I wanted to pass along Audrey Kurth Cronin’s advice in Foreign Affairs for consideration. First, she observes:
All terrorist groups adopt at least one (and sometimes two) of the following strategies: compellence, polarization, provocation, and mobilization. A superficial reading of the October 7 assault might suggest that Hamas sought to compel Israel to alter its behavior by inflicting pain—as Hezbollah did in 1983 with its attacks on American and French personnel and civilians in Beirut, which led Washington and Paris to withdraw their forces from Lebanon. But compellence does not fit the context of today’s Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005, and no Israeli policy change could advance Hamas’s long-term goal. What is more, if all Hamas wanted to do was kill Israelis, its fighters would not have filmed their operations or taken hostages, actions that reflect the fact that the attack on Israel was aimed at audiences beyond the Israelis and was thus advancing a strategy other than compellence.
Terrorist groups often attempt to polarize the polities they target, carrying out attacks that will pit one part of society against another and hoping that the state will rot from within. Examples of this include the Armed Islamic Group’s atrocities in the late 1990s against entire Algerian villages full of civilians who rejected their extremist principles, and suicide attacks that al Qaeda in Iraq launched in Shiite strongholds and against moderate Sunnis from 2004 to 2006. But Israeli society was already deeply divided politically before the Hamas attack—which, if anything, has at least partially unified Israel. Hamas did not need to polarize Israeli society; in recent years, the Israelis have accomplished that feat themselves.
What Hamas was trying to do, instead, was to provoke and mobilize. Terrorists often try to provoke states into counterproductive overreactions.
and
Mobilization strategies, meanwhile, seek to grab attention, draw recruits, and gather allies for a terrorist group’s cause. The Islamic State, known as ISIS, did that in 2014, carrying out some basic functions of government in the parts of Iraq and Syria it conquered to create the appearance of order, and also carrying out gruesome videotaped beheadings of hostages to create an image of uncompromising, fearsome severity. Seeming to take a page from the ISIS playbook, Hamas has threatened to kill a hostage each time Israel targets “people who are safe in their homes without prior warning,†in the words of Abu Obeida, a spokesperson for the Hamas military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades. Obeida also suggested that the group would broadcast the executions, probably on social media. Hamas leaders may be calculating that such ultraviolent spectacles would bring further attention to their cause and mobilize support—not only among Palestinians but also among sympathizers and anti-Semitic extremists throughout the region and around the world. In the long run, preying on humanity’s basest instincts through spectacles of dominance and vengeance will cause a global backlash and destroy Hamas. But like ISIS before it, the group may believe that such tactics will buttress it in the short term.
Then she recommends:
Overwhelming military oppression in Gaza would backfire, stirring support for resistance and aligning Israel’s adversaries against it. A more nuanced political strategy would divide them. Israeli leaders must make clear that their enemies are the 30,000 Hamas fighters in Gaza, especially the Qassam Brigades, and not the two million other residents of Gaza. To legitimize its barbarity, Hamas has claimed that every Israeli is a combatant, just as al Qaeda and ISIS did in their campaigns in the West and in the Middle East. Israel must avoid doing the same thing and make clear that it is specifically targeting Hamas.
A successful Israeli military response would use discriminate force, making it clear through both statements and actions that Israel’s enemy is Hamas, not the Palestinian people. The Israeli government should help fleeing Gazans find somewhere to go, by either creating safe zones, helping the Egyptians to do so, or permitting regional or international actors to create a humanitarian corridor, and then allowing aid organizations to supply food and water to trapped civilians. Even in the north, they must avoid targeting Gazan hospitals from which the injured cannot be moved. Hamas will use those people as human shields—and when they do, such barbarity toward their own people will sap the group’s ability to mobilize wider support. The Israel Defense Forces will be fighting street to street; Hamas will not hold them off for long regardless.
I found the entire piece very puzzling and sadly reminiscent of commentary following the 9/11 attacks on the U. S. What would “overreaction” by Israel consist of? Would Israel pay a higher price for overreaction or underreaction? And what in Israel’s past reactions to attack would lead her to believe that any of the advice she offers would be heeded?
One last remark. I think that U. S. deployment of naval forces in the eastern Mediterranean is creating a more risky situation than Americans seem to recognize. Are we prepared for a direct confrontation with Turkey?
