Bashar Al Assad’s fall raises critical questions for Israel’s destructive Gaza strategy

Experts say using raw military firepower to defeat militants creates far more problems than it solves

Syrians celebrating the fall of the Assad regime in Umayyad Square, Damascus. Reuters

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Gaza’s destruction has sharply divided conflict experts, including war veterans-turned-academics, over whether Israel has conducted a disastrous or successful campaign in its 14-month war.

The debate is in sharper focus after the fall in Syria of Bashar Al Assad, whose forces devastated cities in the 13-year-civil war. The conflict involved an insurgency that arose following harsh government crackdowns on protesters. About half a million were killed and 7.2 million remain internally displaced in a war that saw government forces use chemical weapons against civilians.

Once again, experts are asking which approach is best for defeating insurgents, from moderate fighters to terrorists: heavy firepower or prioritising political solutions? Gaza and Syria, they say, are good examples of an “enemy-centric” approach to countering insurgency, that neglects political solutions.

A neighbourhood devastated by Israeli strikes in the southern Gaza Strip. AFP

Like Syria, Gaza has been a catastrophe. Most of the enclave is devastated with more than 45,000 Palestinians killed, and 1.9 million internally displaced, most of its 2.3 million population. It's sparked accusations against Israel from war crimes to genocide.

In Gaza, the political process has been sidelined by violence. Current indications are that some parts of the enclave will be reoccupied by Israeli soldiers while questions linger over a transitional government.

“Israel is fighting an insurgency. It has overthrown the Hamas government in Gaza - and Hamas has resorted to insurgency,” says Emma Sky, an expert on conflict in the Middle East at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs and former political adviser to US General Ray Odierno and General David Petraeus, at the height of the Iraq war.

In that regard, “it is also important to discern between those who are members of armed groups and those who are civilians. A new generation across the Middle East and in the West is being radicalised witnessing the deaths of so many civilians,” she tells The National.

Insurgency is also growing in the West Bank’s Jenin, where militants gain ground against an isolated Palestinian Authority that is undermined by Israeli occupation and, critics say, its own corruption.

“Every government needs the support of its military establishment. Bashar Al Assad lost that support by failing to meet the needs of his soldiers and their leaders,” says Peter Mansoor, a historian at Ohio State University who has written two histories of the Iraq war. He served alongside Gen David Petraeus, who commanded forces during a strategic shift to counterinsurgency in the Iraq war known as the Surge, and later headed the CIA.

War by the book

Mr Mansoor’s comment on crumbling support for Al Assad - most Syrian men were conscripted - refers to the idea of legitimacy, where a ruling authority is popularly supported, undermining insurgents. Legitimacy is discussed in a US army field manual, FM 3-24. First published in 2006, it would normally have been an obscure document.

Peter Mansoor, left, a historian at Ohio State University, served alongside Gen David Petraeus, right, in Iraq. Photo: Staff Sergeant Lorie Jewell

But in the midst of the Iraq war and co-authored with Gen Petraeus, to whom Mr Mansoor was executive officer, the manual turned heads among military thinkers. It deals with insurgency, against an occupying power or against a standing government.

Counterinsurgency, in the manual, puts politics and working with local leaders first. It tries to limit military action, which builds resentment to state forces. Once the political process is moving, it advocates handing security responsibilities to local government. It suggests benchmarks that could easily apply in Syria or Gaza.

“A drop in the number of people in camps often indicates a return to normalcy,” it suggests. “Strikes do not address the root causes for beginning or sustaining an insurgency,” another part of the manual warns.

Gen Petraeus commanded troops during a period widely seen as a turnaround for the US, after a time of strategic drift from battle to battle with insurgents, only for them to regroup.

“An illegitimate government’s only method of controlling its population is coercion, which can be resource-intensive,” FM 3-24 says. “Clear, hold, build,” was Gen Petraeus’s mantra, something he urged Israel to do in a Foreign Affairs opinion piece earlier this year. In Iraq, he warned US officers: “You can’t kill or capture your way out.”

Gen Petraeus and Mr Mansoor’s vision was not concerned with “whether the war was right or wrong”, Mr Mansoor says. “It was about what is the best way forward.”

Occupying Gaza?

Critics of Mr Petraeus say it is wrong to suggest Israel has to occupy and rebuild Gaza. One Israeli defence expert told The National that whatever happens, Israel needs to immediately formulate a plan for a postwar, Palestinian-led government.

