What should Israel’s goal in Gaza be? - by Daniel Pipes

Should Israel invade Gaza? Why Israel must map out a strategy to achieve its goals.

Daniel Pipes..
Washington Times..
23 September '19..

As Israeli frustration mounts about violence coming out of Gaza, the idea of a ground invasion, and once and for all to finish with Hamas aggression, becomes more appealing. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has endorsed this approach, saying that “There probably won’t be a choice but to topple the Hamas regime.” While sympathetic to this impulse, I worry that too much attention is paid to tactics and not enough to goals. The result could be harmful to America’s foremost Middle East ally.

Attitudes toward Gaza are in flux. Efraim Inbar, the strategist who heads the Jerusalem Institute for Security Studies, for years advocated “mowing the grass” as “Israel’s strategy for protracted intractable conflict.” By this, he advocated an occasional reminder to Hamas’ rulers and other Gazans of Israel’s overwhelming power. Implicit in this approach is an acceptance that, most of the time, Israel accepts aggression from Gaza, with its attendant damage to property and life. As recently as May 2019, he dismissed the Palestinian threat to Israel as a “strategic nuisance.”

But Mr. Inbar recently recognized the high costs of this passivity and now calls for a “restricted ground invasion” of the territory: Why? Because “a short-term ground operation will bring better results than Israel’s activity thus far [i.e., mowing the lawn]. We need to maneuver inside enemy territory, locate them, and destroy them, or tie the hands of its members.”

Others agree. For example, Ayelet Shaked, leader of the New Right party, calls for a widescale military operation in Gaza: “We must choose the time that is best for us, evacuate the Israeli citizens who live in towns along the Gaza envelope in order to give us maximum flexibility, and we must uproot the terror from within Gaza.”

To these analyses, I respond with Carl von Clausewitz’ simple but profound counsel: First decide on your policy, then your strategy, then your tactics. Or, in plain English: Start by figuring out what you wish to achieve through the use of force, then decide the broad outlines of your approach, then the specific means.

Seen in this light, debating whether to engage in a ground invasion and to overthrow Hamas is debating a tactic; this should not be the topic of conversation until the goal and the means to achieve it have been decided upon. To start by focusing on tactics risks losing sight of the purpose.

So, what should Israel’s goal in Gaza be?

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Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes), president of the Middle East Forum, taught “Strategy and Policy” at the U.S. Naval War College.