Center for a New American Security

Although this blog steers clear of all things Israeli and Palestinian, the New York Times asked me -- in light of the civilian deaths in Gaza -- to consider proper rules of engagement for conflicts in which civilians are caught up in urban combat.

The recent Israeli campaign to end rocket fire originating from Gaza left 1,300 Palestinians dead and many wondering about the morality of such seemingly “disproportionate” operations. Questions of morality in warfare, though, are notoriously difficult to referee and inspire more emotion than sober thought.

A related question to ask — and one more accessible to traditional tools of measurement — would be one concerning effectiveness. In pursuing military options that carry with them such a high human cost, did the Israel Defense Force achieve operational successes at the expense of Israel’s long-term strategic interests?

In modern conflict against violent nonstate actors like Hamas, Hezbollah or guerrilla groups in Iraq and Afghanistan, it may be in the best interests of the dominant military actor to adhere to rules of engagement that go beyond the laws of land warfare and international conventions. As the United States military has discovered in both Iraq and Afghanistan, civilian casualties have a direct effect on the effectiveness of operations in the strategic sense.

Traditionally, Israel — much like the United States — has subscribed to a Jominian concept of warfare that privileges the destruction of the enemy’s fighting forces above other considerations. In the Clausewitzian model, though, the supreme question of war has to do with whether or not military force served its purpose in advancing national political aims.

The time may arrive when Israel decides that highly kinetic, enemy-centric military operations do not necessarily serve Israel’s longer-term strategic aims. Instead, Israel may want to adopt lessons learned from the United States experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and place a higher emphasis on the prevention of civilian casualties at the expense of lethality and force protection.

I wrote this before I had a chance to read some of the disturbing testimonies of Israeli soldiers who fought in Gaza.

What’s great about Gaza — you see a person on a path, he doesn’t have to be armed, you can simply shoot him. In our case it was an old woman on whom I did not see any weapon when I looked. The order was to take down the person, this woman, the minute you see her. There are always warnings, there is always the saying, ‘Maybe he’s a terrorist.’ What I felt was, there was a lot of thirst for blood.

Ha'aretz and other Israeli newspapers promise to run more of these stories in the days to come.

[A] reserve officer who looked at the transcript Wednesday said: "This is not the IDF we knew."

Okay, I may live to regret this, but take it away, comments section. Please, though, avoid anything that could reasonably be interpreted as anti-Jewish or anti-Arab.* I would very much like to keep this discussion about the issues I discuss in the Times piece -- with a similar level of sobriety -- without descending into hate speech. Thanks.

*Regarding some of the comments thus far, I'm not trying to get into an argument over semantics here. "Anti-semitic", "judeophobic", whatever... You guys and girls are all adults and know what I'm talking about. Let's just keep the conversation lively without descending into ugliness.

Again, as I said two weeks ago, the key competition to watch in the aftermath of the Gaza War would be the fight for who gets to deliver essential services to the population of Gaza. Hamas, I argued, would fervently resist any competitors in the race to aid the people of Gaza, because the degree to which they would be seen as the victors depended on the degree to which they can now deliver social services in the aftermath of this conflict. If someone else delivers the aid, a wedge could potentially be driven between the population and Hamas. Hamas knows that. Thus...

Hamas police in Gaza broke into a warehouse full of United Nations humanitarian supplies and seized thousands of blankets and food packages, a United Nations spokesman said Wednesday, a rare public clash between the international agency that feeds much of the territory and the militant group that rules it.

The incident highlighted difficulties facing donors seeking to bypass Hamas while helping Gazans survive and rebuild after Israel's three-week military offensive.

"Hamas policemen stormed into an aid warehouse in Gaza City Tuesday evening and confiscated 3,500 blankets and over 400 food parcels ready for distribution to 500 families," said United Nations Relief and Works Agency spokesman Christopher Gunness. "They were armed, they seized this, they took it by force," Gunness said, terming the incident absolutely unacceptable.

Now this presents an information operations opportunity for Israel and, potentially, Fatah. Will either be smart enough to exploit it?

Who am I kidding? Probably not...

A week out of internet range means that Londonstani is doing a lot of his Gaza catch up and blog reading this weekend.

As ever, AM has been on the case and hit the nail on the head. Londonstani has been quite surprised by the way the British government has reacted to Gaza '09 compared to Lebanon '06.

Instead of backing Israel come what may, the government has been careful to show that is unhappy with Israel's actions. By the by, that stance has been mirrored in the media, where even usually quite pro-Israel publications have run articles critical of Israel's policies in general and its actions in Gaza in particular.

Londonstani did wonder whether the sands had shifted because of the obviously high death toll, or whether a certain sensitivity for British Muslim sensibilities had suddenly kicked in.

