerability to missile attacks; UN Resolution 1701 seemed the right exit strategy but did not drastically change southern Lebanon, which continued under Hizballah control. Since the war Hizballah has rebuilt, acquiring missiles capable of hitting every point in Israel, but the 2006 response appears to have strengthened deterrence, and with Israeli covert operations and Hizballah’s increasing involvement in Syria the border has stayed mostly quiet.
  • Operation ‘Cast Lead’ (PDF p.20-22 / printed pp.82-84): Decided on after a long escalation of rockets and mortars from Gaza: since the August 2005 disengagement over 6,000 rockets and mortars had been fired by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organisations, over 400 rocket attacks in 2008 alone before the operation, and the daily lives of over one million Israelis within range were affected. The operation of 27 December 2008-21 January 2009 followed the 2006 pattern, better planned and executed: of three IDF plans with incremental ambitions the political leadership chose the minimalist option, a large raid to damage Hamas’s military wing enough to deter further firing — Brig. Gen. Zvi Fogel: the objective was “to cripple Hamas military capabilities as much as possible” — and neither toppling Hamas rule in Gaza nor re-conquering the entire Strip was an objective. Israel caught Hamas off guard: 88 strike aircraft hit 100 preplanned targets in 220 seconds, one of the first targets a Hamas officers’ graduation ceremony, struck by five missiles as the officers marched, which some IDF officers called an Israeli version of ‘Shock and Awe’; a conservative estimate, the authors write, suggests 225 Hamas militants were killed and 750 injured in that incident alone, and about 100 warplanes and helicopters dropped over 100 bombs in the first hour. Some officers saw an opportunity to topple Hamas; the government resisted expanding the operation. A ground phase, planned for unlike 2006, began a week after the air strikes, conquering territory not as a goal in itself but to reduce enemy fire and destroy operational infrastructure — Gabriel Siboni’s ‘War and Victory’ is cited for this — and the operation ended with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. Casualty figures are presented as contested: the 2009 UN report’s 1,387-1,417 Palestinians killed; Israel’s figure of 1,166, of whom 709 identified as Hamas terror operatives; the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights’ 1,417, consisting of 926 civilians, 255 police officers and 236 fighters; on the Israeli side ten soldiers killed (four by friendly fire) and 207 wounded, three civilians killed and seven severely injured. The additional cost was reputational: like Hizballah, Hamas fighters hid among civilians using them as shields, the authors write, and despite many Israeli precautions civilian casualties brought international criticism culminating in the ‘Goldstone Report’, which accused Israel of war crimes and severe human rights violations; the note cites Dore Gold’s refutation and adds that Goldstone himself retracted the report’s findings on 2 April 2011. The operation achieved for a while its objective of tranquility on the Gaza border, rockets dropping for a few years from hundreds per month to isolated cases, mostly by more extreme organisations such as Islamic Jihad, until deterrence eroded and mowing was again a necessity.
  • Operation ‘Pillar of Defense’ (PDF p.22-24 / printed pp.84-86): Rocket and mortar incidents from Gaza numbered 365 in 2010, 680 in 2011 and 800 in 2012. The operation of 14-21 November 2012 was an immediate response to over 100 rockets fired within 24 hours, an attack on an Israeli patrol and an IED explosion on the Israeli side of the border; unlike previous incidents Hamas also fired rockets. The government again chose a minimalist approach, issuing no statements about toppling Hamas or decisive victory; Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s objectives were to strengthen deterrence, severely impair Hamas and other terror organisations, specifically crippling rocket capabilities, and minimize attacks on the home front. As in 2006 and 2008-09 the major achievements came in the first hours of accurate, surprise airstrikes: Ahmed al-Jabari, the Hamas supreme military commander, was eliminated at the outset, as were many junior Hamas terrorists, and underground rocket launchers and warehouses stocking Iranian-made long-range Fajr-5 missiles were attacked — simultaneously decapitating the military wing’s leadership and destroying its strategic assets. The IDF then continued a stand-off fire campaign whose impact dissipated as targets became less valuable. The authors present its civilian-casualty measures as unprecedented in the history of warfare: almost 100 per cent precision-guided munitions (against 63 per cent in 2006 and 81 per cent in Cast Lead), leaflets, telephone calls, aborted strikes and roof knocking; civilian casualties were less than a third of the 200 total Palestinian fatalities. Iron Dome intercepted 422 rockets fired into urban areas, an 88 per cent success rate, and the 58 rockets that fell there killed only three civilians, which reduced pressure for a ground offensive; 60,000-70,000 reservists were nonetheless mobilised for a ground invasion that did not materialise, preparations also intended as psychological pressure, though, the authors write, it was obvious Israel was reluctant to put boots on the ground. The operation ended with an Egyptian-negotiated truce whose details were not made public; Israel made a few minor concessions, and its important achievement was Hamas’s commitment to maintain and enforce the ceasefire. It was the first major operation after the Goldstone Report and the ‘Arab Spring’ Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Egypt, and Israel maintained international support. The absence of a ground operation left two problems: Hamas’s claim of victory, by insisting Israel was deterred from a ground offensive, encourages further provocation, and without regaining operational control parts of the terrorist infrastructure remained intact.
  • Conclusion (PDF p.24-25 / printed pp.86-87): The critics of Israel’s use of force share, the authors argue, a common Western cultural bias that aspires to solutions ending military conflict; the idea that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a prolonged intractable conflict evolved over 100 years is simply intolerable to many Westerners, as is the absence of a decisive military solution, and the success of a military strategy should be measured against the policy goals set by the political echelon, not by analysts; part of the critics are simply averse to military force. Long-term occupation and a population-centric strategy are not an option for Israel, which settles for modest goals — destroying the enemy’s capability to terrorize large numbers of Israelis and harm strategic targets. An Israeli response is only a question of time: the initial response is low-key, but the cumulative effect of terrorist activity inevitably brings an escalation intended to inflict a high price, destroy at least part of the enemy’s offensive capabilities and restore deterrence; Israel showed much patience and endurance before its large-scale operations. “Nevertheless, the empirical data clearly indicates that Israel’s use of force achieves temporary quiet, which this article argued is Israel’s main goal.” Over time Israel has improved its performance, used more precise fire and taken more precautions to prevent the loss of innocent lives, suiting the IDF’s moral code and enhancing legitimacy at home and abroad; whether its actions affect the learning curves in Gaza or Lebanon is unclear, and the immediate tranquility may also be due to Hizballah and Hamas having assumed government responsibilities. The article closes: “‘Mowing the Grass’ is a realistic strategy that could serve a model for other armies.” Yet if the non-state actors acquire statist characteristics and/or more powerful capabilities, it might become outdated.
  • Acknowledgements, contributors, bibliography (PDF p.25-28 / printed pp.87-90): The authors thank Dima Adamsky, Steven David, Hillel Frisch, Eado Hecht, Avi Kober, Ellie Lieberman and Shmuel Sandler, three anonymous reviewers, and Eitan Rapps for research and editorial assistance. 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. The bibliography (PDF p.25-28) lists in full the works cited in notes 1-82, from Adamsky (2010) to Zinger (2012), and introduces no work not cited in the notes.

