The Counterinsurgency Trap in Gaza

In early January, the Israeli military announced it would begin drawing down some of its forces in the Gaza Strip. Five brigades, made up of several thousand troops, were expected to leave Gaza over the next several weeks. But rather than signaling an end to combat, the move was more likely a foreshadowing of a new phase in Israel’s struggle against Hamas. What began as an essentially conventional war may be morphing into something altogether different: a counterinsurgency campaign. 

In place of the features that have defined the war to this point, such as brigade-level troop deployments, major airstrikes, and full-scale combat, a counterinsurgency approach would rely more on special operations forces, precision strikes, and targeted raids. The idea would be for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to hold territory after clearing it of Hamas fighters. Retired U.S. Army general and former CIA director David Petraeus has urged Israel to adopt this strategy in Gaza. “Don’t clear and go on,” he said in a November 30 speech. Repeating the slogan that defined the U.S. counterinsurgency effort that he oversaw in Iraq, Petraeus drove home a simple message: “Clear, hold, and build.”

That, however, is easier said than done. Research on past counterinsurgency campaigns suggests that such an approach in Gaza would produce a quagmire that could stretch on for years for the IDF. Hamas would adapt to its new reality by relying on its underground tunnel network, using destroyed infrastructure to its advantage, and leveraging the vast mounds of rubble now found throughout Gaza’s cities to conceal its movements and explosive devices. Hamas, along with other terrorist groups inside Gaza, could also begin deploying suicide bombers against Israeli soldiers on foot patrol. 

Put simply, applying Petraeus’s vision of counterinsurgency to Gaza would be a disaster for the IDF. Palestinians and others would credibly accuse Israel of reestablishing its occupation of the territory. Raids and checkpoints would further radicalize civilians in Gaza. And Hamas would exploit the situation to further marginalize moderate Palestinian voices, inspire a far-reaching uprising that would claim the lives of more IDF troops and even more Palestinian civilians, and galvanize other members of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance to launch attacks on targets in Israel and elsewhere. Rather than bringing the violence closer to an end, a counterinsurgency campaign in Gaza would produce a forever war. 

MIA: POLITICAL OBJECTIVES

Israel’s endgame in Gaza is still unknown, but there are signs that an extended occupation paired with a counterinsurgency approach could be the next chapter in the fighting. Statements from Israeli leaders hint at a sustained Israeli presence in Gaza with an open-ended timetable for leaving. Speaking on January 30 in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the war against Hamas will not end until Israel achieves all of its objectives. “We will not withdraw the IDF from the Gaza Strip, and we will not release thousands of terrorists,” he said. “None of this will happen. What will happen? An absolute victory.” On January 4, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the IDF’s military campaign “will continue for as long as is deemed necessary.” And Herzi Halevi, the IDF’s chief of staff, said in December that the war in Gaza would continue “for many months.” But if Israel adopts a counterinsurgency approach, months could easily turn into years. 

Even without deliberately making that choice, Israel could find itself backing into it. That is what happened to the United States in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, where mission creep allowed limited objectives to give way to murkier, more ambitious goals. For example, in Afghanistan, the United States started the war intending to destroy al Qaeda but eventually found itself trying to do nation building. In the end, Washington failed to achieve either outcome. The morass facing Israel in Gaza today could turn out the same way—or come to resemble what Israel itself encountered in southern Lebanon, when a campaign that began in 1982 with the goal of eliminating fighters from the Palestine Liberation Organization stretched on for nearly two decades, with Israel ultimately withdrawing unceremoniously in 2000 without removing the threat posed by Palestinian militants. To boot, Israel’s nearly two-decade occupation of Lebanon helped give rise to a new foe, Lebanese Hezbollah, a threat the Israelis are still grappling with today. 

Meanwhile, Netanyahu also has a personal incentive to prolong the war; it has become clear that many Israelis want new political leadership as soon as the conflict in Gaza is over. In a Christmas Day op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Netanyahu declared that the prerequisites for peace between Israel and the Palestinians were that “Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized.” Achieving even one of those objectives, let alone all three, would require a multiyear commitment of troops in both Gaza and the West Bank, and even that would not ensure success. 

Four months into the war, some members of Israel’s military brass are losing patience with the lack of a coherent political endgame. In January, Gallant expressed frustration that there was no plan for what the conflict looks like beyond “destroying Hamas,” saying, “it is the duty of the cabinet and the government to discuss the plan . . . and to determine the goal.”

TACTICAL VICTORY, STRATEGIC DEFEAT

If the IDF does adopt a counterinsurgency approach in Gaza, it will be directly at odds with the policy recommendations of the Biden administration, which, from the beginning of the conflict, has warned Israel not to occupy Gaza after the war or to make mistakes similar to those committed by the U.S. military after 9/11. Washington has been pressuring Netanyahu to scale back Israel’s military campaign, concerned about the more than 26,000 Palestinians killed—many of them women and children. “In this kind of fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin remarked in early December. “And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.” 

After almost four months of fighting in Gaza, it has become clear that Israel has no defined political strategy for what happens next. Netanyahu has voiced his opposition to the idea that the Palestinian Authority would retake control of Gaza, a position at odds with the Biden administration. And Arab states remain reluctant to commit any troops to a peacekeeping force, which means Israel will likely end up patrolling Gaza while Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups prepare for a drawn-out, low-intensity conflict. In this scenario, Israel would face Palestinian insurgents conducting hit-and-run attacks, staging deadly ambushes, and employing snipers operating from the rubble of demolished buildings. The IDF has razed much of Gaza, pulverizing its infrastructure with relentless airstrikes. This ruined terrain creates an environment that would favor insurgents, providing them with new places to conceal fighters and weapons. Complementing these new hiding places is Hamas’s vast, labyrinth-like subterranean tunnel system that runs underneath Gaza.

