Asymmetry
Mismatch Between Israeli and Palestinian Tactics is a Classic Case of the Problems of "Asymmetric Warfare"

Israel's attempts to find a means of responding to suicide bombings by conventional military action against Palestinian Authority institutions and infrastructure, even though the PA itself is not providing the bombers, provides an illuminating example of the challenges of so-called "asymmetric warfare": the nature of the challenge serves to frustrate or defeat the tactics which in a more conventional setting Israel has long been able to master. And at least arguably, the tactics which Israel is using are working merely to radicalize the Palestinian resistance and to recruit new suicide bombers to replace those who have gone before.

As has been noted in these columns before (See the Dossier in the issue of November 3, 2000), "asymmetric warfare" is a term used in US circles to refer to a range of responses — which may include terrorism, cyber-warfare, or other unconventional responses to a technologically superior military power enjoying the advantages of the so-called "Revolution in Military Affairs", another nonce term.

Israeli military doctrine for most of the state's history called for pre-emption and the use of technological superiority and training as force multipliers to offset the superior numbers of a conventional enemy force. Its ability to respond to unconventional challenges has never been as well-developed or as successful. In the 1970s Mossad waged a famous (or notorious) effort to hunt down and kill the members of Black September held responsible for the Munich Olympics killings in 1972, but that was a covert war between covert organizations, and one which ended badly when an innocent civilian was killed in Norway. Against Hizbullah in South Lebanon, neither Israel nor its surrogate South Lebanon Army ever found an effective countermeasure, and in the end Israel withdrew.

Although some Palestinians at the time called for a "Lebanonization" of the West Bank and Gaza and some clearly hope to drive Israel from the territories by using the sort of tactics Hizbullah used in South Lebanon, the commitment of Israeli leaders to retain at least some security zones in the West Bank is far deeper than the commitment to remain in Lebanon. Others like to compare the conflict to the Algerian War of Independence, and there are certainly parallels (in the increasing killing of civilians and the severity of the response, among others), but France was separated from Algeria by the Mediterranean, and Israel and the West Bank are deeply intertwined.

But that does not mean that Israel has found a way to respond to the suicide bombings, sniper attacks and other irregular operations being conducted against it. A full conventional military response — occupying land, defeating military formations in a conventional battle — what the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) do well — is hard to apply in this case. There are those in the Israeli government, and some opinion shapers in the West as well, who are calling for, essentially, the reoccupation of the West Bank (though probably not Gaza) and the expulsion of the Palestinian leadership. Such a move is still unlikely, though perhaps less so than a few months ago. It would break the present Israeli coalition by driving Labor out of the government, and thus give the impression of a division within Israel. It would greatly increase the dangers of a general Arab-Israeli war by infuriating public opinion in Egypt and Jordan, forcing those two countries to decide between abandoning their commitment to their peace treaties with Israel or facing domestic destabilization. And destruction of the Palestinian Authority would leave the field to the radicals of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who are certainly far less willing to negotiate than Yasir ‘Arafat and the PA, however difficult the latter may have been as a "peace partner". And few IDF commanders want to re-enter the West Bank cities, where their soldiers will be targets.

A limited, lower-level conventional response is also hard to apply, though Israel has tried several approaches. The brief entry of Israeli tanks into Jenin, crossing a previously uncrossed "red line" by entering a Palestinian-controlled city, was roundly criticized abroad, and when a similar move seemed imminent against Bayt Jala, US criticism and the opposition of Labor reportedly combined to cancel the assault.

The mismatch of tactics has been so extreme at times that Israel has used its F-16s to bomb Palestinian police posts and other infrastructure. In one case recently, one of two bombs dropped by an F-16 failed to go off, and Israel had to warn of the danger of the unexploded ordnance. That was a reminder that even pinpoint bombing has its limitations when being used as a counterinsurgency tool. And any attempt to use conventional military force to stop suicide bombings is almost certainly doomed to failure, so what Israel has done instead is to retaliate against PA infrastructure, the logic apparently being that this will force the PA to crack down on Hamas and other radicals itself. But that runs the risk of degrading the PA's infrastructure at the very time one is demanding that it do more than it is doing: the logic of bombing Palestinian police posts and then demanding that the Palestinian police arrest more people seems counter-intuitive, to say the least.

Ariel Sharon's military record always showed him to be a particularly aggressive (if innovative) soldier, but one who worked, even as a commando, with conventional forces doing conventional things: taking ground, destroying an enemy emplacement, controlling territory. He has little real experience with genuine unconventional means of warfare. (Ironically, Ehud Barak's personal military history showed much more experience along those lines.)

The Israeli campaign of targeted killings (or assassinations: See the Last Issue) suggest an attempt to find an unconventional response to an unconventional challenge, but they present their own problems. Besides the fact that they are widely criticized abroad and raise ethical questions for many Israelis as well, they appear to be aimed more frequently at Palestinian Authority officials than at the actual planners of the suicide missions, with two or three exceptions where Hamas officials were directly targeted. The precision of the intelligence available to Israel has already led to the arrest of several Palestinians accused of collaboration, and thus raise the question whether (perhaps irreplaceable?) intelligence assets are being expended in order to carry out the killings, and of course there is the cost of ordnance when a conventional weapon is used to carry out the killings: the Apache helicopter was designed to take out bigger targets than a private passenger car.

It seems clear that Israel has not found a solution to the problem of an asymmetric challenge, and that it may take even more extreme action as it fumbles its way toward finding one. That poses danger, but it is also a reminder that these sorts of insurgencies, with widespread popular support, are hard to suppress if not impossible. France failed in Algeria. The US in Vietnam had considerable success against the irregular forces of the Viet Cong, but then faced a combination of opposition at home and regular North Vietnamese forces on the ground. Faced with such a challenge, the usual response has been negotiation, but Israeli leaders were clearly frustrated with their experience in that field as well. So the danger continues.

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