If Israeli forces enter Gaza, they will do well to remember US failures in Afghanistan

Dominic Nicholls
Mon, 23 October 2023 

Israeli soldiers have now spent almost two weeks preparing for an anticipated ground offensive in the Gaza Strip - HANNIBAL HANSCHKE/EPA-EFE

Israel’s forces have been massed on the border with Gaza for more than two weeks now. The order to invade has not yet come.

As more time passes, and more is reported about Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister’s concerns over a two-front war with Hamas and Hezbollah, it raises the question of whether the order is certain to come at all.

Most analysts conclude it is still overwhelmingly likely to arrive, and in the near future, perhaps when more hostages have been freed from the clutches of Hamas.

But some, both within Israel and outside the country, are wondering whether Israel could achieve its military goal – fully eradicating Hamas – with some version of the strategy it is currently employing, where the air force targets the group from the sky and elite forces conduct raids deep inside the territory. Certainly it would save the lives of thousands of Israeli soldiers.

In my view, the answer is simply that they cannot. It takes more than missiles and stealth jets to kill an ideology.

Netanyahu, despite his hawkish rhetoric, is known within Israel to be cautious in terms of ordering full-on wars. He has avoided the option in several previous bouts of fighting, only once sending large numbers of troops into the Gaza Strip in 2014.

This time, if further encouragement is needed to give the green light, he may look to the lessons of history, in terms of the scale of an operation needed to root out terrorists or wholly transform a region.

Whether they like it or not, Israeli forces, indeed the whole of Israel’s society, is about to embark on a generational counter-insurgency struggle. Victory will require political bravery and societal nous just as much as military muscle.

To avoid defeat they would be wise to study the glaring mistakes made by the US-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11.

For victory, they should turn to the Malayan Emergency of 1948-1960, when British and Commonwealth forces eventually triumphed over a communist revolt, albeit after many years of fighting and with a painful political bill.

That campaign successfully employed the counter-insurgency model of “Clear, Hold, Build”. It was a framework that the US and its allies failed to replicate in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Clear – arresting, killing or pushing out those that have taken up arms against the innocent, terrorised the population into reluctant support and generally offered nothing but a bleak future of enduring conflict, usually in the service of an ideology supported by few.

Hold – flood the area with troops and other elements of a state’s security apparatus in order to keep the insurgents away from the green shoots of a new, peaceful society. This phase is long and hard, requiring huge investment in both human and financial resources. Friendly force casualties will rise against a backdrop of little obvious progress. Real political leadership is vital to withstand the calls for a change of strategy.

Concurrently with the last phase – build. Physically build schools, hospitals and housing, while at the same time building the civic structures to ensure everyone has a stake in the future.

In Afghanistan, the US-led coalition managed the first two, to greater or lesser degrees, across that devastated country. By the time coalition forces pulled out, the building of physical infrastructure was stuttering but established; the creation of representative, accountable and honest Afghan political structures, however, was never seriously embraced.

For an enduring peace where Hamas no longer exists or is no longer supported by the public, even with coercion, Israel needs time, patience and courage.

Splitting the active Hamas terrorists from the wider passive Palestinian supporters can only be achieved if military action against the former is combined with civil reform for the latter.

Of course, Hamas has been responsible for civil structures – schools, hospitals, a future – in Gaza since 2007, and squandered most of that time, but if Israeli forces cross the start line with the maximalist aims they have described, they will be reminded quickly of the aphorism: if you break it, you own it.

Too often – as in the US experience in Vietnam or the coalition’s actions in Iraq and Afghanistan – too heavy a military hand not only increases the number of people willing to take up arms in opposition, but also decreases the chances of civil accommodation.

It took the British-led operation in Malaya over a decade of hard work, including eventual political reform, to end the communist insurgency. The half-hearted efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, with too little help given to society to enable it to build its own future, failed.

The question now is whether Israel will prefer the short-term hit of high-explosive nicotine or be prepared to invest time, money and lives in the uncomfortable compromises necessary for an enduring and satisfying peace.