What Would “Total Victory” Mean in Gaza? Answer to Col. (res.) Shay Shabtai

On 27 March 2024, IDF spokesperson Col. (res.) Shay Shabtai published BESA Center Perspective Paper No. 2,267, "What Would 'Total Victory' Mean in Gaza?"

Colonel Shabtai’s Executive Summary opens with a crucial acknowledgement: “In recent years, the concept of decisive victory has eroded in Israel.” Without such an acknowledgement, there can be no improvement in the concept of decisive victory. Col. Shabtai is also candid about the silver lining around the terrible dark cloud of October 7, that “brought it [the concept of decisive victory] forcefully back to the centre of the national security process.” The colonel then asserts that there are four types of victory:

Tactical (the ability of the IDF to negate the enemy’s fighting ability); operational (the ability of the operative echelon to dismantle the fighting system facing it, which is currently happening in Gaza); military strategic (the ability to remove the military threat posed by the enemy for many years to come); and grand, or national, strategic (military victory leads to a fundamental change in the geopolitical situation, like a peace treaty or the establishment of a new regime).

Without a doubt, talking about “total victory” in Gaza in terms of strategic victory, is a major improvement over the extremely costly, in lives, money and lost opportunity, of going in every few years merely to “negate the enemy’s fighting ability,” which, by the repetitive nature of the case, proves that the enemy’s fighting ability was never negated in the first place. It might have been limited, but it was never negated. Such modest ambition, unfortunately, is still present in the colonel’s thinking.

Despite the stated wish for a “grand, or national, strategic” victory, all that the colonel expects is that it, “can bring about a relatively calm security situation for a decade or more”. The only military conceptual adjustment impelled by the worst massacre since the Holocaust, it seems, is relative calm for a while. Is that not exactly what we had prior to 7 October? One wonders what Col. Shabtai proposes Israel does differently that will turn the hitherto jihad pauses of a few hours to a few weeks into “relative calm for a decade or more.”

A hopeful sign is the colonel’s acceptance that, “the right interfaces among military, civil and economic moves,” can bring about the desired improvement in the security situation. But the fact that economic, psychological and moral victories are not included as components of “total victory” in the above list, gives cause for concern that we are again about to get stuck in the rut of one-dimensional, technocratic, military thinking.

The reader must know at the outset that I have no military experience, and I do not presume to intrude on martial matters. I see the need for this response to the colonel because, once again, I read a piece of Israeli military thinking that ignores the specific nature of Israel’s enemy, and so ignores, or at best marginalises, those non-military dimensions that need to be integral to strategic thinking if “total victory” over this particular enemy is to be accomplished. It is possible that my failure to comprehend the following passage diminishes, or even negates, what I have to offer in this answer to Col. Shabtai. The colonel says:

Victory and decision are one and the same. Over the years, attempts have been made to distinguish between them: for example, victory is tactical and decision is operational or strategic; or victory is the result and decision is the process. The word “victory” is more popular than the more professional word “decision,” but the two concepts overlap. The words used depend on the user’s needs and image.

Unless the words victory and decision in this context mean something other than in standard English, I understand “decision” to precede an action and “victory” (or defeat) to follow an action. The cognitive disposition from which, “victory and decision are one and the same,” eludes me. Is the colonel saying that victory/defeat is decided at the outset, or is he saying that his thinking does not recognise defeat? Is the colonel’s presumption that all that Israel needs to do is decide on the kind of victory she wants, i.e., one of the four listed above? If the latter were the case, then not only is Israel ignoring the specific nature of the enemy, she is treating the enemy as irrelevant. I would be very grateful to be put right on this. Colonel Shabtai continues:

Decision/victory is one of four elements of Israeli national security doctrine (along with early warning, deterrence and defence), but in fact it is the most important, because it is the only optimal outcome of a military campaign. In the last three decades, ever since Operation Accountability against Hezbollah in 1993, the theoretical discussion about the use of force in military operations has gone awry: deterrence has become the desired outcome of a military campaign, while decision/victory has essentially disappeared as the primary goal.

