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A ‘Long War’ Is Not the Answer to Israel’s Security Problem — and Could Lead to Destruction (PART TWO)
An Israeli soldier stands during a two-minute siren marking the annual Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day, at an installation at the site of the Nova festival where party goers were killed and kidnapped during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, in Reim, southern Israel, May 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
To read part one of this article, click here.
There are those who exhibit a romantic nostalgia for the hardships suffered by the founders of the state in the War of Independence — back then, we stood alone, the few against many. But after the first ceasefire in the War of Independence, the young IDF was able to strengthen itself and stand in an equal and even better power position than the armies of Egypt and the forces from the north. Note, by the way, that the IDF was largely unable to repel the Jordanian army, which was well equipped and organized.
Although Israel won the war of liberation, it did not even approach the defeat of its enemies and the achievement of complete victory. Determination and faith are important in war but do not guarantee military achievements. Embrace the difficulties of the past if you wish, but don’t expect those difficulties to somehow ensure success.
Ideology is also involved in the attempt to change the security concept. The Israeli right wing does not believe in reaching an agreement with the Palestinians, and is not interested in a binational state. To avoid a resolution is necessarily to choose endless war. According to Minister Bezalel Smotritch, Israel needs a security concept that entails a continuous war against the Palestinians until they are defeated. To this ideological way of thinking, endless war is justified if it has the purpose of eliminating the Palestinian threat to Israel.
In the Iron Swords War, the political leadership defined a goal that is impossible according to Ben-Gurion’s security concept, and the IDF set out to achieve that goal without a plan, a time frame, or the proper means in place. The IDF embarked on the Iron Swords War without a clear vision of what it was trying to achieve militarily, how long it would take, and what means it had at its disposal. A military plan must be based on resources that you know you have. You must never plan on unspecified quantities of capabilities, equipment, and time that are not already available to you.
Hezbollah’s entry into the war, which will occur in the manner chosen by Nasrallah, illustrates the absurdity of the way the Iron Swords War is being conducted. The entire northern region has been evacuated and abandoned indefinitely because the IDF is invested in Gaza and cannot allocate the necessary resources to protect the north.
What will Israel’s strategic situation be if the war in Gaza ends with a hostage agreement but without the Hamas regime having been “deported to Tunis”? Hamas (and the rest of Israel’s enemies) will be jubilant in their victory at having both achieved the release of Palestinian prisoners and survived to tell the tale. Will the price paid by Gaza, and perhaps the prevention of Gaza’s rehabilitation as long as Hamas is in power, be enough to reposition Israel as a regional military power?
Is a new concept of security — one in which every external threat is to be fought by war until its elimination — really required? The elimination of Hamas has not yet been achieved, and Israel has been at war with it for 10 months. How much time, armament, and military equipment will it take to eliminate Hezbollah? And after Hezbollah, what will prevent the forces supported by Iran in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen from continuing to fight? What will their military elimination look like? And what will move Iran to partner up with Abraham Accords?
According to the new concept, it is not possible to rely on deterrence because it always fails. There is also no point in short wars that do not completely eliminate the enemy. But if the goal of war is complete victory, it is mandatory to build a force that can support such an effort. How many days of war should the warehouses be prepared for? Weeks, months, or years?
If it is to enter a new “long war” era, the IDF will have to prepare and equip forces for wars that last years. Will the Israeli economy be able to withstand this? Will it be able to support “the largest army in the Middle East” (like after the Yom Kippur War)? Will the society that carries the economy on its back and serves in the reserves tolerate this? Will Israel continue to be a center of attraction for investors under such an economic structure? Will Israel’s enemies mount another attack like October 7 or just wait for the fruits of the Ben-Gurion concept to collapse? Israel’s “miracle” can be destroyed from within. Israel may have a well-equipped army, but what will happen to the country that relies on it?
In order to avoid ending the discussion on a vague statement that the concept of a long war for total victory and complete elimination of the threat is impossible and unrealistic, we will examine what Israel can still do according to the old concept.
If the Iron Swords War had been conducted according to the security concept, the following strategy could, for the sake of illustration, have been devised in October:
The IDF will be satisfied with severely hitting Hamas, not the entire territory of the Gaza Strip, while creating a completely demilitarized area in the north of the Gaza Strip. That area will later become the basis for the establishment of an alternative government.
Israel will arrive early at an agreement to free the abductees. This will be at the heavy price of releasing murderers and will allow the survival of some Hamas leaders, but will also allow for the design of a new border area and an obstacle that provides security for the returning residents of the surrounding communities.
As a result of these measures, Israel will maintain international support and perhaps even become a partner in a regional coalition with Saudi Arabia.
