Disproportionate Force: Israel's Concept of Response in Light of the Second Lebanon War

Summary

Gabi Siboni, Disproportionate Force: Israel’s Concept of Response in Light of the Second Lebanon War (INSS Insight No. 74, October 2, 2008): a short policy article arguing that Israel is evolving an updated security concept for rocket and missile threats from Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, whose core is to make a disproportionate strike against the enemy’s weak points the primary war effort and operations against missile launchers only the secondary effort. On an outbreak of hostilities the IDF should act immediately and decisively with force disproportionate to the enemy’s actions, prioritising damage to assets over hunting launchers, aiming punishment at decision makers and the power elite — in Syria at the military, the regime and the state structure, in Lebanon at Hizbollah’s military capabilities together with the economic interests and centers of civilian power that support it, and at Lebanese state infrastructure in proportion to Hizbollah’s closeness to the Lebanese government — so as to impose long and expensive reconstruction, create a lasting memory, shorten the fighting and win a ceasefire on terms that increase long-term deterrence and prevent a war of attrition. The same disproportionate response, Siboni argues, should answer even isolated border incidents, and the same approach applies in the Gaza Strip against Hamas, where the IDF should strike hard and impose a ceasefire rather than chase Qassam launchers.

What the file is

The Institute for National Security Studies web page for INSS Insight No. 74, published October 2, 2008, accessed free from the publisher. The original as saved is the HTML file; the paired text copy supplied with it is a plain-text rendering of the same page, with no page markers, so locators are line numbers in the text copy (552 lines as split, 553 by newline count; 2,066 words in total). The article itself occupies lines 321-354 of the text copy; the rest is the site frame — navigation and topic menus repeated before and after, an events listing and three related-publication listings dated 2026, a newsletter block and the footer — which is recorded in the reading notes and is not part of the 2008 article. Within the article the opening paragraph is duplicated: its first rendering (line 332) has the quotation marks around the Nasrallah quotation garbled, and the second rendering (line 334) is clean. Text quality is otherwise good, with the article’s own slips preserved (see Open questions). The page carries the series line INSS Insight and the topic Military and Strategic Affairs, and the notice that the opinions expressed in INSS publications are the authors’ alone (line 350).

Section by section

The article has no internal headings; it is a single sequence of eight paragraphs (lines 334-348), preceded by its duplicated opening paragraph (lines 332-334) and followed by the publisher’s notice (line 350).