Alarmingly, this confirms my suspicion: the enemy is irrelevant. Therefore, what constitutes victory in the eyes of the enemy is irrelevant. It seems not to be part of Israel’s military considerations that to an enemy on jihad, and all Israel’s enemies are on jihad, anything short of unequivocal victory for Israel is victory for them. The wars that Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, etc., conduct are unfortunately only characterised as “guerrilla warfare and terrorism”. To Israel’s enemies, all of them, victory means humiliating your enemy. The IDF being overwhelmingly more powerful than her enemies and thus capable of obliterating them, yet failing to do so, means only that such enemies, still armed to the teeth, can do huge military parades without fear of IDF attack, thereby humiliating the IDF and securing victory for themselves.

To scoff at Arab victory parades, as so many in the West do, is to fail to understand their Muslim enemy. To fail to obliterate and humiliate (this is crucial and not to be neglected) a jihad enemy is to guarantee that that enemy will return to secure its own absolute defeat and humiliation of Israel, be it within the hour or in a thousand years. The failure of the Reconquista, for example, is that the Christians effectively stopped at the Mediterranean. Now the Muslims are back, and this time, they made sure to score the psychological and moral victories first.

According to Col. Shabtai, “The IDF’s use of the term ‘victory’ in recent years has not been aimed at victory/decision, but at a significant improvement of deterrence.” Exactly what “a significant improvement of deterrence,” means when there is no such thing as deterrence is not clear. “Early warning, deterrence and defence,” all mean that the mighty IDF is humiliated, all mean victory to jihad, and all mean that the war will be resumed with even greater determination.

“Israel’s belief that it can rely on intermittent deterrence operations (‘rounds’) and does not need a victory/decision was painfully shattered on October 7, 2023,” says Colonel Shabtai. Indeed, but 7 October 2023 was not a prerequisite for seeing this. It was blindingly obvious all along to all who bothered to study Israel’s enemies: Muslims. Granted, Israel has had many genocidal enemies down the millennia, but none of them conditioned their telos on their complete annihilation of every single Jew on earth, except the Muslims. Their holy texts tell them:

The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.

Of course, this is the notorious genocide hadith, Sahih Muslim 6985, and it concerns a war of annihilation, yet it seems of no interest to the IDF, assuming they even know about it. The Charter of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, is replete with references to the Islamic holy texts, especially the military aspects of those texts, which are their main purpose. The Simchat Torah massacre caused not so much as a ripple here, prompting only the tweaking of an already flawed approach, albeit a step in the right direction:

It took a severe blow to national security to force a review of the security doctrine and a rediscovery of the concept of victory/decision. While it was quickly understood that victory/decision is required in the current campaign and probably also in future campaigns, the need arose to define what a “victory” is.

Colonel Shabtai continues, “Victory occurs at each of the four levels of national security: tactics, operations, military strategy and national strategy (or Grand Strategy).” A general response to this is that “victory” here needs to be qualified as “military victory”. If Ukraine is to prevail over Russia in the current war, victory is likely to be economic, rather than military. If jihad is to prevail over the West in general, victory is likely to be psychological, rather than military. Colonel Shabtai proceeds to offer clear breakdowns of what the different levels of military victory entail, in the order: tactical victory; operational victory; (military) strategic victory; and Grand Strategy (national strategic) victory. Unfortunately, none of this credits the enemy with any agency, let alone its own strategic thinking, for example:

Strategic victory requires fundamental changes in the situation on the ground: the loss by guerrilla and terrorist operatives of the support of their population; isolation of the arena to prevent the insertion of new weapons and funding in a way that could allow guerrilla and terrorist operatives to recover; and a distancing of junior operatives or supporters from leading terrorist operatives that significantly impairs those leaders’ ability to command their juniors.

There are hints of a broadening of mind, such as, “the support of their population,” but this is understood only in the narrowest, most technical sense, missing that the guerrillas and terrorists, which indeed, they are, are organically integral to the population: they are family members who attend the same mosques and share the same ideology. The listed "fundamental changes in the situation on the ground" are military "enabling works", so-to-speak, and not "fundamental changes".

“Such a change in the situation on the ground requires steps that go beyond military combat.” Yes, indeed. But then comes:

These include rehabilitating the economic and civilian infrastructure for the population that is not engaged in terrorism; gaining the consent of neighbouring countries and other partners to block weapons smuggling routes and money transfer channels into the territory; and the regulation of local government such that it can satisfy and develop the civilian and economic needs of the population.

