Israeli Counter-Insurgency and the Intifadas

Dilemmas of a Conventional Army

Sergio Catignani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134079971
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'armée et de la marine

This volume analyzes the conduct of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) counter-insurgency operations during the two major Palestinian uprisings (1987-1993 and 2000-2005) in the Territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It employs primary and secondary resources to produce a comprehensive analysis on whether or not the IDF has been able to adapt it

1 Introduction

The literature on Israel’s security dilemmas and its armed forces is extensive both in terms of depth as well as breadth. There is, however, a major gap in the literature relating to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), or Tsahal.¹ The gap concerns the way in which it has been able to adapt to and cope with the low-intensity conflict (LIC) in the Occupied/Disputed Territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the last two decades.²

This book analyses the tactical and operational conduct of the Israel Defence Forces’ counter-insurgency operations during the two major Palestinian uprisings (1987–93 and 2000–05) in the Territories. It sets out to see whether or not the IDF has been able to adapt its conventional order of battle and conduct of warfare to the realities of the Israeli—Palestinian LIC and achieve some sort of victory over the Palestinian insurgency.

Whilst examining the IDF’s attempts at adapting to Palestinian insurgency over the last two decades, this book will also look at what effects both Intifadas have had on the combat morale of the IDF. IDF combat morale surveys are security-sensitive and, thus, not available for public scrutiny. By bringing together evidence from academic and professional studies, media reports and data gathered through interviews conducted in Israel, I have been able to provide an analysis of the combat morale trends affecting IDF ground forces combat personnel during the two Intifadas.

In examining the core literature on combat motivation, this book has been able to draw out the most salient factors affecting, either negatively or positively, the combat motivation of armed forces (see Chapter 2). Having done so, the book has looked at the strategic, operational, tactical and organisational changes and adaptation that the IDF has undergone in response to Palestinian insurgency. By relating such changes (or lack thereof) to the factors affecting combat motivation the book has shed greater light on the combat motivation trends of the IDF during the two Intifadas.

Furthermore, by providing a historical examination of the way in which the IDF and the Israeli security doctrine were formed and developed over time, the book explores the extent to which Israeli security assumptions, civil—military relations, and the organisational culture, structure and conduct of the IDF have affected its ability to adapt, successfully, to the contemporary Israeli—Palestinian LIC. As it begins to consider the evolution of Israel’s national security strategy and the nature of its civil—military relations, it will explore, particularly in the chapters covering the two Intifadas, the extent to which Israel’s security policy-making establishment has been able to adopt a strategy relevant to the nature and magnitude of the current conflict, between the Israeli state and the Palestinian community.

The book will delve into the various dilemmas that the IDF as a ‘conservative organisation’, and IDF personnel involved in the two Intifadas, have endured. These include, upholding the purity of arms principle (use of weapons for solely defensive purposes), despite the risk of causing significant collateral damage, instances of excessive force and abuse during military operations carried out in Palestinian urban centres, and of using a war-fighting organisation to conduct constabulary duties in densely populated areas. In particular, the growing phenomenon of IDF conscientious objectors caused by the politically and ethically controversial nature of maintaining (and providing security within) the Territories, will be highlighted. Yoram Peri defined the phenomenon of conscientious objection as one of those ‘challenges of an unprecedented nature and difficulty for Israeli society’.³ Although this book looks at the justifications that conscientious objectors voiced in regards to their radical protest, it does not provide lengthy personal accounts of selected individuals’ experiences, as do the works of Ronit Chacham or Peretz Kidron.⁴ Rather, it discusses how the tactics adopted by the IDF against Palestinian insurgency as well as general Israeli national security strategy vis-à-vis the Territories affected motivations to serve.

The growing discontent of many reservists, with conditions in terms of compensation, training and the unsatisfactory equipment with which they serve during their periodic reserve duty, will be addressed. Such discontent has lowered their will to serve in regular training and routine security duties on a yearly basis in the IDF. It has especially affected combat reservists who, in effect, have been disproportionately used during the two Intifadas.