Key passages

  • “‘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.” (Abstract, PDF p.3)
  • “The use of force is therefore not intended to attain impossible political goals, but rather to debilitate the capabilities of the enemy to harm Israel.” (PDF p.6 / printed p.68)
  • “It just ‘mows the grass’ of the enemy capabilities, with no ambition to solve the conflict.” (PDF p.8 / printed p.70)
  • “Ironically, ‘Mowing the Grass’ mirrors the patient Arab Muqawamah strategy.” (PDF p.8 / printed p.70)
  • “Mowing the Grass can be characterized as an anti-Muqawama strategy” (PDF p.11 / printed p.73)
  • “In contrast to the criticism voiced, Israel’s strategy was neither attempting to target civilian infrastructure, nor planning to pressure the population to rise against Hizballah.” (PDF p.19 / printed p.81)
  • “So far, Israel refrained from adopting what is called the ‘Dahya concept,’ which advocates the threat and/or use of disproportionate force in order to enhance deterrence.” (PDF p.14 / printed p.76)
  • “Nevertheless, the empirical data clearly indicates that Israel’s use of force achieves temporary quiet, which this article argued is Israel’s main goal.” (PDF p.25 / printed p.87)
  • “‘Mowing the Grass’ is a realistic strategy that could serve a model for other armies.” (PDF p.25 / printed p.87, as printed)