The terrorists and the population share a division of labour in which some fight, while the rest support and protect them. There is no significant distinction between those who fight and those who do not. It is not credible that the IDF is unaware of this. The explanation for the IDF ignoring this critical reality has to lie elsewhere, especially when it gives rise to the following fantastic claim:

“Such a strategic victory was achieved in 2004 at the end of the second intifada, and it resulted in relative quiet for about a decade.”

A cynical reader might point out that relative to the second intifada, “quiet for about a decade” includes: the bloody expulsion of the PLO from Gaza; the popular election of a Hamas government in Gaza; Israel capitulating to Hamas; the destruction of both synagogues and economic infrastructure, e.g., greenhouses; rockets from Gaza raining down on Israeli homes; and intermittent attacks on Israelis in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. To Israel’s enemies, this is a glorious string of victories that encouraged many to join the jihad armies to share in the near-certain glory when they next humiliate the IDF.

The consequences of equating “victory” and “decision” are well-illustrated when Col. Shabtai writes:

The Grand Strategy victory, or victory on the level of national security strategy, is when a military victory leads to a fundamental change in the strategic posture of the State of Israel. This can stem from a desire among enemy leadership to fundamentally change its hostile attitude toward Israel and sign peace agreements with it that end the military conflict. Such a great victory – some would call it a mutual victory – was achieved with Egypt about five years after the Yom Kippur.

Equating “victory” with “decision” leads to the curious conflation: “The Grand Strategy victory... is when a military victory leads to a fundamental change in the strategic posture of the State of Israel.” Should a Grand Strategy victory not be a military victory that leads to a fundamental change in the strategic posture of the enemy – after the enemy’s defeat? The State of Israel needs neither victory, nor war, to fundamentally change her strategic posture. A decision would suffice for such a change.

“A fundamental change in the strategic posture of the State of Israel... can stem from a desire among enemy leadership to fundamentally change its hostile attitude toward Israel and sign peace agreements with it that end the military conflict.” Here again, there is confusion. Enemy leadership requires neither defeat nor war to harbour a desire to fundamentally change its hostile attitude toward Israel and sign peace agreements with it, the Abraham Accords being the clearest case in point.

According to Col. Shabtai, “Such a great victory was achieved with Egypt about five years after the Yom Kippur [War].” One might legitimately wonder why the peace established with Egypt after the Yom Kippur War is in Western circles generally described as a “cold peace”, rather than a “great victory”. The only belligerent who describes it as a great victory is the Egyptians, who forced Israel to relinquish every inch of territory she had rightly acquired in defence against Egyptian aggression and which she was fully within her rights to annex. Not only did Egypt end up paying nothing for her aggression against Israel, she got Israel to sign an agreement that she would never try to take the conquered territory back, while Egypt, being Muslim, can abrogate the agreement at any moment.

Colonel Shabtai’s comparison of the Israeli’s victory in, and subsequent annexation of, the Golan Heights with Allied victories over Germany and Japan at the end of WWII is misplaced.

Another type of grand victory is a situation in which the IDF controls territory following a military victory, and the failure of the previous regime in the war leads to regime change of a kind that creates fundamentally different national conduct. The classic historical examples of such a change are Germany and Japan after World War II. Israel won this kind of victory in the Golan Heights when it applied sovereignty over the territory in 1981.

For such a comparison to hold, Israel would have had to abolish Islam and effect a root and branch de-Islamisation of the Golan Heights, as the Allies had comprehensively eradicated Nazism in Germany and Kokka-Shinto in Japan. These are, indeed, "fundamental changes." There is also further temporal confusion when Col. Shabtai says:

Grand victory cannot be achieved only by military means. It requires dialogue with local forces, deep and ongoing economic and civil rehabilitation, and permanent security control and policing mechanisms that create law and order and are acceptable to the population.