The majority of non-combat reservists have not been called up, due to the relatively low, albeit unrelenting, level of violence during the two Intifadas. The lack of an imminent conventional threat on any of Israel’s borders over almost the last two decades means a smaller number of reservists have carried the growing burden of maintaining Israel’s national security. This situation has occurred in spite of the continued rhetoric that the IDF is a ‘people’s army’ and that the burden of security should rest on all of its (male, Jewish and non-Ultra Orthodox) citizens. It has, consequently, created resentment on the part of quite a few combat reservists, creating the eventual reluctance to serve, not on the basis of conscientious objection, but because of not wanting to carry the security burden without greater financial remuneration and/or greater social appreciation.

Lastly, this book will address the question of whether or not the use of the IDF to ‘solve’ militarily the Israeli—Palestinian conflict has been a successful strategy given the politically complex nature of the conflict.

Why study the IDF during the two Intifadas?

One reason for studying the IDF’s LIC experiences in the Territories is the fact that, as suggested by recent experience, as well as by contemporary military experts, future warfare is likely to involve comparable operations within urban arenas. LICs have been the most common conflicts in international relations since the Second World War. Around 80 per cent of the conflicts during the Cold War were LICs, as were 95 per cent of the conflicts occurring between 1989 and 1996.⁵ This trend has only increased over the last decade.⁶

Not only are such operations likely to become more common, but also more challenging. These operations, in fact, already entail huge economic expenditure, high domestic and international political costs, problematical moral dilemmas, and public-image blunders that are not exclusively relevant to the IDF. The IDF is a unique organisation in that it is a ‘people’s army’. In addition, Israel and its precursor Yishuv (‘settlement’—term used by the Zionist movement to indicate the group of Jewish residents in Palestine) community in Palestine have been in a constant state of conflict, in one form or the other, with its Arab neighbours over the last 80 years or so. Nonetheless, the ethical and operational dilemmas and issues of political legitimacy that the IDF has experienced over the last 20 years whilst carrying out low-intensity operations, whether counter-terrorist, counter-guerrilla or constabulary, are similar to those that have affected armed forces involved in peace-keeping and peace-enforcement operations since the end of the Cold War, as well as in the ‘global war on terror’ (GWOT) since 9/11.

IDF COIN (Counter-Insurgency) operations are also relevant to comparable operations, such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq, which increasingly involve populated civilian areas. The problematic nature of such operations often affects ground forces, not only because of the close contact they have with the hostile civilian population, but also due to the fact that given the decentralised nature of urban conflict operations, low-ranking officers and even non-commissioned officers (NCOs) sometimes take tactical decisions, which may have dramatic strategic consequences. Consequently, the responsibility and pressures on low-ranking officers and soldiers have increased considerably.

The stresses and challenges that officers and soldiers undergo in LIC scenarios and during periods of transformation/adaptation make it necessary to study the effects they have on their combat motivation. This is crucial for understanding combat motivation factors that influence immediate operational performance, and essential in attempting to understand the combat motivation outcomes that armed forces might experience in the medium to long-term.

Despite the worldwide increase of low-intensity warfare most armed forces have continued to focus their training and materiel acquisition efforts on large-scale intensity conflicts.⁷ This has been the case for Israel. Notwithstanding the IDF’s involvement since the early 1950s in bitachon shotef (batash)—that is, ‘current security operations’—such as the interception of guerrilla and terrorist combatants during border patrols, retaliatory operations and cross-border punitive strikes,⁸ the IDF’s main preoccupation until very recently has been the threat of high-intensity warfare from the states bordering Israel. Its focus, in terms of order of battle and training of military staff, has been geared towards conventional, high-intensity conflict (HIC). The IDF’s last Gaza Brigade Commander, Brig. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, stated in early 2003 that in the IDF’s case, at the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000 ‘there was no relevant doctrine and techniques for LIC combat in urban populated areas’.⁹ This was the case in spite of the fact that Israel had been involved extensively since the mid-1980s in guerrilla warfare in South Lebanon and in COIN operations within the Territories since the late 1980s.

