Why Israel Desperately Needs to Switch to a Counterinsurgency Strategy: A New Path Forward
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The Israelis and Palestinians are both running out of time.
The Gazans are being killed by the hundreds each day to due to relentless Israeli bombing and they, even in peacetime, live under a despotic regime that has made them the pawns of the Iranians and their fundamentalist allies. If they wish to live in a Palestinian country free from war, so that they can enjoy the dignity and freedom to build and live unabated in their own nation, then they will need to do so either without Hamas, or with a Hamas that has been defanged and renounced violence.
For Israelis who want to be able to live in their homes free from what Hamas calls a “fortress of resistance,” at their doorsteps, the IDF needs to be given operational freedom of movement in order to remain in Gaza and eliminate the remaining Hamas battalions who still occupy the area. In warfare this is simply known as “kinetic action.”
Both of these require time.
Unfortunately, the world has had just about enough of this war. Israel cannot continue to operate in the region without global allies and Palestinians rely on the money from primarily the West to provide some of their most basic necessities. We’ve already seen the difficulties organizations like UNRWA have in maintaining funds when they’re in bed with a government like Hamas and I haven’t seen the Iranians stepping in to fill this financial gap.
But the war itself has been nothing short of horrifying and no doubt a crime against humanity at the very least if not an outright genocide (although that will be determined in the coming years). To continue to engage in such a conventional style of warfare would be both a strategic failure and a moral stain on the part of the Israelis.
To that end, I propose a solution that fits this style of 21st-century warfare: switching to a counterinsurgency strategy.
I don’t intend for this to be just my dry, academic appeal from one of the hundreds of millions of people around the world cheerleading this conflict from one side or the other without any skin in the game. This is personal for me.
I’m a veteran of this war, one who lost friends in combat and saw firsthand the devastation this conflict has wrought on civilians on both sides. But I’m also a father, one with a newborn who I don’t want to see grown up one day marching into war with tears in his eyes like I did.
To that end, there can’t just be a military solution here, there needs to be a political one, and this is exactly what counterinsurgency warfare was designed to bring about.
Defining insurgency warfare
David Galula wrote that insurgency warfare is “20 per cent military action and 80 per cent political.”
As a quick aside: Galula fought as a captain in Algeria post serving in the French resistance against the Nazis, but also served as a military attache and UN observer in China, Greece, and Vietnam during their insurgencies. Afterwards he went on to be an academic and write various books and papers still widely used today to define insurgencies and counterinsurgency policy because what else are you supposed to do after a life like that?
To him and many others, counterinsurgencies in the 20th century failed because governments were only addressing battlefield action and not the political response necessary to put a permanent end to the insurgent group. Funny how history seems to have a way of repeating itself sometimes.
This is why I don’t want to refer to Hamas as guerillas or terrorists when discussing this conflict. Guerillas, by definition, are irregular groups who limit themselves to acting within the bounds of international law, something that Hamas simply doesn’t care about.
Defining your enemies as terrorists is something that the coalition governments did in the early 2000’s during the days of Iraq and Afghanistan which they used to absolve themselves of even considering their enemies’ perspectives and stated goals. I would argue that this did not work in their favor.
To this end, we need a working definition of what an insurgency is. After several books and endless articles, here is my definition as follows:
An insurgency is a political organization with at least some popular support whose stated goal is the overthrow of an established governing order. One whose ideology is so well entrenched in the population that their kinetic destruction will not result in a permanent ideological destruction of the group (thus often resulting in copycat groups). While the end goal is political, the reasons for formation can range from political, economical, social, religious, ethnic, or environmental and can include several or all of the aforementioned reasons.
Revolution, coup, and civil war
It’s important to distinguish an insurgency from other forms of revolution. If an insurgency is a form of protracted warfare, then a revolution, such as the French Revolution of 1789 or the Arab Spring of the early 2010s, are random, spontaneous acts of pent-up frustration against the ruling governments. Revolutions are largely leaderless, although they can transform into insurgencies or even rival governments if a group within them is able to consolidate enough power.
A coup d’etat is an action carried out within the halls of political power. It differs from an insurgency in that a coup does not require the population’s support in order to succeed. While the planning phase of a coup can last months or even years, the act itself is brief, dramatic, and almost always a huge gamble (the plot against Hitler in 1944, the plots in Iraq against King Faisal and Nuri al-Said in 1958, and against Kassem in 1963).
