What is Israel's military strategy -- and
can it be defeated?
Published April 21, 2024
Photo: IDF soldiers with a journalist. Credit: Flick/IDF (CC BY-
NC 2.0 DEED)
Israel is in a strategic bind. Over the last weeks a wave of
defeatist, pro-Israel articles flooded the media in Israel and the
United States. Lead among them, Israeli newspaper Haaretz
published a piece with a blunt headline: “Saying What Can’t Be
Said: Israel Has Been Defeated – a Total Defeat.” To casual
observers of Israeli atrocities — and to many Zionists around the
world — the idea that one of the most well-equipped, so-called
advanced militaries in the world could be resoundingly, even
totally, defeated is a shocking proposition.
The capacity of the Palestinian factions in Gaza to resist remains
intact, in spite of the Israeli aim of “dismantling Hamas”. The
prisoners taken on Oct. 7 have only been released through
negotiations. Hundreds of thousands of settlers have fled from the Technological military supremacy has been a cornerstone of
settlements inside the Gaza envelope and along the Lebanese Israeli military strategy and self-concept from the earliest days,
border, many without plans to return. Iran’s intervention revealed and confidence in this strategy was bolstered multiple times by
the weaknesses in Israel’s air defense systems and reliance on the the defeats of large scale, conventional Arab armies at the hands
United States and U.S.-backed Arab regimes to intercept the of the Zionists throughout the 20th century. However, since
Iranian attack. Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance group and guerilla army,
defeated Israel in 2006, Israeli forces have refused to learn
The political and social crises within Israel are sharper than ever important lessons from this engagement, focusing instead on two
and the balance of forces regionally is not in their favor, as primary tactics: bombing Gaza from the air and “policing” the
covered recently in Liberation News. How did we get to this occupied and largely demilitarized Palestinian populace in the
point? How has the resistance achieved their war aims? What has West Bank.
been the Israeli strategy in pursuing this genocide? And what can
historical precedents tell us about what might come next? Similarly, since the first kibbutz, the dual civilian-military
purpose of settlements has been integral to Zionist military
Three legs of Zionist hard power construction and social reproduction. Like the border towns that
dot the outskirts of Native reservations across the United States
From its earliest days in the late 19th century, Zionist hard power and along the length of the Mexican border, Israeli kibbutzim in
in Palestine has been constructed on three key pillars: Palestine follow the same military logic of settler colonial
technological, financial, and military supremacy through alliance expansionism. In Israel, it is a step more explicit. These
with Western imperialism, militarized settlements that blur the settlements are not simply home to soldiers — for example the
line between civilian and soldier, and a reliance on terrorism to Gaza envelope settlements of kibbutzim Be’eri, Re’im, and
maintain a psychological aura of omnipotence. Nahal Oz all also have accompanying military bases of the same
name.
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Finally, terrorism designed to make Palestinians abandon their But these “friendly fire” instances cannot be explained just
land has been integral to Israeli military strategy from the simply by the chaos that resulted in getting caught unprepared.
bombings and massacres that defined the British Mandate era and The Hannibal Directive is a military policy that requires the use
repeated ad nauseam from Deir Yassin to Kfar Qassem to the of maximum force in the event that a soldier is being kidnapped.
Suez Crisis to Sabra and Shatilla to the Ibrahimi Mosque to Jenin “You will open fire without constraints, in order to prevent the
to the Mavi Marmara to Al-Shifa Hospital. The aim of terrorism abduction,” says a former IDF soldier quoted in Al Jazeera. He
as such is to cultivate, on one hand, a deeply rooted mindset of added that such force is applied even at the risk of killing a
defeatism in the Palestinian nation, and on the other, to reproduce captive soldier.
Israelis’ own sense of supremacy.
This calculation is based on the reality that letting resistance
Each one of these strategic pillars was undermined by events on forces take Israeli prisoners is of greater strategic damage to
Oct. 7 have been continually proven to be ineffective, outdated, Israel than the deaths of Israelis and has been publicly known for
and impotent against the Palestinian and regional resistance. years. What is new and shocking about Oct. 7 is that it has been
confirmed by multiple Israeli sources that Israeli command issued
Oct. 7: A ‘Mass Hannibal Event’ a mass Hannibal Directive with regard to all prisoners taken —
including alleged civilians. The widely circulated images of burnt
On the morning of Oct. 7, fighters from Hamas’s armed wing, out cars from the Nova Music Festival and houses completely
the Qassam Brigades, broke through the fence along the Gaza destroyed could only have been achieved by high powered
border. Under the cover of a barrage of several thousand rockets, incendiary shells used by Israeli tanks and helicopters. Given the
the brigade headed toward the headquarters of Israel’s Gaza already described breakdown of command and control on the
Division and Southern Command. The goal was to attack military Israeli side, the use of Hannibal unleashed an unprecedented level
targets and take military captives to exchange for the thousands of violence that killed hundreds of Israelis.
