ZioNation - Progressive Zionism and Israel Web Log

The Dahiya Strategy and Gaza: Unlessons of the Second Lebanon War

If fighting is renewed in earnest along Israel's southern or northern fronts, Israel would face guerrilla enemies armed with rockets to be used against civilian targets and anti-tank rockets, and protected by concrete underground bunkers. A controversy has arisen as to how to deal with these threats.

The controversy is not a matter of right or left politics, but an issue to be resolved by analysis and operations research. What applies to Lebanon, applies in large measure to Gaza as well. Any operation against Hezbollah or Hamas will evoke extensive rocket attacks such as those we experienced in the Second Lebanon War and on a smaller scale, those we are experiencing today in Gaza. The measures of the IDF in both cases have proven to be ineffective. Therefore, the IDF has sought a strategy that would end the rocket attacks in the briefest time possible, because of the tremendous pressure they produce from the civilian population.
The strategy it proposes is disastrous. It will not stop the rocket attacks and it will help the enemy achieve its goals. The real problem facing Israel is not an objective external military threat, but an internal psychological one, that must be met by psychological and political means.

Continued...

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Ami Isseroff on 11.17.08 @ 09:23 PM CST [link]