AMERICAN INTEREST
by Raphael Cohen and Gabriel Scheinmann
August 31, 2014

Israel’s long-term strategy against Hamas will not bring clear, satisfying victories, but attrition is its only viable option.

……While the death tolls in today’s conflicts pale in comparison to those of World War II, Korea, or Vietnam, no military, no matter how careful to avoid collateral damage, can guarantee civilian safety, especially when fighting occurs in densely populated areas. Operation Protective Edge resulted in the deaths of more than 2,100 Palestinians, of whom at least 47 percent were combatants, according to Israeli authorities; UN sources put the civilian casualty number at close to 70 percent.

No party, then, is satisfied with the outcome of Protective Edge. Halfway through the conflict, 69 percent of Israelis wanted the operation to continue until Hamas was toppled, according to a poll conducted by Israel’s Channel 10. According to another poll, Netanyahu’s approval ratings sunk from a high of 82 percent on July 23, at the start of the ground phase, to just 38 percent by August 25. Israelis are understandably frustrated at their government’s seeming inability or unwillingness to deal Hamas a true death blow, one that would release Israel’s citizens from the constant threat of rocket fire and tunnel assaults. For their part, Gaza’s civilians are unlikely to receive any long-term relief from either the Hamas regime or the Israeli blockade. Meanwhile, the United States will be blamed for not giving Israel enough support to defeat Hamas (indeed, at one point the White House reportedly froze a shipment of Hellfire missiles) as well as for giving it too much support as the civilian casualty count rose.

Nevertheless, the “long war” remains the only viable option for responding to the Hamas threat. As Nobel Prize-winning scholar Thomas Schelling explained in his seminal work Arms and Influence (1966), long-term deterrence would require credibly establishing the “power to hurt”, likely a politically untenable and morally dubious endeavor. Alternatively, the military, political, and human costs of even a partial reoccupation of Gaza in order to physically control the launch and tunnel entrance sites would be exorbitant, as Israelis learned during their brief ground campaign. Finally, a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace remains elusive.

Viewed through this lens, Operation Protective Edge marked a solid Israeli victory. A war of attrition is by definition a protracted process, a wearing down of resistance until the enemy is militarily exhausted. It is the kind of war that ends not with a victory parade but merely an absence of violence. According to the Israeli government, previous operations in Gaza produced an immediate 90 percent reduction in rocket fire, but only for a year or two. The IDF estimates that Protective Edge killed at least 900 Hamas militants, likely insufficient to destroy it as an organization but perhaps a blow serious enough to buy a couple years of calm. Likewise, it destroyed several dozen assault tunnels and dealt Hamas’s infrastructure a severe setback. While quick fixes, whether through policies of deterrence or disruption, appear seductive, the course ahead will likely be drawn-out, bloody, and continuously evolving. The nature of war—nasty, messy, and often unsatisfactory—remains unchanged over time.

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http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/08/31/the-grim-lessons-of-protective-edge/