Then, government officials issued statements that basically said, "hey, didn't you all notice how we've changed our tune."

For example: "Ms Blears said the UK has called Israel's bombings "disproportionate", but added: "We're not all brilliant at [expressing this] and I think we have to really, really try now to explain that so that people don't feel that there's hypocrisy and double standards."

And another: "Speaking to the Guardian, Malik expressed alarm that the vast majority of British Muslims were drawing no distinction between current UK government policy and that held by Tony Blair when he failed to condemn immediately an invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 2006."

The online and real world campaigns over Gaza launched in the UK (specifically in London) built upon an infrastructure that had its foundations laid in the anti-war demonstrations of 2003. With every new incident to whip up anger, Londonstani has noticed an upgrade in capability and capacity.

The comments show that the point being made by the British official AM spoke with has been realised on the highest political levels. Londonstani can imagine that if a lynching-happy rag like the Daily Mail got hold of AM's info, there would be all sorts of furious headlines claiming "Government changes foreign policy to appease Muslims" or some such other crap. But this totally misses the point. In the real world, it seems to Londonstani like a threshold moment with short term and long term effects.

In the short term, the unsaid fear seems to be that the government might be pushed into pulling out of Afghanistan, for example, because that's what newly politicised Muslims in Britain want. Now, it maybe true that is indeed what British Muslims want in a knee-jerk sort of fashion. But it in reality, despite the newly squeaking voice, British Muslims have little of the cash, organisation and contacts that translate into real political clout. The F1 racing lobby has much more influence. It's much more likely that the British government uses British Muslims as a fig leaf to do something they would really like to do anyway (like pull out of Afghanistan).

However, in the long-term, there is a good chance that the British Muslim community (or communities) will have a bigger voice in foreign policy. Now, before anyone gets all worked up about "benefiting from terror", remember that it wouldn't be the first time a community pressure group to say "of course, we are trying to control our angry young people. but, if you don't give us X, they will do something silly that we can't control". In fact, Londonstani has had conversations with the fluffy secular Polisario people in southern Morocco/Western Sahara that sound very similar.

In the long run, the process can't be a bad thing. Feeling that your anger will be heard and registered forestalls the sense of angry hopelessness that extremism feeds off.

Londonstani just wishes someone had reminded the American official that it wasn't too long ago that tensions in N. Ireland affected immigrant groups in the U.S., which reciprocated by funding terror in Britain.

Update: Abu Muqawama here. Let me just add to that last sentence that Rep. Peter King (R, NY) -- after 9/11, one of the most outspoken public officials against Islamist terrorism -- was, pre-9/11, one of the IRA's most enthusiastic supporters in the U.S. Congress. Sigh.

I was having lunch yesterday with a noted defense intellectual and retired military officer who was, among other things, giving me some hilarious career advice for when I finish my PhD. ("If I worked in the Pentagon," he told me, "I would be naked with a rifle on the roof within a week." I probably would be as well. Ah, well...) The conversation turned to Gaza, though, and he asked me what I thought.

I first said that Hizballah -- a group I know a hell of a lot more about than Hamas -- excels along three lines of operation: combat operations, information operations, and the provision of social services to the population. Hamas, it appears, is not nearly as sophisticated in any of those three lines of operation despite being almost exactly as old, as an organization, as Hizballah was in 2006.

That said, the parallel I keep drawing is not between Hizballah in 2006 and Hamas in 2009 but rather between Gaza in 2009 and southern Lebanon in both 1993 and 1996. Without getting into the nitty-gritty of Operation Accountability (1993) and Operation Grapes of Wrath (1996), let me just say this: In 1993, Israel conducted an air- and artillery-based campaign which displaced over 100,000 Lebanese and destroyed around 6,000 homes in southern Lebanon. That's about how many homes have been destroyed in Gaza. Immediately following the operation, though, UN observers in southern Lebanon began to see something they had never observed before: Jihad al-Bina, Hizballah's construction arm. For the first time, Jihad al-Bina had a major presence in the area and in fact rebuilt many of the home that had been destroyed in the fighting.

One of the Israeli goals in 1993 was to create a rift between Hizballah and the population in the naive hopes the population would "crack down" on the guerrillas in their midst. The way in which Hizballah was able to distribute aid and reconstruction services following the operation, though, ensured Israel would not be able to do that. Hamas, like Hizballah, has an interest in similarly helping the population. But unlike Hizballah, they have serious competition. Both Fatah and international aid organizations will also be attempting to help the people of Gaza. Understand that in the same way in which Hizballah does not like aid programs taking place in southern Lebanon without at least their tacit -- and public -- approval, Hamas does not want competitors in this arena either. This explains some of the fighting which has taken place between Hamas and Fatah in the past few days.

