Israel's security policy, on military superiority and similarities with India's approach to Pakistan
Israel’s prevailing security policy has collapsed.
The unspeakable horrors of October 7, 2023 have prompted a visceral retaliation in Gaza.
That brings risks of escalation on other fronts, and the unprecedented suffering of innocent civilians that will ricochet through generations.
The catastrophe should prompt a fundamental rethink of Israel’s strategic concepts — and carries dire warnings for India, too.
Every couple of years, starting in 2008, Israel launched limited air campaigns into Gaza.
This is to degrade the military capabilities — from rocket launchers to tunnels — of Hamas and other militants.
Every couple of years, it would kill and destroy just enough of Hamas’s people and power to keep the rockets silenced, and the threat contained.
Israel was managing, not seeking to solve, the problem of Palestinian resistance, from which its terrorist enemies sprouted.
The government of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu(BN) abandoned the two-state solution and actively undermined it.
BNs cynical ploy was to sabotage politics, by strengthening extremists such as Hamas.
This is at the expense of more credible and popular Palestinian forces, especially the Palestinian Authority (PA) that nominally ran the West Bank.
Mr. Netanyahu sought to keep the Palestinians hopelessly divided, the PA weak, and to thereby stall the political process for addressing the Israel-Palestine dispute. And he succeeded.
Israel’s strategic concept of periodic attrition only ever addressed Palestinian groups’ capabilities, never their political intent.
It was based on an assumption of unassailable Israeli power — a belief that operational superiority alone can deliver strategic effects.
Hamas poses no existential threat to Israel.
The Narendra Modi government has treated Pakistan as little more than an irritant to an unstoppably rising India.
In defence matters, this has included some commendable efforts.
Facing a more urgent threat on the China border, in 2021 India resuscitated the Line of Control ceasefire.
It re-tasked a dedicated Pakistan-facing Strike Corps to the China border.
More could be done to right-size the military’s focus on Pakistan, which, for decades, has been a sink of resources and military attention.
India was also seduced by the cult of operational superiority.
India has procured new technologies such as the SPICE (Smart, Precise Impact, Cost-Effective) missiles, adopted new punitive attack options such as in Balakot.
May even be involved in the mysterious assassinations of several anti-India terrorist leaders in Pakistan.
All of these impressive capabilities are products of India’s closer relationship with Israel.
They make India stronger; but by themselves they only enable successful tactics, not effective strategy.
India has rejected the notion of addressing the threat politically.
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