The Limits of Israeli Power – Bashir Abdel Fattah

The lessons of history show that military force alone cannot resolve conflicts or achieve a country’s foreign policy goals. No matter how effective it is, it will inevitably encounter challenges, and excessive or unreasonable use of it will bring adverse consequences.

Our late professor Dr. Muhammad al-Sayyid Salim, in his seminal work entitled Foreign Policy Analysis published in 1989, articulated the relationship between a state’s possession of power and the effectiveness of its foreign policy. He stressed that this is not a direct relationship in all cases, as there is no necessary correspondence between the two. This is because the possession of power does not necessarily guarantee the achievement of strategic goals. A state may possess the means of power but fail to achieve the goals of its foreign policy, and sometimes even the opposite may occur.

In turn, Andrew Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, in his 2008 book entitled The Limits of Power…The End of American Exceptionalism, explores the various challenges that have beset the United States since the end of World War II. Its loss of clear vision, its squandering of sources of wealth and pillars of power, exposed the limits of American power to reshape the world. Signs of these boundaries became evident in the Korean War (1950-1953), then in the Vietnam War (1962-1973), and were consolidated with the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021 after two decades of strategic confusion. Thus, Bacevich’s proposals are consistent with Selim’s vision of reducing the influence of military power in achieving the country’s foreign policy goals.

In the early 1990s, the late Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev told the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad that “military force has lost its credibility as a mechanism for resolving conflicts in the Middle East.” Today, the U.S. government is warning the Netanyahu government not to fall into the clutches of “power madness” that would lead to continued genocide, starvation, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and “scorched earth” policies.

As part of the “punishment deterrence” strategy, the occupation forces have adopted the “Dahiya Doctrine” since 2008, which is the key strategy of their war against resistance movements and civilian assemblies, which constitute the basis of their support. This doctrine relies on various principles, the most prominent of which are: to weaken the capabilities of resistance forces through the comprehensive destruction of their infrastructure and important and symbolic facilities, using heavy aerial bombardment. To achieve deterrence through collective punishment and abuse of civilians, to besiege resistance organizations and deprive them of their social incubators.

The Israeli occupation forces failed to achieve the “absolute victory” that Netanyahu sang about. For the first time since the 1973 war, he called up nearly 350,000 reservists, used the ugliest means of violence, and exhausted a large amount of weapons and ammunition. He also supported settlers to attack the West Bank and Palestinian property. Nearly 700 people were martyred in Jerusalem, nearly 6,000 were injured, and large areas of Palestinian farms and pastures were confiscated. However, all these crimes did not succeed in achieving the goals of the Netanyahu government’s aggression, namely: conquering the Hamas movement and eliminating its military capabilities, repatriating Israeli prisoners in the Gaza Strip, ensuring that the scenario of the “flooding” of the “Al-Aqsa Mosque” will not be repeated, and ending new threats to Israel’s depth. At the same time, he failed to operationally disengage from the Palestinian resistance factions and their support fronts stationed in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq; the occupation forces suffered painful blows from the Palestinian resistance movement every day in various locations of its invasion. Despite its amazing firepower, advanced technical capabilities and intensive air coverage of the ground combat area, it did not succeed in destroying the resistance’s tunnel system or its drone and projectile attacks. Under the pressure of the continued resistance to the attacks, Netanyahu still has difficulty in repatriating more than 100,000 internally displaced Israelis from settlements and towns around Gaza and Galilee. According to the data of the occupation forces, since the ground invasion of Gaza began on October 27 last year, the death toll has reached 700, including 360 officers and soldiers, and more than 10,000 wounded, including 3,700 limb injuries. As for Lebanon, the Israeli Walla website reported that since the confrontation with Hezbollah began on October 8, 44 Israelis have died, including 24 civilians, 19 officers and soldiers, and another 271 people have been injured, including 141 soldiers and officers.

Although the “punishment deterrence” strategy has not yielded results, in the eyes of the occupation leadership, the current war in Gaza demonstrates the urgent need to increase the number of regular and reserve forces. Therefore, Netanyahu aims to recruit 4,800 Orthodox Jews this year, believing that the addition of one battalion from excluded groups will mobilize 10 reserve battalions per year.

The American newspaper The New York Times reviewed the failure of the occupation forces to eliminate the Hamas movement despite their ability to weaken it. American officials believe that the Israeli army will not make further progress in the Gaza Strip, and the only solution to release 115 Israeli prisoners, dead or alive, is to reach an agreement. Based on the US proposal, Israeli military officials revealed that the Gaza War is over. Most of Hamas’ combat forces have been eliminated, the Rafah Brigade has been defeated, and most of the tunnels on the Philadelphia axis have been filled. Therefore, the military top brass can be sure that it is time to reach an agreement on the exchange of prisoners.

Meanwhile, the failure of Israel’s deterrence strategy has seen resistance factions in Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza, Syria and Iraq launch missiles and marches towards the occupying power. The terrible hemorrhaging of the Israeli economy continues. Despite the power disparity in favor of the occupying forces, the resistance refuses to take any action other than to stand its ground. Since its factions are actors without a state and a regular army, their calculations differ from the latter’s estimates. While the resistance uses unconventional tactics, such as tunnels, and is strong enough to withstand losses and absorb blows, it does not allow power disparities a chance to influence its decisions. This prevents the occupying power from investing its overwhelming military and technological advantages to achieve its foreign policy goals, or to defeat the resistance and break its will.

After the brutal Israeli aggression, the resistance movement developed tactics and resumed martyrdom operations in densely populated population centers deep in Israel. Recently, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad movement claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings in Tel Aviv and explicitly announced the resumption of operations, which Hamas continued to carry out during the second Palestinian intifada in 2000. Perhaps the movement, due to the serious imbalance in the balance of power, has become concerned about the feasibility of a military confrontation with the occupation forces, so I decided to return to the old path and transfer the suffering of Gaza to the heart of Israel by carrying out operations that target not only Israeli settlers and soldiers, but also civilians. The fact that the perpetrators of this operation succeeded in reaching the center of Tel Aviv shows that Hamas has the ability to infiltrate Israel, either through the transit procedures in the West Bank or by recruiting Palestinians from the Arabs of 1948, who are tired of it. After the intensification of Israeli attacks on the West Bank and Jerusalem, they distanced themselves from the Gaza war. The announcement by the Qassam and Al-Quds Brigades that they intend to resume martyrdom operations in the occupied territories as long as the occupation’s policy of massacres, forced displacement of Palestinians and assassinations continues has heightened fears among Israeli security services that panic will return to the centres of major cities.

Recently, Tamir Heyman, the former head of Israel’s military intelligence agency “Amman”, warned that he believed Israel’s status as a regional power and military power was disappearing. In turn, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak called for an end to the failed war in Gaza and a negotiated way to repatriate Israeli detainees. In the middle of last year, the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University called on the leaders of the occupying power to recognize the limits of power and act accordingly. He called on them to coordinate with Washington before engaging in any future military operations. However, the Netanyahu government refused to stick to the “crazy power” strategy, ignoring the terrible consequences it brought. Instead of reexamining its calculations and listening to the advice of wise men and allies, it announced its intention to continue its aggression against Gaza, both above and below ground, while intensifying operations on the northern front.