In the aftermath of the war, Fatah and Hamas are already fighting over who will distribute humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. Hamas is preventing Fatah activists from playing a role in the rebuilding of Gaza, and recently hijacked 12 trucks full of aid donated by the Jordanian government, meant for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

So this is the fight to watch next. Pay close attention to who rebuilds Gaza -- and how Hamas will seek to get credit for every bit of aid that is delivered to the people. That fight will help determine the long-term strategic effects of this latest spasm of violence.

Well, that was quite a day. After enjoying the inauguration with several of my favorite fellow veterans -- all names to watch in the coming few years, incidentally -- I skipped the inaugural ball because a) Lady Muqawama remains in Palo Alto, doing her equations, and I didn't feel like flying solo and b) I've got work today, dammit. Serious work!

Speaking of serious, there is an article in the New York Times today on the way in which the war in Gaza has played out in France, which has a large North African population. About a year ago, a prominent UK defense intellectual traveled to Washington, DC and met with an equally prominent defense intellectual turned U.S. public official. Our British friend noted that it was harder for Europeans to actively support the war in Afghanistan -- much less Iraq -- because of the way it affected tensions in the large immigrant communities of Bradford, Birmingham, and my old haunt in Walthamstow. By prosecuting unpopular wars in Muslim lands, the Brit argued, we're running the risks of stoking the flames of insurgencies at home. The American response was, basically, a disinterested shrug: "It's not our fault you lot have had limited success integrating your immigrants into society," came the response, "and 'how things will play in Leyton' should not have an effect on collective defense requirements such as NATO obligations in Afghanistan. Your domestic political issues are your problem."

Now, you do not have to have an opinion about whether or not the concern raised by our British friend was legitimate. When the Brit related this story to me, I -- then hanging my hat in the 'Stow -- immediately understood both sides. On the one hand, you can do like the American and essentially tell the Europeans they're in this mess because they -- unlike we suddenly morally superior, Obama-era Americans -- can't integrate immigrant communities better. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that disgruntled immigrant communities in the nations of Western Europe are finding their voice politically. (Perhaps an indication they are growing more integrated into society.) And perhaps NATO planners should consider how that will affect both collective defense requirements and also the unpopular-in-Europe war in Afghanistan.

Thoughts from the crowd?

[I'm sure the one blogger who has not abandoned me, Londonstani, has some particularly good thoughts on this.]

This is the single most important question with respect to the Gaza Campaign:

Have three weeks of overpowering war by Israel here weakened Hamas as Israel had hoped, or simply caused acute human suffering?

Remember, though, that yesterday we wrote of how states consistently overestimate the degree to which the population can or has any interest in disciplining armed actors in their midst:

There are ... limited indications that the people of Gaza felt such pain from this war that they will seek to rein in Hamas.

As I read this article, it occurs to me that Israel is trying to figure out what they themselves did in a kind of ex post bellum way. Not sure if that is at all healthy.

P.S. One or two readers get all precious when I use the label "Palestine." Unless those readers want me to start typing out the official UN designation for the territories in question -- "The Occupied Palestinian Territories" -- they need to relax and let me use "Palestine" as a shorthand.

Now, this is utter genius!

If you follow media issues, you'll know that newspapers, magazines and broadcasters are getting poorer. And the cash sink hole that they need to cut is foreign reporting. It costs loads to cover, and brings in little in the way of readership, viewers etc.

But the problem is that when something major happens on the world stage, new outlets have to cover it in some way for the sake of their own image. Ie. "How can a respectable international organisation like XXX NOT cover a story like XXX."

Bit of a problem, right?... How do you get round this? Well, one answer is celebrity journalism. In 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle sent Sean Penn to Iran. In the same vein, kinda, Joe the Plumber is covering Gaza.

My favourite bits? "Rockets?.. you can't plan your day? You can't take a picnic." and "the Israel people".

The part about "the media shouldn't have any business in it[reporting a war]."?.. Well, he's probably just repeating what he heard the editors say before he left for his "assignment".

Peter Beaumont and Hazem Balousha make the case in today's Observer that no, Hamas, was not weakened fundamentally by the Israeli offensive and that this has changed little with respect to the organization's popular support.

Wael Abd Latef, 38, a bookshop owner from the Tal el-Hawa district of Gaza City, was convinced that the long days of bombardment have had little effect on Hamas. He abandoned his house five days ago with the arrival of Israeli tanks, and on Friday returned to check his property. "It's a war against the civilians. It's not against Hamas," he said. "They think that it's against Hamas, but it's not. The situation is a disaster for Palestinian people, not Hamas. Israel started the war against Palestinians. They imposed sanctions on Palestinians. Hamas demands the world just leave the siege and break the blockade on Palestinians by opening the curtains. Hamas spent a long time helping the Palestinian people here and worked for its interests.