of Palestinian prisoners held in Zionist prisons, as well as put the
question of Palestine back on the international table in a real way The fear of letting their soldiers be captured is not irrational on
as more and more reactionary Arab governments turned toward the part of the Israeli military. In 2011, current Hamas leader
normalization with Israel in recent years. Yahya Sinwar was released in part of a deal that saw 1,027
Palestinians freed for the return of one Israeli soldier held by
The Qassam fighters found their enemy unprepared and in Hamas, Gilad Shalit. This seemingly disproportionate exchange
disarray. The headquarters of the Gaza division was seized in is an integral part of the previously ruling logic of Zionist settler
under an hour and Israeli command and control broke down colonialism. With mandatory conscription, the vast density of
completely. Units that were active in the area were without orders para-state settler militias, and within the colonial relationship
and no top level command was issued for hours, much less able more broadly, the distinction between civilian and military
to make it down the chain to soldiers on the ground. This chaos personnel is blurred.
reigned for hours, with Israeli units operating without
coordination and essentially firing at anything that moved within From this perspective, disparity in numbers seen in the Shalit deal
the Gaza envelope, including one another. is a core part of the psychological contract signed between the
Israel and the settler population. The spirit of the Hannibal
One story involved all-women armored units from the Paran Directive has continued to play out in how the Zionist forces have
Brigade roving the countryside for 16 hours without orders, approached the issue of returning the prisoners currently held by
reported in Israeli media as a win for feminism as these women the Palestinian Resistance — unable or unwilling to launch ground
killed “over 50 terrorists.” A more rational reading of this story, operations to enter the tunnels and retrieve them, Israeli forces
that several low level soldiers (all in their early 20’s) were seem content to kill their own people alongside every other
abandoned by command and left to roam the countryside killing person in Gaza.
indiscriminately for 16 hours straight, paints a much different
portrait of the capacity of the Zionist forces. The reaction within Israeli society to the mass Hannibal
revelations and the handling of the hostages demonstrates the
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degree to which these events are seen as a betrayal by the settler known as Hasbora, or the “the Gospel” in Hebrew.
populace. The breakdown of the social contract is in no small part
contributing to the flood of settlers leaving Occupied Palestine. Hasbora codifies, automates, and expands what has been true in
Ronen Bergman, a senior political analyst for the Israeli every previous Israeli assault on Gaza. In a report published in
newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, was recently quoted in the Hebrew 972 Magazine, the system is described as being able to
media (translated by Al Mayadeen here) saying with regard to the “‘generate’ targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds
recent meetings of the Israeli War Cabinet discussing potential what was previously possible,” and as a “mass assassination
responses to Iran’s retaliation: “If they had filmed it and factory.” “Mass assassination” here is the appropriate term —
broadcast it on YouTube, today there would be four million there is nothing indiscriminate about the bombings carried out
people in Israel trying to find a way to escape from here.” daily by Zionist forces. Over half of the targets generated by
Hasbora in the course of the fighting have been what are called
The Dahiya Doctrine and the Gospel “power targets,” which includes “private residences as well as
public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks.” These
The Dahiya Doctrine gets its name from the Dahiya targets are disgusted to cause the biggest shock possible to the
neighborhood in Beirut which Israel identified as a “Hezbollah social fabric of Gaza.
stronghold” during the 2006 invasion of Lebanon. The Israelis
subjected the neighborhood to scorched earth tactics that have Similar to many of the applications of the suite of technologies
become familiar scenes from Gaza in every Israeli offensive popularly known as “artificial intelligence,” this cutting edge
against Gaza since 2008. In a report by a UN fact-finding mission technology has only served to amplify and intensify the existing
in the aftermath of Israel’s 2008-2009 war on Gaza, Deputy strategic equation on the Israeli side. The ability of Israeli forces
Prime Minister Eli Yishai is quoted on Jan. 6, 2009: “It [should to leverage technological and financial dominance into credible
be] possible to destroy Gaza, so they will understand not to mess deterrence has collapsed. The threat of the Dahiya Doctrine did
with us. It is a great opportunity to demolish thousands of houses not deter the Palestinian Resistance from launching Al-Aqsa
of all the terrorists, so they will think twice before they launch Flood last year, nor Seif al-Quds in 2021. It has not deterred the
rockets.” Lebanese resistance from supporting Palestinians on the northern
front. Despite ten years of Dahiya-style bombardment in the
This crude admission gets at the heart of the Dahiya Doctrine — U.S.-backed Saudi war on Yemen, the Yemeni resistance is
strategically, it is meant to increase Israeli deterrence. In military undeterred.
theory, deterrence is the credible threat of force used to prevent
another actor from taking hostile action. Israeli deterrence has Al-Aqsa Flood, deterrence, and continuing the resistance
always relied on the threat of swift, overwhelming force provided
by its technological edge, whether to commit massacres during Over the decades the Palestinian struggle has seen many setbacks.
