Università degli Studi “Roma Tre” Scuola Dottorale in Scienze Politiche XXV Ciclo Israel’s Struggle Against Hamas Supervisore Dottorando Prof. Leopoldo Nuti Niccolò Petrelli Coordinatore della Sezione Prof. Leopoldo Nuti Introduction The PhD research, ‘Israel’s Struggle against Hamas: Strategic Culture, Adaptation and War’, studies the impact of cultural factors on the Israeli counter-insurgency vis-à-vis Hamas in the period comprised between 1987 and 2005, analyzing to what extent the peculiar traits of the Israeli approach to security and military affairs account for the shaping of a distinct ‘way of war’ and for the successes and failures of the Jewish state in countering the Islamic Resistance Movement’s insurgency. The concept of ‘counter-insurgency’ is logically contingent on that of ‘insurgency’, to which it applies. Being insurgency a protracted struggle to control a contested political space conducted by one or more popularly based non-state challengers1, ‘counter-insurgency’ could be defined as all those measures through which elements of national power are applied for the purpose of suppressing an insurgency. From this definition it appears clear how the concept constitutes an analytical paradigm through which scholars and practitioners approach asymmetric warfare (or war against ‘irregulars’, ‘partisans’ or ‘guerrillas’), that is struggles between non-state and state actors.2 Although old as human civilization, asymmetric warfare rose to prominence after 1945, coming to represent the norm, rather than the exception, of war.3 The end of the Cold War and the last two decades seemed to confirm the ascendancy of this specific kind of warfare over ‘conventional’ or ‘symmetric warfare’ and the setting of a pattern that will probably continue for some time.4 Counter-insurgency represents therefore a topic worth to study not only by virtue of its prominence in the history of warfare, but also in light of the nature of the conflicts confronting the international community, either currently and possibly also in the near future. Sir Michael Howard has authoritatively emphasized how the military profession is one of the most demanding, not only in light of the fact that military organizations episodically have the opportunity to practice the business for which they have been established, but even more by virtue of the 1 Gordon H. McCormick, Steven B. Horton and Lauren A. Harrison, ‘Things Fall Apart: The “Endgame Dynamics” of Internal Wars’, Third World Quarterly, 28/2 (2007), 321-367. 2 C.E. Callwell employs the term ‘small wars’ to denote ‘operations of regular armies against irregular forces’, C.E. Calwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1906), 21; Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy (Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2010), 388; for more recent definitions see William S. Lind, Keith Nightengale, John F. Schmitt, Joseph W. Sutton, Gary I. Wilson, ‘The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation’, Marine Corps Gazette (October 1989). 3 K.J. Holsti, The State, War and The State of War (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), 22-24; Christopher Paul et al., Victory Has a Thousand Fathers: Sources of Success in Counterinsurgency (Santa Monica: RAND, 2010), xiii. 4 John Keegan, A History of Warfare (London: Vintage Press, 1994), 221; Martin Van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York: Free Press, 1991) 36-37; Lawrence Freedman, ‘The Revolution in Strategic Affairs’, Adelphi Papers, 38/318 (London: Routledge 1998) and ‘The Counterrevolution in Strategic Affairs’, Daedalus, 140/3 (Summer 2011), 16-32. very nature of the profession of arms.5 Of all human endeavors, war confronts men and women with the greatest physical demands and psychological pressures, combining complex material and intellectual challenges of different nature with the constraints of time. Success in war remains inextricably linked to the ability of military organizations to face these challenges to understand the actual conditions of combat and to overcome the tactical, operational and strategic challenges that war presents through a ‘a rapid, complex, and continuous process of competitive adaptation’.6 Although war has remained fundamentally unchanged in its nature, the twentieth century, and even more the first years of the 21st, have witnessed an increasing sophistication of this phenomenon.7 Successful adaptation to the realities of combat has in fact increasingly required from military organizations more than only physical endurance and mental stamina. The application of sophisticated technologies (especially Information Technologies - IT) to military affairs, the pervasiveness of the media in theatres of war and the consequent descent of political concerns down to the level of actual combat, have rendered mastering of