Finally a civil war. Civil wars are when a nation is split into two or more groups who each find themselves in control of a standing army or militia, along with land and a population that they control. After a period of chaos each group will begin to mobilize and eventually reach a war footing resembling something like a war between nations.
While the goal of the “rebel” side might be to overthrow the existing order, the action does not take place from the inside the nation but rather is experienced as an invading force. The Spanish Civil War and American Civil War are perhaps the most relevant examples.
The uniqueness of an insurgency is that an it can incorporate all these forms of rebellion, but alone none of these forms of rebellion are insurgencies.
For example, an insurgent group might use propaganda or terrorism to spark a revolution. There may be a coup from members within the existing governmental order who have direct ties with the insurgency. Or, when insurgencies are large and powerful enough, they can afford to field armies and can transition from an insurgent style of warfare into full-blown civil war.
The final note I want to make about insurgencies is that insurgencies rarely enjoy international legitimacy. This is why ISIS, despite having carved out for itself an actual state with a functioning government and economy, never ascended past the title of insurgency since the international community refused to accept it and waged a ferocious war against it until the state itself was obliterated (although remnants of the insurgency survive to this day).
The primary goal, however, of the insurgency is to achieve that international legitimacy. To be recognized as the new ruling order of a people or nation which will allow it to carry out its vision that will (in theory) rectify the problems that the original ruling party was unable to solve and which sparked the insurgency’s rise to power in the first place.
What an Insurgency Needs
“At the beginning, the political struggle was the main task, the armed struggle a secondary one. Gradually, both the political struggle and armed struggle became equally important. Later, we went forward to the stage when the armed struggle occupied the key role. But even in this period, we had to define clearly when it occupied the key role within only a certain region and when throughout the nation.”
-General Vo Nguyen Giap, Commander-in-Chief of the People’s Army of Vietnam, Secretary of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party, Minister of Defense, Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam, 1962, People’s War, People’s Army
General Vo Nguyen Giap (I felt I could only pick one title this time) led the Vietnamese People’s Army against the Japanese, French, Americans, and Cambodians. He is credited with planning and executing the victory at Dien Bien Phu the success of which resulted in 11,000 captured French soldiers including their general and his staff. He later led the Tet Offensive against the Americans which, while not producing any tangible military success, did have the effect of undermining American public opinion in regards to the war.
I think it’s hard to find anyone else more qualified to explain insurgency warfare. Thus, the following will cover just the basics of what an insurgency needs for success as laid out by the famed General and agreed upon by other leading military analysts.
1. A cause
As General Giap states in his remarkably direct and passionate way, any insurgency begins from a place of politics and only later emerges into violence and warfare. This is because the foundation of any insurgency is a good cause.
No nation or society is perfect. Since there is and will always be an unending series of problems and plenty of disgruntled people willing to do something about them, there will never, in theory, be an end to new insurgencies.
However, there are three inherent vulnerabilities behind a cause for an insurgency:
- An insurgency is an act of last resort. Most people are, by nature, squeamish about joining the weaker side in any fight, particularly one against a nation where the consequences for doing so can range from imprisonment to death by slow torture for you and your family.
- Because insurgencies are a desperate final act, if the people feel like they have an alternative avenue to engage with the system politically they will almost always choose it. This is why democratic countries face fewer prolonged and violent insurgencies than totalitarian ones (however totalitarian countries have more tools at their disposal for dealing with insurgencies once they do arise).
- If the ruling party is willing to solve the problem, or at least looks like it’s solving the problem, then the insurgency immediately loses momentum and is more likely to fizzle out.
For instance if, in 1920s Appalachia America, the coal barons had agreed to remove the armed guards from the mining camps and ended the abuse against coal miners, it is incredibly unlikely that 10,000–15,000 armed miners would’ve marched to Blair Mountain and engaged in a bloody battle against the people of West Virginia.
There is a fourth variable as well: the cause must appeal to the largest possible group. As Galula correctly predicts in his 1958 book Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, “A purely Negro movement trying to exploit the Negro problem as a basis for an insurgency in the United States (with a population of 20 million Negroes and 160 million whites) would be doomed from the start. In South Africa (with 11 million Negroes and 4 million whites), its chances would be good — other factors aside.”
For Israel, the situation is given another layer of complexity since it certainly can’t capitulate to Hamas’ maximalist demand of ending itself for the sake of a united Palestine from the river to the sea. In this situation, Israel chose a policy of containment which eventually backfired and ended on October 7th.