Evidence the work relies on

  • Its 82 footnotes, gathered in the bibliography at PDF p.25-28: the strategic literature it argues against (Catignani 2005, 2008, 2009; Maoz 2007; Henriksen 2012; Petrelli 2013; Lowenheim and Heimann 2008; Byman 2012); the deterrence and attrition literature it builds on (Ben-Gurion 1971; Tal 1996; Almog 2004-05; Schelling 1960; Pape 1996; Gray 2001; Rid 2012; Kober 2005, 2009; Delbrück 1985); IDF and Israeli sources — lectures and writings by serving and former officers (Ya’alon 2008; Haloutz 2010; Hirsh 2004, 2009; Laish 2011; Ortal 2013; Shabtay 2011; Gabriel Siboni 2009 on Cast Lead’s ground manoeuvre), Maarachot articles, an IDF Central Command briefing of 20 February 2013 for the term’s tactical use, the IDF website and a Ynet item (note 12), and “Interviews with senior IDF officers” for the main objective of large-scale operations (note 37), plus an interview with IAF Lt. Col. R (25 December 2010) for the Cast Lead expansion temptation (note 74).
  • Official and institutional figures, as the article presents them: the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) statistics and definition of terrorist attacks behind the Defensive Shield figures (note 50); the UN Environment Program’s Lebanon Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment behind the 2006 Lebanese toll and damage figures (note 64); for Cast Lead, the 2009 UN report’s range, Israel’s figure and breakdown, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights’ count, all as cited through Johnson, Hard Fighting (RAND, 2011) (note 76); the IDF’s reservist mobilisation figures for Pillar of Defense, through Israel Defense (note 82); and public-opinion evidence for Israeli consensus — the Peace Index and Ben-Meir and Bagno-Moldavsky, INSS Memorandum 126 (2013) (note 18).
  • The case-study evaluations lean heavily on Lambeth, ‘Israel’s War in Gaza: A Paradigm of Effective Military Learning and Adaptation’, International Security 37:2 (2012), and Johnson, Hard Fighting (2011), for both the 2006 war’s poor-performance debate and Cast Lead’s execution.

Analysis

The article is a work of Israeli strategic studies written from inside the institution whose name the authors carry: both are at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center, Inbar as its director. Its method is doctrinal reconstruction plus case-study vindication. It first stipulates the premise — an intractable conflict with ideologically unchangeable enemies, in which motivation cannot be affected in the short run — and then measures each operation against the modest goals that premise sets (capabilities destroyed, quiet bought, deterrence cumulatively maintained), finding the strategy successful on those terms and instructing critics to measure success “against achieving the policy goals set by the political echelon, not by the analysts” (PDF p.24). The critical literature it answers is present only in its footnotes and one-sentence summaries; no Palestinian source is cited for any Palestinian figure except the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights’ Cast Lead count, which reaches the article through a RAND study, and Palestinian motivations are characterised throughout in the article’s own terms — Muqawama as a doctrine of keeping the struggle alive until Israel disappears — without quotation from Hamas, Islamic Jihad or Hizballah texts. Several of its central empirical claims are asserted rather than demonstrated in the text: that the 2006 response strengthened deterrence rests on the quiet border and on Nasrallah’s reported admission (PDF p.19-20); that pinpoint attacks’ collateral damage was successfully decreased is stated without figures (PDF p.12); and the claim that Israel’s 2006 strategy was neither targeting civilian infrastructure nor planning to pressure the population (PDF p.19) sits on the same pages as the article’s own account of the military’s suggestion to exert strong pressure on the Lebanese government by extensively damaging Lebanese infrastructure and of Laish’s summary naming “the center of the government and its deployment in Beirut, and its communal infrastructure in south Lebanon” among the assault’s objects (PDF p.18). Its treatment of law is confined to legitimacy and the Goldstone Report’s reputational cost; the article states no legal analysis of the operations it describes. Its significance for the wiki is as the fullest ingested primary statement of the strategy itself, by two of its academic proponents: compare Siboni’s 2008 prescription of disproportion, which the article pointedly says Israel had not adopted in its ‘Dahya concept’ form (see How it relates).

People, organizations, places and events

Efraim Inbar, Eitan Shamir, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, Hassan Nasrallah, Ahmed al-Jabari, Hamas, Hizballah, Islamic Jihad, Palestine Liberation Organization, Palestinian Authority, Israel Defense Forces, Israel, Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Second Lebanon War, Operation Defensive Shield, Operation Cast Lead, Operation Pillar of Defense, Second Intifada, Goldstone report

Concepts

Mowing the Grass, Muqawama, Cumulative Deterrence, Deterrence, Dahiyeh Doctrine, Disproportionate Force