the Nakba or rout the Arab armies in 1967 and 1973. In many The anti-imperialist struggle in the region has seen many, many
ways, this is not a novel strategic development on the part of setbacks. At a bare minimum, 5 million people from Sudan to
Israel. Terrorism has been a cornerstone of colonial and Afghanistan have been directly killed between the invasions,
imperialist violence for hundreds of years. dirty wars, coups, and interventions led by the United States just
in the last 30 years and the number is undoubtedly much, much
The “shock and awe” of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which higher in reality. The United States has had its forces and
targeted civilian infrastructure with mass destruction, represents operatives on the ground in the region for so long that it has not
another manifestation of this colonial strategy in the 21st century. had to rely on Israel as an independent actor the way it did in the
Further back, a similar approach was applied by U.S. imperialists mid to late 20th century.
in the mass carpet bombing of Korea. It is in the relentless Israeli
campaigns against Gaza over the last two decades that the Dahiya This same period was an era defined by the Oslo Accords, the so-
Doctrine has been refined into a precise, automated killing called “peace process,” and continual degradation and
machine. The Israeli military revealed last year that it has been encroachment of Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank and
developing and utilizing an AI-powered target generation system Gaza. The Palestinian liberation movement was fractured,
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divided, and lost many of its material sponsors with the collapse Palestinian resistance has reignited a vision of a Palestinian
of the socialist camp and the anti-colonial movements. In its future.
place rose the comprador regime of the Palestinian Authority and
a retreat of militant forces. This was a period of great difficulty Additionally, exemplified by the unprecedented Al-Quds Day
for the national liberation movement and the global anti- press conference which featured speeches from leaders across the
imperialist movement. Resistance Axis and the strategic coordination of the Gaza,
Lebanon, and Yemen fronts as well as actions from Iraq and Iran,
The Israelis were content, meanwhile, to continue the slow and the Palestinian struggle is pulling the region closer toward
steady process of ethnic cleansing and apartheid, self-assured in cooperation and integration than potentially any time since the
their own omnipotence and the weakness of the Palestinian short-lived heyday of Pan-Arabism in the 1950s and 60s or the
movement. They did not learn any lessons from their defeat in Arab nationalist revolts in the final days of the Ottoman Empire.
Lebanon in 2006, instead employing a nearly identical strategy
against Gaza half a dozen times in two decades. Oct. 7 and the What options does Israel have?
nearly 200 days since then have revealed these suppositions about
the balance of forces to be a house of cards. Israel aimed and failed to reestablish their deterrence capacity
after being humiliated by Hamas on Oct. 7. It is in fact the Axis
The resistance regionally has also demonstrated an incredibly of Resistance which has succeeded in establishing credible
high level of strategic patience and tactical skill. The networks deterrence — on the ground in Gaza and Lebanon, in the seas off
that formed the basis for the Axis of Resistance go back to the Yemen, and with Iranian missiles and drones striking their targets
1980s during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. A new within Israel. The United State is effectively deterred from further
generation of organizations rose up to combat this occupation, escalation and, despite Israeli bluster, it seems unlikely to pursue
including elements that would become Hezbollah. Since their a regional war.
victory in 2006, Hezbollah has developed, with assistance from
Iran, a complex, indigenously produced missile stockpile and Despite deploying massive violence, the strategic calculus of the
deep underground fortifications. Israeli military has remained stagnant and disjointed. Israeli
society is riven with division and fear. The IDF image of
Similarly, the resistance in Gaza have — even under the conditions omnipotence has been shattered. A regional war against the full
of siege — built a similarly complex indigenous weapons force of the resistance would be disastrous for the peoples of the
production capacity and the much discussed tunnels under Gaza. region and ultimately suicidal for the Zionist project, but there are
This has made Israeli ground operations within Gaza over the last very few power centers or individuals in Israeli politics who seem
months catastrophic. In countless videos released by the ready to admit defeat and make serious concessions at the
resistance, as well as in statements from the Israeli military, it is negotiating table.
clear that large numbers of officers have been killed by the
resistance requiring constantly calling up reservists, that tank Israel is backed into a corner with no good options. It is also
units travel without infantry escorts making them vulnerable to moments like this that the most unhinged and self destructive
ambushes, and that ultimately, the Israeli military as a fighting tendencies in a society become viable. It is impossible to predict
force on the ground cannot match the organization, leadership, what will happen next, but what is abundantly clear is that the
bravery, and audacity of the Palestinian resistance. previously hegemonic logics of escalation, deterrence, and what
is possible in this struggle have been upended.
The resistance factions also retain a high level of popular support
across Palestinian society. The unity of different political and
sectarian factions on the military front has prompted discussions
between the leaders of the factions in Beirut and Moscow in
recent months about potential day-after plans, on Palestinian
terms. Whether a national unity government that includes all the
factions, a revitalized PLO, or something else entirely, the
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