The IDF will be left with enough potential to fight Hezbollah — so much so that war might be prevented and an arrangement might be made that allows the residents of the north to return home.
True, this solution does not describe a complete victory, and Hamas would continue to exist. But the conditions would have been created for the establishment of an alternative government, at least in the north of the Gaza Strip, in an area that would begin to recover while the southern part of the Strip remains in ruins. It is possible that the IDF would have had to engage in another round of war in the southern Gaza Strip, but that is Israel’s fate. That is the way it was, and that is the way it will continue to be. The Hamas regime would have probably crumbled in half-destroyed Gaza, and the situation in the southern Gaza Strip would have provided Israel with deterrence at least until the next round.
It could have been a short war, just another round, but one that allowed a return to normality that made it possible to restore and recover.
The last 10 months have made clear that great pain does not confer desired abilities that did not previously exist. Israel is an island nation based on a reserve army. A long war is not a solution to a security problem. It is not possible to achieve complete victory, but we may well achieve complete failure if we pursue victory for too long without considering the limitations on our power, economy, and society.
Col. (res.) Gur Laish served as head of the campaign planning department in the Israel Air Force and as head of the security concept division at the National Security Council. He has a master’s degree in political science from the University of Haifa. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
The post A ‘Long War’ Is Not the Answer to Israel’s Security Problem — and Could Lead to Destruction (PART TWO) first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Palestinian Authority Restructures ‘Pay-for-Slay’ System, but Questions Remain About Whether Move Is Genuine
PA President Mahmoud Abbas at the UN General Assembly in New York. Photo: Reuters/Caitlin Ochs
The Palestinian Authority has restructured its so-called “pay-for-slay” program, which rewards terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis, in an effort to push the United States to repeal punitive legislation against the PA for its long-standing policy.
The Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund makes official payments to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of “martyrs” killed in attacks on Israelis, and injured Palestinian terrorists. Reports estimate that approximately 8 percent of the PA’s budget is allocated to paying stipends to convicted terrorists and their families.
On Monday, however, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree revoking the “laws and regulations related to the system of paying financial allowances to the families of prisoners, martyrs, and the wounded,” according to the official PA news agency WAFA.
“All families that benefited from previous laws, legislation, and regulations are subject to the same standards applied without discrimination to all families benefiting from protection and social welfare programs,” WAFA reported.
The decree means that the PA has changed its system such that payments to Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorist attacks and their families will be based on their social economic status, not the acts they committed. Under the now-revoked program, Palestinians would receive more money for more severe terrorist acts — a policy that, according to critics, incentivized more terrorism.
However, Israeli journalist Lahav Harkov argued that the PA is “just restructuring the mechanism through which they pay terrorists so that they can claim it’s not them, it’s an ‘independent’ foundation doing it. An ‘independent’ foundation funded by the PA and whose board is appointed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas.”
The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Monday saying, “This is a new fraudulent trick by the Palestinian Authority, which intends to continue making payments to terrorists and their families through other payment channels.”
Palestinian officials told Axios they hope Abbas’s decision will improve relations with the Trump administration and with the US Congress in order for Washington to resume US financial aid to the PA.
Along with its policy change, the PA reportedly asked the US to repeal the Taylor Force Act, a 2018 law which prohibits US funding to the PA so long as it maintains its pay-for-slay program.
Critics therefore doubt the sincerity of the move. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a think tank, noted that the PA has deceptively used “pay-for-slay” reform as a beginning chip in the past.
“The PA president … promised ‘pay-to-slay’ reform in 2020 to try to convince then incoming President Joe Biden to revoke 1987 legislation designating the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) ‘and its affiliates’ as terror groups,” FDD wrote.
Aaron Goren, a research analyst and editor at FDD, wrote in response to Monday’s news that “pay-to-slay reform is certainly welcome at face value and demonstrative of the Trump administration’s power in negotiations. However, American officials should be wary of the PA’s steadfast tactic of leveraging pay-to-slay reform to get concessions from the United States and Israel. The PA is likely to make serious demands from both nations in exchange.”
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Super Bowl Halftime Show Dancer Gets NFL Lifetime Ban for Displaying Palestinian Flag During Performance
A protester holding a flag with the words “Gaza” and “Sudan” as rapper Kendrick Lamar performed during the Super Bowl halftime show at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on Feb. 9, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
A dancer in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show has been banned for life from all National Football League stadiums and events for waving a combined Palestinian-Sudanese flag with the words “Gaza” and “Sudan” during the rapper’s performance on Sunday night at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
The NFL said the African American protester, who has not been identified, concealed the flag and unveiled it without prior knowledge by the show’s production team.