How it relates to other sources

  • This article gives the name and the full strategic account of the practice the wiki’s other sources describe in parts. Englert, Schatz and Warren’s editors, writing after 7 October 2023, name eighteen years of blockade during which Israel regularly bombed a population behind barbed wire as mowing the grass, in Israeli military parlance (From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine, lines 203-243). Inbar and Shamir, writing in 2013-14, supply the parlance’s own theory: mowing as a strategy of attrition aimed at capabilities, not at political goals, resumed whenever rearmament makes it necessary.
  • On disproportion, the article disagrees in terms with Siboni, Makdisi and Falk. Siboni, in October 2008, prescribes the disproportionate strike as Israel’s evolving concept of response, aimed at assets, decision makers and — in Lebanon — the centers of civilian power that support Hizballah (Disproportionate Force: Israel’s Concept of Response in Light of the Second Lebanon War, lines 336-348). Makdisi records the Dahiyeh doctrine as a plan already authorised, announced by Gadi Eisenkot before the 2008-2009 Gaza bombing (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.373-374), and Falk treats Cast Lead as its extension (Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, PDF p.141-142). Inbar and Shamir write that “so far, Israel refrained from adopting what is called the ‘Dahya concept,’ which advocates the threat and/or use of disproportionate force in order to enhance deterrence” (PDF p.14), and that in 2006 Israel’s strategy was neither attempting to target civilian infrastructure nor planning to pressure the population (PDF p.19). The four accounts stand, attributed, on the Dahiyeh Doctrine and Disproportionate Force pages.
  • On the Goldstone Report, the article cites Dore Gold’s refutation and states that Goldstone himself retracted the findings of his report on 2 April 2011 (PDF p.21, note 77). Falk records the same retraction differently: Goldstone backed away from the report’s most incriminating finding, on the deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians, a conclusion the other three members of the UN inquiry commission refused to withdraw (Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, PDF p.72), and Barghouti quotes the report’s paragraphs 1688-1690 and 1755-1756 as the core documentary evidence for accountability (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, PDF p.47-49). Both accounts stand on the Goldstone report page.
  • On al-Jabari’s killing, which opens the article’s Pillar of Defense case (PDF p.23), Falk presents the same assassination as a planned provocation that broke an informal truce al-Jabari himself had agreed to through Egypt, and as an extra-judicial killing planned well in advance (Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, PDF p.79). The article mentions no truce negotiations.
  • On the Second Intifada’s suppression, the article’s Defensive Shield account — capabilities dismantled, suicide bombings falling dramatically by 2004, preventive arrests continuing the mowing — is the capabilities-side statement of the outcome that Byman, cited in its own notes, called a ‘curious victory’; Makdisi’s account of the same period centres instead on the PA policing Palestinians on Israel’s behalf while Israel retains borders, airspace, water and taxation (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation; see Palestinian Authority).

Open questions

  • PDF p.1 prints the authors’ names as “Efraim Inbara” and “Eitan Shamira”, the affiliation superscript run into the names; PDF p.3 gives the names correctly.
  • PDF p.5 prints “This article argues that the much of this literature misunderstands Israel’s rationale”, with “the much of” as printed. PDF p.9 prints “gaps between Jews and Arab are simply too large”, with “Arab” singular as printed. PDF p.19 prints “limited ground incursions near the borer” for border, and “144 killed (121 of them soldiers) killed” with the duplicated “killed”. PDF p.25 prints “could serve a model for other armies”, missing “as”, as printed.
  • The article states that Hizballah and Hamas took control “of Lebanon in 2005 and Gaza in 2007 respectively” (PDF p.14). No other ingested source describes Hizballah as taking control of Lebanon in 2005; the article gives no further account of the 2005 date.
  • Within Cast Lead, the authors’ conservative estimate of 225 Hamas militants killed and 750 injured “in that incident alone” — the graduation-ceremony strike (PDF p.21) — is not reconciled with the totals they report two paragraphs later, in which the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights counts 255 police officers among the dead in the whole operation; whether the ceremony’s dead are counted there as militants or as police officers is not addressed.
  • For Pillar of Defense the article gives total Palestinian fatalities as 200 and says civilian casualties were less than a third of that, without giving the civilian number itself or a source for either figure in the text (PDF p.23; note 81 covers only the precision-munitions percentages).
  • Bibliography slips as printed: Cohen and Inbar’s journal issue is dated “(Apil 1991)” (PDF p.26); Colin Gray’s editor is “Manwarning” in note 47 (PDF p.14) and “Manwaring” in the bibliography (PDF p.26); the INSS volume on Pillar of Defense is “Memorandum 124” in note 79 (PDF p.22) and “Memorandum 12” in the bibliography (PDF p.26).
  • The article’s statement at PDF p.19 that Israel’s 2006 strategy was neither attempting to target civilian infrastructure nor planning to pressure the population to rise against Hizballah is not reconciled in the text with its own preceding account (PDF p.18) of the military’s suggestion to damage Lebanese infrastructure extensively to pressure the Lebanese government, or with the Laish summary it quotes.
  • Gabriel Siboni, cited at note 75 for Cast Lead’s ground manoeuvre, is the author of the wiki’s Disproportionate Force: Israel’s Concept of Response in Light of the Second Lebanon War, where his byline reads Gabi Siboni; the two name forms stand as printed in each source.

Coverage

PDF p.1-28 of 28, read in full

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