2. The people
“Success in counterinsurgency goes to the party that achieves the greater popular support. The winner will be the party that better forms the issues, mobilizes groups and forces around them, and develops programs that solve problems of relative deprivation.”
-Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century: Reconceptualizing Threat and Response, written by the Strategic Studies Institute for use in the U.S. Army War College
“Our Party obtained great success in its policy of uniting the people. The slogan: “ Unity, unity and broad unity — success, success, and great success, “ put forth by President Ho Chi Minh became a great reality.”
-General Vo Nguyen Giap
Population in insurgent warfare is so essential that modern military advisors and academic analysts have broken it down into a formula that resembles something like a 7th grade math equation:
Insurgent forces + population > security forces + government
In today’s hyper-connected and highly globalized world the population has evolved from the early days of General Giap’s revolutionary forces convincing the average Vietnamese rice farmer to abandon their farm to fight for independence. Today, the propaganda battlefield takes place on the internet, and the population is the global population.
We are in the midst of what the CIA calls the world’s first “globalized insurgency,” made possible due to technological leaps in communication and transportation. Unlike in the days of national insurgencies, or people’s insurgencies, you no longer need to find a unifying national force like colonialism or communism to bring your nation together.
Today, oppression has defined the way an entire generation sees the world. Ensure your message reaches the right ears and eyes and you have an endless stream of money, support, and, more often than not, willing fighters eager to either join your side or carry out attacks in your name on their home turf.
3. The propaganda
“The insurgent, having no responsibility, is free to use every trick; if necessary, he can lie, cheat, exaggerate. He is not obliged to prove; he is judged by what he promises, not by what he does. Consequently, propaganda is a powerful weapon for him. With no positive policy but with good propaganda, the insurgent may still win.”
-David Galula
“The PLO and the Provisional IRA (PIRA) both succeeded in placing the concept of the propaganda of the deed at the center of a new chapter of insurgency. And in both cases the military staff that opposed them and whose job it was to monitor doctrine failed to understand the significance of what was happening.”
-John Mackinlay
Good propaganda is at the core of every insurgency. Having a message is one thing, displaying your cause for the world to judge is another.
Today, with social media being a mainstay in our everyday lives, news and propaganda no longer need to be filtered through governments or news channels before it reaches the everyday masses. For instance, during the October 7th attacks, rather than a military or government official arriving at her home, Alana Zeitchik was horrified to discover that six of her loved ones had been kidnapped after she and others in her family recognized them on a Hamas uploaded TikTok video.
Ironically though, when it comes to convincing the world that you are the more moral and just side, the insurgents have the upper hand. They are not held to the same standards that recognized governments are, not considered responsible to anyone but themselves, and not expected to prove anything they are claiming.
Nations and counterinsurgents meanwhile, are held to that standard, particularly if they are Western and democratic. Counterinsurgents don’t enjoy the luxury of being able to make claims moments after a disaster on the battlefield has happened, they’re expected to conduct thorough investigations and thus are unable to initially drive the narrative.
In short, in the war of propaganda, the counterinsurgents are nearly always on the back foot, reacting instead of initiating. Defending themselves rather than being able to shape the conversation in a way that is beneficial to them.
In today’s day and age of globalized governance, 24/7 news cycles, and endless online scrolling, even if you do manage to obtain countless battlefield successes, but are unable to win the propaganda war you will, more times than not, lose the war.
Author’s Note
I do realize that I’ve just spent the last five pages going over what an insurgency is vs what Israel’s strategy should be. As I wrote in the beginning, I didn’t want this to turn into another dry, academic article about insurgencies, particularly when there are many more people far more qualified than myself on this issue, but alas this article has developed a bit of a mind of its own.
The reason I spent so long characterizing insurgencies is that I do believe it’s essential to create a baseline of what an insurgency is, how it differs from other forms of rebellion, and what it needs in order to be successful. Not only was this hopefully as interesting to you as it was to me, but it will help me to more succinctly explain my proposed strategy for Israel without having to veer off into parallel narratives like my wife tells me I’m prone to doing.
That said, this piece is already much longer than I intended and in the interest of not making this into a 30 minute read right off the bat I’m going to end here. In part 2 I’ll discuss more thoroughly what Israel’s counterinsurgency policy should be and why it is so essential for both Israelis and Palestinians.
I apologize for not reaching the main point of this article, and I hope you’ll stick with me for the next one when we take a dive into a new way forward.