technology, cultural and political awareness essential elements of the effectiveness of military organizations.8 Moreover, the expansion and growing multidimensionality of the ‘battlespace’ has posed new daunting intellectual challenges for the military in terms of elaborating sound operational schemes and military strategies as well as adjusting concepts and doctrines to the reality of the strategic environment.9 Thus ‘war disciplines militaries’ and forces them to adapt to the complexities of the battlefield,10 to modify organizational structures, abandon proved equipment, techniques, tactical and operational configurations, not to mention shared strategic beliefs, in favor of untested and sometimes risky military and political alternatives. 5 Michael Howard, ‘The Use and Abuse of Military History’, The Army Doctrine and Training Bulletin, 6/2 (Summer 2003), 21. 6 Williamson Murray, Military Adaption in War, Institute for Defense Analysis Paper P-4452 (June 2009); David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency (New York: Oxford UP, 2010), 2; David Kilcullen, ‘Counterinsurgency Redux’, 2, http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/kilcullen1.pdf 7 Colin Gray, Modern Strategy (New York: Oxford UP, 1999), 17-47; ‘How Has War Changed since the End of the Cold War?’, Parameters, 35/2, (Spring 2005), 14-26; ‘Clausewitz, History, and the Future Strategic World’, Strategic and Combat Studies Institute Occasional Paper No. 47 (Shrivenham,: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 2004), 1-24. 8 Williamson Murray and Robert H. Scales Jr., The Iraq War, A Military History (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), 251. 9 Shimon Naveh, In Pursuit of Military Excellence: The Evolution of Operational Theory (London: Frank Cass, 1997),8-10; Barry D. Watts and Williamson Murray, ‘Military Innovation in Peacetime’, in Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett (eds.), Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996); Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, ‘Lessons of War’, The National Interest (Winter 1988). 10 James A. Russell, Innovation Transformation and War: Counterinsurgency Operations in Anbar and Ninewa Provinces, Iraq, 2005-2007 (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2011); Robert T. Foley, Stuart Griffin, Helen McCartney, ‘‘Transformation in Contact’: Learning the Lessons of Modern War’, International Affairs 87/2 (2011) 253–270. The Puzzle of Israel’s Approach to Counter-insurgency Asymmetric warfare can be defined as such on the base of two kind of asymmetries.11 The first concerns the very nature of the actors: a confrontation between a state and a non-state opponent necessarily presupposes an asymmetry in the legal and political status of the belligerents. The second focuses upon tactics and methods of operations: conventional operations by regular armies are usually confronted by ‘unconventional’ methods such as civil disturbances and low-level violence, terrorism and guerrilla by people in arms (but not in uniform).12 Beyond variations taking place within the limits of distinct environmental, cultural, political and geographical factors, the above described asymmetries have consistently and repeatedly determined for counter-insurgents analogous conundrums at each level of war.13 At the tactical level, counter- insurgency requires to transform the organizational structures and operating patterns of conventionally-oriented military organizations in order to adapt to the mode of fighting of a weaker side whose forces counter mass by mobility, taking advantage of superior local knowledge and invisibility, as well as of environments that hinder the effective use of precision firepower.14 At the operational level, counter-insurgency is essentially concerned with the nature of the insurgency itself. The main challenge remains therefore to displace the insurgents’ influence from the social networks among which they operate, countering ‘the issues’ that drive the insurgency (frequently called simply ‘grievances’) isolating and marginalizing them from the outer concentric circles of the civilian population, whose allegiance and assistance they seek.15 Finally, at the level of strategy and policy, counter-insurgency poses two distinct categories of problems. Conventional war presupposes the settling of political disputes in battle followed by some kind of political agreement through which a body responsible for the wielding of authority over the forces of the losing side accepts the verdict of the battlefield. In asymmetric warfare, the absence of this authority in one of the belligerents prevents the possibility of such a settlement, making sure that war will possibly last until a sufficient portion of the population of such entity accepts the new political equilibrium. The need for persuading a conspicuous