"Hamas has the authority and the legitimacy to rule Gaza. I don't think the war affected Hamas that much. They destroyed everything, but Hamas is still there. Hamas will show its power when the war is over." He was scathing about the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, head of Fatah, whose term in office is ending.

Because I know the readership likes nothing more than a little social science on a Sunday morning, it's worth noting here that Yale super-nerd Stathis Kalyvas has determined states habitually overestimate the degree to which the population has influence over armed groups. And the use of indiscriminate force, such as artillery and air power? It rarely has the desired effect states intend. States opt to use indiscriminate force over more selective violence because the costs associated -- human and political -- are much lower. (For the state, anyway. Not for the taregeted population.) Factors such as a nation's strategic culture play into this as well.

John Paul Vann gets the last word:

This is a political war and it calls for discrimination in killing. The best weapon for killing would be a knife, but I'm afraid we can't do it that way. The worst is an airplane. The next worst is artillery. Barring a knife, the best is a rifle — you know who you're killing.

Israel's latest war is over, it appears. Unlike in 2006, when the post-war talk all centered around Hizballah's performance and the IDF's poor showing, the talk this time around is about the ethics of Israel's assault and the way in which the operation was conducted. The good news from Israel's perspective is that even the most hardened Hamas supporter would have a very tough time declaring victory. It appears as if even the best units from Hamas were rolled up with little difficulty, and though I am not in favor of using body counts to gauge operational excellence, it has to be said that Israel inflicted a lot of pain on Hamas with very few casualties of their own. And it's Israel -- not Hamas -- deciding how and when the conflict ends. What Israeli policy-makers are going to have to weigh over the next few weeks, though, will be how badly their international reputation has been hurt by this conflict. And that could affect long-term policy goals. Sound off in the comments section on who you think won this conflict, and why.

I just went for a 30-minute run. It is 15 degrees (F) at the moment, so that was a very bad idea. My ears are still numb, and I have no idea how I am typing.

You should stay in tonight and read this article from Ha'aretz by ... [wait for it] ... Amira Hass. Yes, yes, I know Amira Hass is Robert Fisk's favorite journalist. But if you can sneak past the journalistic agenda, this article by her is basically an interview with Human Rights Watch weapons nerd Marc Garlasco. Garlasco used to serve in the Pentagon and was chief of high value targeting during the opening stages of the Iraq War. Now he travels the world for HRW making sure countries (and non-state actors) are only using the weapons international law says they are allowed to use. Garlasco is such a dork he's fascinating:

Gazans have noticed that there are bombs that produce mushroom clouds in various shades of red. Here, Garlasco admits, "I can only speculate. It looks like Israel is maybe using a new weapon that it was not using before: DIME - the dense inert metal explosive, consisting of 25 percent TNT and 75 percent tungsten, a heavy metal. You mix the two, in a fine grain, like pepper, and when the bomb hits the ground it aerosolizes. In less than a second, the mist dissipates and explodes."

He says the advantage of DIME is that "it strikes a very small area, 10 to 20 meters, and the fire it ignites burns out very quickly; if it hits us now, we will die, but no one around us will be hurt. The problem is that when you are killed - you are ripped to shreds and there is nothing left."

And he doesn't give a flip whether you're Israeli or Palestinian:

Garlasco and Human Rights Watch also examine the other side, and he says, "We believe that the Grad and Qassam are illegal weapons because they are not accurate enough to be used in this situation." He adds that Hamas makes frequent use of land mines and explosive charges that are liable to injure civilians. ...

In 2005, Garlasco met with a political representative of Hamas and told him that use of Grads is a contravention of the Geneva Convention. The reply he got from the Hamas man was: "'All Israelis are military.' And I explained to them that their reading of international law is wrong."

Raise a glass to this man. He's doing the Lord's work in a land God has given up on.

By the way, here's a question for the class: the Arabic-speaking world and everyone else is freaking out about the fact that Israel has been using white phosphorus and denying it. Fair enough. But where was all the outrage when the Lebanese Armed Forces were using white phosphorus rounds against Fatah al-Islam in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in 2007?

Update: There is a really nerdy discussion taking place in the comments. Which is good. Check out this article from the Christian Science Monitor that also interviews Garlasco but places the use of these weapons in a more historical context in the theater. (Nick chimes in with memories of the fighting in southern Lebanon, in other words.)