In fact, with the rise of LICs as the main form of warfare that conventional armies, such as the IDF face, ‘the distinction between “front” and “rear” and “war” and “peace” have become more blurred’.¹⁰ Consequently, the conventional differences between ‘combatant’ and ‘non-combatant’ and between ‘battleground’ and ‘civilian quarters’ have also become confused. These distinctions have been particularly problematic in Israel’s case, because of the very narrow distance between Israel and its zone of conflict/operations and the consequential narrow margin of error allowed in these operations.

Moreover, given the generally equivocal nature of low-intensity threats to the core national interests of a specific state, the legitimacy of the use or threat of military force in order to stabilise and impose order over a particular theatre of operations has become paramount from a legal point of view,¹¹ and also from an ethical standpoint.¹² More than ever before, military leaders have to deal with the moral misgivings that may arise amongst both their soldiers and themselves. Thus, military leaders have found themselves continually trying ‘to build an internal credibility for their operations’ and ‘to constantly respond to a sensitive civilian environment … in order to construct an external legitimacy for their actions’.¹³ This credibility and legitimacy have become even more poignant issues in Israel’s LIC strategy vis-à-vis the Palestinians, given the rise of domestic dissent within a society that relies predominantly on conscript and reservist armed personnel.

The question of legitimacy when using military force in LICs is especially crucial even if fought out on the basis of self-defence, as in the Israeli case. The issue of the legitimacy of the use of force has become, in fact, very relevant as the media can easily weaken such legitimacy by exposing operational blunders or even abuses carried out by armed forces and, thus, influence heavily international and domestic public opinion. The exposition of such operational errors and abuses has also become easier to monitor as local civilians have increasingly been able to acquire relatively inexpensive video and digital recorders and disseminate them through various media outlets to their advantage.

Tactical mistakes by forces on the ground may have extraordinary strategic consequences due to pervasive media coverage and due to the overall greater political and diplomatic stakes involved in LICs. This may result in greater political interference from the government sanctioning the use of the military in a particular mission, from aborting the actual operation to modifying it. This would mostly be due to the fear of operational failure being highlighted on the media almost immediately, whether or not that would come in the guise of suffering one’s own casualties, inflicting civilian casualties, causing collateral damage, demonstrating ‘excessive force’ and so on. In fact, ‘the presence of the news media is a primary reason for the increasing link between tactics and strategy’.¹⁴ Such a linkage has become so strong that it has recently led armed forces like the IDF to factor in the media when planning missions at the operational and tactical levels.

Whereas during the first Intifada such legitimacy proved very hard to defend both at the international, but more importantly, at the domestic level, given the vast asymmetry of violence used between the Israelis and Palestinians, the more violent Al-Aqsa Intifada strengthened Israel’s resolve to fight and its self-perception of fighting a legitimate conflict. Yet, even at the higher end of the spectrum of such low-intensity violence (i.e. terrorism and guerrilla warfare), the IDF Head of Doctrine for the Ground Forces Command, Col. Roi Elcabets, plainly stated that ‘we know that the legitimacy of our struggle is a major thing and every act of any soldier might on occasion harm the battle of the narrative’ [emphasis mine].¹⁵ One would think that the principle of self-defence would be adequate enough to justify the use of force in Israel’s specific case. For clashes such as LICs, which are objectively not perceived as being existential threats (despite former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s and other top IDF officers’ remarks to the contrary), the issue of the narrative of the conflict has become an important aspect for legitimising and creating a consensus on the use of force and in defining the strategic intent of any force used.¹⁶ Consequently, it seems that even in the Israeli case, where the level of violence during the current Al-Aqsa Intifada has been significantly high and the targets of such violence are clearly Israeli civilians and military units, ‘this lack of consensus [has led] … to an inherent controversy on the question of defining strategic objectives’ and that ‘the lack of clarity regarding the greater objectives [has made] it harder to clarify the means for achieving them’.¹⁷

This suggests that military operations, which may be brilliant from a tactical point of view, against insurgents who are seeking self-determination (whether religious—that is, Islamic—political or ethnic) within the Middle East, may not achieve the intended strategic outcomes. Some have argued that the political nature of LICs precludes the ability to impose unilaterally a strategic solution through the sole use of military means or through the imposition of peace terms. This book will consider whether or not this has been the case with...