The Counterinsurgency Trap in Gaza

Why Israel Cannot “Clear, Hold, and Build” Its Way to Victory

By Colin P. Clarke

February 5, 2024

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.