“Israel is still focused on the military side, rather than the political side. The fortification of the Netzarim corridor in the centre of Gaza is not a good sign,” the expert said.

The two approaches – heavy firepower or “holding and building” in Gen Petraeus’s terms, have sometimes been divided into population-centric counterinsurgency and enemy-centric counterinsurgency.

“Israel is pursuing a specific kind of counterinsurgency, in which the counterinsurgent is basically indifferent to winning local popular support, or civilian welfare,” Sam Heller, a fellow at the Centre for International Research and Policy tells The National.

The Israelis and former Syrian army believe in the “enemy-centric” approach, destroying insurgents like a regular army. This is stated by the Israeli military’s Momentum Plan, which views Hezbollah and Hamas as armies, rather than ideological groups that have to lose political support.

According to a 2013 Rand think tank study of 71 insurgencies, 23 out of 33 state responses that involved “escalating repression and collective punishment” were defeated. Politics-led strategies were more successful.

Has Israel won in Gaza?

Analysts including Andrew Fox, a former senior lecturer at the UK’s Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and John Spencer, chairman of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point US military academy, claim Israel’s war has been a success.

Mr Spencer, an Iraq veteran, says high “civilian harm” in Gaza is inevitable because of the need to eradicate Hamas, which is embedded in urban areas. Mr Fox has called the war “a masterpiece of operational design”. Both say it is more successful than US and British efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Mr Fox served.

US soldiers in the Hurriya district of Baghdad, Iraq, in March 2009. Getty Images

Their views stand in stark contrast to another veteran Iraq war general who The National interviewed last year, Stanley McCrystal, who was critical of Israel’s approach, warning that extreme violence would serve to recruit militants.

Some highlight that, in the past, Israel has pursued policies closer to western thinking than its recent Gaza approach. “There have been Israeli political leaders, notably Yitzhak Rabin, who have realised that a political process needs to follow on from, if not accompany a protracted insurgency,” Clive Jones, director of the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies tells The National.

“While he gained notoriety for calling on the [Israeli military] to ‘break the bones’ of protesters during the First Intifada, he soon realised that as a popular uprising, a political process was necessary,” adds Mr Jones.

“The other Israeli strategy, however, is that insurgents must be punished first and forced to accept Israel’s diktats. Moshe Yaalon, when he was chief of staff, noted before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence committee in 2002 that Israel’s superiority needed to be burnt into the consciousness of the Palestinians. I think this speaks, of course, to an Israeli view of deterrence but perhaps also [to] an existential fear that without the use of overwhelming force, the very existence of Israel is at stake.”

West Bank in crisis

Dave Harden, former mission director of USAID in the West Bank and Gaza, tells The National that the US previously formulated a plan to encourage Israeli-Palestinian Authority co-operation, dramatically reducing unemployment and boosting security co-ordination, specifically by opening up the Jalameh crossing north of Jenin.

The move, following the bloody unrest of the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, allowed Palestinian traders to sell on global markets. “The opening of Jalameh also allowed for Israeli Arabs to cross into the West Bank city to go shopping, get car repairs, and visit family. These efforts reduced unemployment, improved security, raised incomes, and gave hope for a more stable future,” he says.

A woman stands next to a police vehicle as Palestinian security forces patrol amid clashes with militants at the camp in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Reuters

But his experience shows that ultimately, only the Israelis can choose their tactics. “While these efforts in Jenin and Jalameh were foundational, they were never intended to solve the political issues between Israelis and Palestinians. Instead, these efforts provided a 15-year window to negotiate a political resolution, which as we know never happened.”

Mr Mansoor cautions that the whole western idea of counterinsurgency may be lost on leaders such as Mr Al Assad and Mr Netanyahu. Mr Jones agrees, saying that “across the Middle East, few militaries facing insurgencies have tried to marry proportionate force to a wider political strategy”.

“Netanyahu's kinetic approach will not end the conflict with the Palestinians, but that is not his goal. He's perfectly fine with mowing the grass as Israeli settlers slowly take over Palestinian territory. It's a long game,” Mr Mansoor says.

"What is unique about the situation in Gaza is the holding of Israeli hostages. This has shaped Israel’s response," says Ms Sky, who also worked in Gaza and the West Bank on capacity building in the 1990s.

"Internal Israel politics has also prevented the articulation and adoption of an end state for Gaza which surely should be the establishment of a legitimate Palestinian government committed to peaceful co-existence with Israel. The US has enabled Israel’s disproportionate response in Gaza through the provision of weaponry and the vetoing of UN resolutions," she says.