“We commend security for quickly detaining the individual who displayed the flag,” the NFL said in a released statement. “He was a part of the 400-member field cast. The individual hid the item on his person and unveiled it late in the show. No one involved with the production was aware of the individual’s intent.” The league added that the individual “will banned for life from all NFL stadiums and events.”
Toward the end of Lamar’s performance — after his track “Not Like Us” and right before his final song “TV Off” — the dancer waved the flag while standing on top of a car used as a prop in the performance. The car, a Buick Grand National GNX, inspired the name of Lamar’s latest album, “GNX,” and it was a key prop in the rapper’s halftime show performance.
“Sudan” and “Gaza” were written on the white sections of the flag held by the protester. A heart was drawn next to “Sudan” and a solidarity fist was depicted next to the word “Gaza.” The dancer, who wore a black ensemble matching the other dancers on stage, also jumped off the car and fled the stage while still displaying the flag. He waved it while standing on the ground near other dancers before security personnel tackled and detained him. He was then removed from the field and escorted from the stadium. New Orleans police told USA Today that as of Monday, the performer has not been formally arrested or charged.
The incident took place a day after three more Israeli hostages were freed from Hamas captivity in Gaza, as part of a ceasefire agreement in the war between the terrorist organization and Israel, and while a civil war rages on in Sudan.
The New Orleans Police Department said it “continues to work with NFL and the halftime production team to ascertain any affiliation the individual may have had with the halftime show.”
The entertainment company behind the halftime show, Roc Nation, said in a statement that “the act by the individual was neither planned nor part of the production and was never in any rehearsal.”
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CAIR Accuses Israel of Moving ‘Genocide’ Into West Bank
CAIR officials give press conference on the Israel-Hamas war. Photo: Kyle Mazza / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that purports to advocate for Muslim Americans, has accused Israel of “moving the genocide from Gaza to the occupied West Bank,” lambasting the Jewish state for committing a litany of alleged human rights abuses in recent days.
In a Monday statement, CAIR accused Israel of displacing thousands of Palestinian civilians, destroying Palestinian neighborhoods, murdering a pregnant woman and her baby, and unjustly raiding a Palestinian bookstore.
“The radical Israeli government is clearly trying to move its genocidal campaign of slaughter and destruction from Gaza to the West Bank, where Israeli occupation forces are driving thousands of Palestinians from their homes, destroying entire neighborhoods, kidnapping hundreds, and randomly shooting others, including an eight-months pregnant woman and her baby,” CAIR said in its statement. “Indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu is a sociopath leading an army of war criminals, and our government must stop spending American taxpayer dollars on his latest campaign of murder, ethnic cleansing and destruction in the West Bank.”
In the 16 months following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s cross-border invasion of and massacre across southern Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, the Jewish state has ramped up operations to uproot terrorists in the West Bank.
These efforts intensified last month, when Israel launched a counterterrorism effort in the West Bank coined “Operation Iron Wall”” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops, gunships, and drones operated in Jenin to extract Palestinian terrorists from the town and its adjacent refugee camps. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that the operation was greenlit “on the directive of the security cabinet” with the aim of “bolstering security in Judea and Samaria [Israel’s preferred terminoloy for the West Bank].”
Jenin Mayor Mohammad Jarrar claimed that 150 buildings had been destroyed in the town as a result of the operation, suggesting that Israeli officials approved the operation with the intent of driving out the Palestinian population from the West Bank and annexing the territory.
Israel has long accused Iran of supplying armed factions in Jenin, particularly its refugee camp, with weapons. Palestinian terrorists have long been active in the city. Israel has been especially alarmed by the rise of the Jenin Brigades, a new armed group.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN body responsible for Palestinian refugees, alleged that Israel inflicted “forced displacement” on some 40,000 Palestinians. The Israeli government and research organizations have publicized findings in recent months showing numerous UNRWA-employed staff, including teachers and school principals, are active Hamas members, some of whom were directly involved in Hamas’s Oc t. 7 atrocities, while many others openly celebrated it.
CAIR’s latest accusation against Israel was not its first time stepping into controversy. In the 2000s, the organization was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with Hamas.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that it “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”
CAIR leaders have also found themselves embroiled in further controversy since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
The head of CAIR, for example, said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’s rampage of rape, murder, and kidnapping of Israelis in what was the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” CAIR co-founder and executive director Nihad Awad said in a speech during the American Muslims for Palestine convention in Chicago last November. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”
CAIR has accused Israel of committing atrocities beyond Gaza and the West Bank. In December, the Islamic group said the Jewish state was guilty of “ethnic cleansing” in Syria following the recent collapse of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime, despite the limited nature of Israel’s military operations in the neighboring country.
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