And yet if the IDF occupies Gaza and transitions to a counterinsurgency mission, it will be playing into the hands of Hamas. The group’s leaders would like nothing more than an opportunity to prolong the fighting, continue killing Israeli soldiers, and highlight the death toll of Palestinian civilians in its propaganda. Hamas’s strategy would be “death by a thousand cuts,” an effort to slowly wear down IDF troops until the Israeli public demands a withdrawal, at which point Hamas would declare victory. The conflict could play out similarly to the United States’ experience in Afghanistan, where the Taliban patiently waited for two decades for the United States to withdraw and then quickly recaptured control of the country. In Gaza, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group operating there, would detonate improvised explosive devices and use a variety of antitank weaponry and homemade rockets to neutralize Israeli armored patrols. By blending in with the civilian population, Hamas would invite attacks that would inevitably lead to Palestinian women and children being caught in the crossfire.

A counterinsurgency campaign in Gaza would produce a forever war.

Hamas may already be transitioning to plan for an insurgency—the group is apparently attempting to rebuild a system of governance, with militants performing both administrative and policing functions throughout parts of Gaza. At the same time, acting on orders from IDF commanders, some soldiers have been setting fire to abandoned homes in Gaza, making them uninhabitable and demonstrating that Israel has no intention of attempting a “hearts and minds” campaign to accompany its military approach. With IDF troops clustered in small garrisons throughout Gaza, making no effort to engage with locals, Israeli forces will become an irresistible target for Hamas to attack. Israeli officials, especially Netanyahu but also his far-right allies, ignore the political aspects of this conflict at their own peril. Israel, by completely ignoring legitimate Palestinian grievances, will offer Hamas a chance to step into the power vacuum and further entrench the group in Gaza.

These are lessons Israel has already learned: from its experience in Lebanon and even from its previous occupation of Gaza, which inevitably led to Israel’s withdrawal in 2005. But far-right elements in Israel’s government currently wield outsize influence and are pushing Netanyahu to consider occupying Gaza indefinitely. They argue that Israel must do so in the absence of any suitable Palestinian government. 

NO END IN SIGHT

If Israel adopts that strategy, it had better prepare for a long haul. Along with a number of researchers at the RAND Corporation, I have examined every insurgency from the end of World War II through 2009 (71 in total) and found that the median length of these conflicts was ten years. When insurgents enjoy the external support of a state sponsor, as Hamas does with Iran, this often prolongs the insurgency because the sponsor is able to provide weapons, equipment, training, and intelligence to the groups fighting. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and China provided support to communist-backed insurgents in Angola, Greece, South Africa, and Vietnam, just to name a few examples. For its part, the United States worked with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s. In most of these cases, external support was crucial to the insurgents’ ability to continue fighting much longer than they would have otherwise and, in many of these instances, prevail. 

To date, Israel claims that it has killed approximately 9,000 Hamas fighters out of a force estimated at 30,000, although these numbers are unverified. As of early February, Hamas still retains the ability to launch rockets into Israel. What this means is that, despite its no-holds-barred approach in Gaza, Israel is nowhere close to achieving its goal of eliminating Hamas. Moreover, reports now suggest that Hamas is regrouping in northern Gaza to prepare for a new offensive. The Israeli government may be tempted to leave the IDF in Gaza until it can make further progress. But the way Israel fights also matters. In our research on counterinsurgency, my RAND colleagues and I found that militaries that adopted what we called an “iron fist” counterinsurgency approach—defined as focusing almost exclusively on killing insurgents—was successful in less than one-third of all cases analyzed, far less than approaches that also focused on assuaging the grievances of the civilian population.

For Israel, counterinsurgency is an attractive option because it allows the country’s leaders to postpone difficult political decisions and instead focus on short-term military wins. But one of the reasons Israel finds itself in its current predicament is precisely because Israeli politicians, chief among them Netanyahu, have consistently delayed and, in most cases, denied momentum for any negotiated settlement with the Palestinians. 

Hamas’s strategy would be “death by a thousand cuts.”

Counterinsurgency-style warfare may seem like an attractive option, but it will not achieve the IDF’s goal of completely eliminating Hamas. With pressure from the Biden administration growing, the clock is ticking for the IDF to make headway in weakening Hamas’s military infrastructure. Mounting IDF casualties will continue to place additional pressure on the Netanyahu government, which is already under fire for its handling of the hostage situation. To date, 221 Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat. 

The Israelis must find a way to transition to a postconflict setting that does not involve an occupation or the continued presence of large numbers of Israeli troops in Gaza. Bringing the conflict to a close will require a coherent political endgame, something Israel’s political leaders have eschewed so far. If Israel refuses to allow a Palestinian entity to govern Gaza, the Israelis themselves will be forced to govern it—or at the very least, provide security, which in turn will necessitate a long-term presence and occupation-like force. 

If the Israeli military feels compelled to remain in Gaza for the indefinite future, as some Israeli political leaders have intimated, then the IDF needs to adopt a light footprint that can respond to various security contingencies without further inflaming the local population in Gaza, a scenario that seems implausible given the IDF’s current objectives, force posture, and risk tolerance for the safety of its own troops. Making peace with one’s enemies is difficult, especially after the horrors of Hamas’s October 7 attack. But without a negotiated settlement, Gaza in 2024 could begin to look even more like Lebanon in 1982: a war without end.