Source: Haaretz
The recent confrontation between Israel and Hamas in Gaza introduces new elements in the evolution of modern warfare. Operation Pillar of Defense was an intense, asymmetric, one-week confrontation between Israel, a highly sophisticated military machine that fought a disciplined and tight counter-force campaign and the uninhibited militias of a non-state actor, Hamas, that concentrated on a counter-value, anti-civilian strategy.
A few hallmarks of the recent exchange, likely to prove a more enduring legacy, are worth noting:
- No-footprint campaign. Both Hamas and Israel elected to confine their exchange to the application of firepower, delivered mainly by manned aircraft and, increasingly, UAVs on one side (Israel) and diverse rockets (and mortars) on the other.
- A war of flying objects (the transformation of firepower). Hamas deployed and employed a huge and diverse arsenal of short- and long-range rockets. Contra these, Israel, leveraging superior targeting intelligence, deployed precision offensive munitions on the attack and, for the first time in military history, a budding-yet-effective precise missile defense. Unprecedented successes were scored by the pre-emptive interdiction of the long-range Hamas delivery capability, together with the effective in-flight interception of a high percentage of its attacking rockets. In an important sense, the Israeli campaign demonstrated a new and innovative phase in the Revolution in Military Affairs—creating an effective combined precision guided system, both on the attack and in defense.
- Intensity, yet limited collateral damage. The conflict was highly efficient, in the sense that much strategic interaction and maneuver was possible and achieved (on both sides), with a small number of casualties - approximately 150 deaths (mostly combatants) on the Palestinian side and a few (mostly civilian) Israelis - in 8 days of intense violent interaction. The damage sustained by purely civilian targets was also remarkably small thanks to the targeting policy of Israel on the one hand and its budding missile defense capability on the other. As a result, the conflict may also be characterized as morally efficient: the number of non-combatant casualties and the extent of collateral damage were quite small relative to historical experience, the volume of firepower on both sides and the magnitude of operations, especially considering the purposeful and doctrinal efforts by Hamas to inflict just such damage and casualties.
- Moral hazards. This desirable moral efficiency may have introduced a serious undesirable moral hazard of delineating a mutually acceptable battleground. Not to diminish the extent of damage and pain, on the spectrum of conflict spanning from total war (Hiroshima) to representative conflict (Knights of the Roundtable), this conflict was further over to the latter end, something approaching a computer-game-war (though not quite, of course). From a strategic perspective, this dynamic may have enabled the gratuitous extension of hostilities, as the relative impunity may have allowed for less careful and focused decision making on targeting and termination by Hamas and on how and when to exit by Israel (not that forethought exit strategies have been the norm in Israeli campaigns in the past).
The Gaza exchange ended without a clear-cut military decision, yet with clear and substantial gains on both sides, political gains that were not correlated with operational outcomes in the field.
On the internal front, Israel demonstrated to its population not only its commitment, but also its growing ability to defend them, while driving home to Hamas the price Israel can levy in return for sustained harassment of Israel. On the international front, due mostly to the moral justification and operational efficiency of the campaign, Israel was able to wage this war without suffering the historical-normal international swell of publicly-motivated international pressure to desist and the interventions of such undesirable players (from her perspective) such as Turkey.
Hamas, on the other hand, was also able to seize on the conflict to demonstrate its commitment to avenge the killing of its military leader, to stand up to Israel militarily, and to enhance its position in the Palestinian political setting as well as its international standing as an indispensable party and increasingly legitimate partner.
If the recently negotiated ceasefire proves more enduring than its predecessors, it may be precisely because of the limited (if bruising) nature of the conflict that preceded it, together with the win-win nature of the outcome. For this outcome enables the parties to escape the 'normal' preoccupying and destabilizing imperative to avenge that attend cases of humiliation and total defeat.