This is to conflate war with peace, exactly as Western commentators on the current war in Gaza do, demanding that Israel wage war according to the rules of peace, while Hamas remains at liberty to wage peace according to the rules of war and war according to Shari'a. “Grand victory cannot be achieved only by military means,” albeit true, pertains to war. “Dialogue with local forces, deep and ongoing economic and civil rehabilitation, and permanent security control and policing mechanisms that create law and order and are acceptable to the population,” pertains to the peace after the war. The non-military means that go along with the military in pursuit of a grand victory are illustrated in the example of Ukraine evacuating a significant proportion of her women and children, pursuing memberships of the EU and NATO and leveraging her private industry for drone production, thereby affording her postwar recovery the healthiest possible start.

“So what would “total victory” mean in the current Gaza conflict?” asks Col. Shaftai. After such an elaborate lead-in, the colonel’s total victory comes down to a three-sentence paragraph, buttressed by two assumptions for which there is little justification: firstly, that Israeli efforts at setting up local governance structures will enjoy international and regional economic and civil backing, highly questionable given the world’s response to the war in Gaza; and secondly, that Hamas will not be in control of Gaza. As the UNRWA teachers scandal highlighted, who is and who is not Hamas is impossible to tell. Hamas may no longer be the government, but they almost certainly are everything else.

It seems that “total victory” in the Gaza conflict is most likely to come in the form of a strategic victory. This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilisation of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

But then, in another three-sentence paragraph, Col. Shaftai seems to advise his readers, ignore everything I just said:

In such a scenario [of total victory], it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

This is a highly problematic paragraph: If “total victory” offers only “relative quiet for a decade or more,” then this “improved” IDF strategy, by the author’s own admission, cannot bring lasting peace to Israel, because this “total victory” cannot effect “a fundamental change in the situation on the ground”. We already know that the colonel's conception of "fundamental change" is so superficial as to extend no deeper than what soldiers need besides material and equipment to make victory in battle possible.

If “total victory” on the part of Israel does not bring about "a desire among enemy leadership to fundamentally change its hostile attitude toward Israel and sign peace agreements with it that end the military conflict," then what is "total" about such a victory? Col. Shabtai resorts to another superficial and unjustified comparison. Talking about “a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel,” the colonel bases himself on an observation that, “This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.” There is only one thing that the resumption of hostilities in Judea and Samaria and in Iraq after “relative quiet” have in common: jihad, a word conspicuous by its absence from Col. (res.) Shay Shabtai’s lexicon.

Anything short of the public humiliation of Hamas will not be total victory, because for Hamas, and their protector, Iran, there is no comeback from such a humiliation. Anything short of humiliation will be victory for Hamas.

Picture credits:

Screenshots from "Hamas marks ‘victory’ with parade: ‘Israel understands no other language than force’," FRANCE 24 English, YouTube, 23 May 2021 https://youtu.be/lGzD1ODgJiA

Comments:

On 28 March 2024 at 17:02, Ben Dor A. wrote:

Dear Anjuli Pandavar

Thank you for taking the time to break down Col. Shabtai's essay piece by piece and showing his awkward ignorance to the mindset of our neighbors.

When I received a copy of his essay by email I just saved it in my drive after reading a few paragraphs.

I wonder if you have written to him and to BESA Center with your opinion about his perspective?

In my humble opinion, I hope that after this war ends and the top level military officers are replaced, you will be able to come over and give the new military leadership a bit of advice about the mindset of Islam and what victory actually means.

Best Regards 

Ben Dor A.

On 28 March 2024 at 20:04, Jalal Tagreeb wrote:

Hi Anjuli,Your article is great. The point is that if the IDF stops without capturing Sinwar, he will come up from his tunnel and claim victory again. People will view him as a hero. But, if he was captured and dressed in his white nylon suit and shown in public in his cell with a shaved beard, this picture will remain in the memories of everyone, and he will never be viewed as a hero, even in his own eyes. Let him be a victim of his approach.

The Americans and British followed a nearly similar approach with Saddam. It is now hard for Arabs to view Saddam as a hero or man of might who could stand for the West. In fact, when Saddam surrendered, he was in other words asking for humiliation and admitting his defeat, otherwise he would not have surrendered.

I am not excluding myself as a former Muslim apologist, people should learn from all jihad cases. So, next should be an article about my case, right? If so, I can provide you with a bullet point outline for the article if you are interested. Is that OK?

Kind regards,
Jalal.