• Opening (lines 332-334, paragraph printed twice): Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was quoted as saying, “the Zionists will think ten thousand times before attacking Lebanon.” Siboni says the remark appears to have been in reference to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s declaration, made while visiting the IDF Home Front Command, that the IDF would face fewer limitations in future confrontations. Siboni reads the remark as evidence that the pressure on Nasrallah is taking its toll and that he is beginning to internalize what he understands as a fundamental change in Israel’s approach in responding to a threat emanating from Lebanon.
• An evolving concept, and the claim of deterrence already won (line 336): an updated Israeli security concept regarding Israel’s response to rocket and missile threats from Syria, Lebanon, and the Gaza Strip is gradually evolving. More than two years after the Second Lebanon War, Israel’s immediate response after the July 2006 kidnapping attack appears to have significantly boosted its ability to deter Hizbollah and Syria from operating against Israel.
• Two challenges and the principle (line 338): the first challenge is how to prevent being dragged into an ongoing dynamic of attrition on the northern border similar to what in recent years developed along the border with the Gaza Strip; the second is determining the IDF’s response to a large scale conflict both in the north and in the Gaza Strip. Both can be overcome by adopting the principle of a disproportionate strike against the enemy’s weak points as a primary war effort, and operations to disable the enemy’s missile launching capabilities as a secondary war effort.
• The strike prescribed (line 340): with an outbreak of hostilities, the IDF will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy’s actions and the threat it poses. Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes. The strike must be carried out as quickly as possible, and must prioritize damaging assets over seeking out each and every launcher. Punishment must be aimed at decision makers and the power elite. In Syria, punishment should clearly be aimed at the Syrian military, the Syrian regime, and the Syrian state structure. In Lebanon, attacks should both aim at Hizbollah’s military capabilities and should target economic interests and the centers of civilian power that support the organization; moreover, the closer the relationship between Hizbollah and the Lebanese government, the more the elements of the Lebanese state infrastructure should be targeted. Such a response will create a lasting memory among Syrian and Lebanese decision makers, thereby increasing Israeli deterrence and reducing the likelihood of hostilities against Israel for an extended period, and will force Syria, Hizbollah, and Lebanon to commit to lengthy and resource-intensive reconstruction programs.
• Against measuring success by rocket fire (line 342): recent discussion of victory and defeat in a future war against Hizbollah has presented an overly simplistic approach. The Israeli public must understand that overall success cannot be measured by the level of high trajectory fire against Israel at the end of the confrontation. The IDF will make an effort to decrease rocket and missile attacks as much as possible, but the main effort will be geared to shorten the period of fighting by striking a serious blow at the assets of the enemy.
• Disproportionate response to isolated incidents, and the home front (line 344): Israel does not have to be dragged into a war of attrition with Hizbollah. Israel’s test will be the intensity and quality of its response to incidents on the Lebanese border or terrorist attacks involving Hizbollah in the north or Hamas in the south. In such cases, Israel again will not be able to limit its response to actions whose severity is seemingly proportionate to an isolated incident; rather, it will have to respond disproportionately in order to make it abundantly clear that the State of Israel will accept no attempt to disrupt the calm currently prevailing along its borders. Israel must be prepared for deterioration and escalation, as well as for a full scale confrontation; such preparedness is obligatory in order to prevent long term attrition. The Israeli home front must be prepared to be fired upon, possibly with even heavy fire for an extended period, based on the understanding that the IDF is working to reduce the period of fighting to a minimum and to create an effective balance of deterrence.
• Gaza (line 346): this approach is applicable to the Gaza Strip as well. There, the IDF will be required to strike hard at Hamas and to refrain from the cat and mouse games of searching for Qassam rocket launchers. The IDF should not be expected to stop the rocket and missile fire against the Israeli home front through attacks on the launchers themselves, but by means of imposing a ceasefire on the enemy.
• Expectations, resilience and the goal (line 348): by instilling proper expectations of the IDF response among the civilian population, Israel will be able to improve its readiness and the resilience of its citizens. Still, the IDF’s primary goal must nonetheless be to attain a ceasefire under conditions that will increase Israel’s long term deterrence, prevent a war of attrition, and leave the enemy floundering in expensive, long term processes of reconstruction.
• Publisher’s notice (line 350): the opinions expressed in INSS publications are the authors’ alone. Series: INSS Insight; topic: Military and Strategic Affairs (lines 352-354).

Key passages

• “the Zionists will think ten thousand times before attacking Lebanon.” (Hassan Nasrallah, as quoted by Siboni, line 334)
• “These two challenges can be overcome by adopting the principle of a disproportionate strike against the enemy’s weak points as a primary war effort, and operations to disable the enemy’s missile launching capabilities as a secondary war effort.” (line 338)
• “With an outbreak of hostilities, the IDF will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy’s actions and the threat it poses.” (line 340)
• “must prioritize damaging assets over seeking out each and every launcher” (line 340)
• “Punishment must be aimed at decision makers and the power elite.” (line 340)
• “it will have to respond disproportionately in order to make it abundantly clear that the State of Israel will accept no attempt to disrupt the calm currently prevailing along its borders” (line 344)
• “refrain from the cat and mouse games of searching for Qassam rocket launchers” (on Gaza and Hamas, line 346)
• “attain a ceasefire under conditions that will increase Israel’s long term deterrence, prevent a war of attrition, and leave the enemy floundering in expensive, long term processes of reconstruction” (line 348)

Evidence the work relies on

• The article cites no document, statistic, study or other source for any of its claims, and carries no footnotes or bibliography. Its only quotation is the opening sentence attributed to Hassan Nasrallah, given without a source, date or occasion beyond Siboni’s statement that it appears to have been in reference to Ehud Olmert’s declaration at the IDF Home Front Command (line 334).
• Its factual premises are asserted in its own voice: that an updated Israeli security concept is gradually evolving (line 336); that Israel’s immediate response after the July 2006 kidnapping attack significantly boosted its ability to deter Hizbollah and Syria (line 336); and that a dynamic of attrition had in recent years developed along the border with the Gaza Strip, offered as the model of what the northern border must avoid (line 338).
• The remainder is prescription, not evidence: what the IDF will need to do, what punishment should be aimed at, and what the Israeli public and home front must understand and be prepared for (lines 340-348).

Analysis

The work is a short policy-prescription article in a security institute’s insight series, not a study: about 900 words of argument once the site frame and the duplicated opening paragraph are set aside. Its method is assertion and recommendation. It states that a new concept is evolving and that the 2006 response already boosted deterrence, then prescribes the concept in detail — targets, sequencing (assets before launchers), purpose (punishment, lasting memory, expensive reconstruction) and the public expectations that should accompany it. It gives no evidence for the deterrence claim beyond Nasrallah’s quoted remark, which it reads as internalization under pressure; it does not consider any other reading of that remark, any cost or legal limit on the strikes it prescribes, or any response the targets might make beyond reconstruction. Its categories are its own: success is redefined away from the level of rocket fire at the end of a confrontation (line 342), proportionate response to an isolated incident is rejected by definition as inadequate (line 344), and civilian power centers that support Hizbollah and Lebanese state infrastructure are placed inside the target set by the closeness of Hizbollah’s relationship to the Lebanese government (line 340) without a test given for either. The article’s significance for the wiki is as a primary statement, from inside an Israeli national-security institute in October 2008, of the doctrine other ingested sources describe from outside: see How it relates to other sources.

People, organizations, places and events

Gabi Siboni, Hassan Nasrallah, Ehud Olmert, Hizballah, Hamas, Israel Defense Forces, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Second Lebanon War

Concepts

Disproportionate Force, Deterrence, Dahiyeh Doctrine

How it relates to other sources

• Siboni’s article is the doctrine stated as prescription by its advocate. Makdisi’s Epilogue describes the same strategy as proclaimed practice, named the Dahiyeh Doctrine for Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut razed in the 2006 war: General Gadi Eisenkot announced that Israel would wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired, treating such villages as military bases, as a plan already authorized (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.373-374). Siboni, writing in the same period (October 2, 2008), does not use the Dahiyeh name and does not mention Eisenkot; he prescribes the principle in general form for Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, with the target set and the reconstruction purpose spelled out.
• Falk likewise treats the 2008-2009 Gaza attacks as an extension of the Dahiya doctrine and names the treatment of civilian infrastructure as permissible targets State Terrorism (Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, PDF p.141-142). Siboni’s Gaza paragraph (line 346), written before those attacks, prescribes exactly the move Falk later describes: strike Hamas hard, do not chase launchers, and impose a ceasefire on the enemy.
• On the 2006 war itself, Siboni’s premise — that Israel’s immediate response after the July 2006 kidnapping attack significantly boosted its deterrence (line 336) — is the opposite evaluation of the same war that Makdisi and Falk record as the turning point in world public opinion against Israel’s disproportionate force (Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, PDF p.270). Both evaluations stand, attributed, on their pages.
• Where Rose roots Israel’s practice of overwhelming reprisal in Ben-Gurion’s 1948 diary prescription of cruel and strong reactions (Israel: The Hijack State — America’s Watchdog in the Middle East, lines 561-565), Siboni presents disproportion as a newly evolving concept of 2006-2008, with no earlier history.

Open questions

• The article spells the organization Hizbollah throughout, while the INSS site frame’s topic list spells it Hezbollah; the wiki page is Hizballah, with Hezbollah as its alias.
• Line 340 reads “for a an extended period”, as printed, with the doubled article.
• The opening paragraph is printed twice in the text copy (lines 332 and 334); the first printing garbles the quotation marks around the Nasrallah quotation into mojibake. The clean second printing is the one quoted on this page.
• Siboni gives no source, date or occasion for the Nasrallah quotation that opens the article and carries its deterrence claim, and no evidence for the claim that the July 2006 response boosted deterrence beyond that quotation as he reads it.
• The trigger of the 2006 war is named only as “the July 2006 kidnapping attack” (line 336); the article gives no further account of it, and no casualty, damage or cost figures for the war appear anywhere in the article.
• Siboni does not name the doctrine he prescribes after Dahiyeh, and does not mention Gadi Eisenkot or any other Israeli commander or official beyond Ehud Olmert’s declaration at the IDF Home Front Command; the relationship between this article and the authorized plan Makdisi records is therefore a matter of parallel statement, as the texts stand.
• The article gives no criterion for the centers of civilian power that support Hizbollah, whose targeting it prescribes for Lebanon (line 340), and no limit on the state infrastructure to be targeted as Hizbollah’s relationship with the Lebanese government grows closer.

Coverage

lines 1-553 of 553, read in full