Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on April 16, 2022

Israeli-Palestinian War: The Effectiveness of the Israeli Defense Forces

By Chijindu Okpalaoka

Introduction

Israel's battle with Palestine extends back to the late eighteenth century. The United Nations issued Resolution 181, called the Separation Plan, in 1947, to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. The State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948, precipitating the first Arab-Israeli War. Israel won the battle in 1949, but 750,000 Palestinians were displaced, and the land was divided into three parts: Israel, the West Bank (along the Jordan River), and the Gaza Strip.

Tensions in the region grew in the following years, particularly between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Following the 1956 Suez Crisis and Israel's invasion of the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria signed mutual defense treaties in anticipation of an Israeli army deployment [1]. Israel launched the Six-Day War in June 1967, following a series of maneuvers by Egyptian President Abdel Gamal Nasser. Israel acquired control of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, Jordan's West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Syria's Golan Heights following the war. Six years later, in what became known as the Yom Kippur War, Egypt and Syria launched a two-front attack on Israel to reclaim lost territory.

The conflict did not result in significant gains for Egypt, Israel, or Syria. Still, Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat declared the war a victory for Egypt because it enabled Egypt and Syria to negotiate over previously ceded territory. Finally, in 1979, following a series of cease-fires and peace discussions, Egyptian and Israeli delegates signed the Camp David Accords. This peace accord brought an end to Egypt's thirty-year battle with Israel [2].

While the Camp David Accords improved Israel's relations with its neighbors, the issue of Palestinian self-determination and self-government remained unsolved. In what is known as the first intifada, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip rose against the Israeli government in 1987. The OsloAccords of 1993 mediated the conflict by establishing a framework for Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza and mutual recognition between the newly constituted Palestinian Authority and Israel's government. The Oslo II Accords of 1995 enlarged on the first accord, mandating Israel's complete withdrawal from six cities and 450 communities in the West Bank [3].

Palestinians initiated the second intifada in September 2000, motivated in part by Palestinian complaints about Israel's rule of the West Bank, a stagnant peace process, and former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's visit to the al-Aqsa mosquethird Islam's holiest sitein September 2000. Despite resistance from the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, the Israeli government approved building a barrier wall across the West Bank in 2002 [4].

In 2013, the US attempted to resurrect the peace process between Israel's government and the West Bank's Palestinian Authority. However, peace negotiations were stymied in 2014 when Fatahthe Palestinian Authority's main partyformed a unity government with Hamas, its opposition movement. Hamas, a breakaway group from Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, created in 1987 after the first intifada, is one of two major Palestinian political parties. It was classified as a foreign terrorist organization by the US in 1997 [5].

In 2014, conflicts in the Palestinian territories triggered a military confrontation between Israel and Hamas. Hamas fired almost 3,000 rockets at Israel, and Israel responded with a major offensive in Gaza. The skirmish ended in late August 2014 with an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire agreement, but not before 73 Israelis and 2,251 Palestinians were dead. Following a spate of violence between Israelis and Palestinians in 2015, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared that Palestinians would be free of the Oslo Accords' territorial boundaries. Between March and May 2018, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip staged weekly demonstrations along the Gaza Strip's border with Israel [6]. The final demonstration took place on the seventieth anniversary of the Nakba, the Palestinian exodus after Israel's independence. While most protestors remained peaceful, a few rushed the perimeter fence, hurling rocks, and other objects. The United Nations reports that 183 demonstrators were killed and over 6,000 injured by live ammunition.

Additionally, in May 2018, clashes erupted between Hamas and the Israeli military, resulting in the deadliest period of violence since 2014. During the twenty-four-hour flare-up, terrorists in Gaza fired over one hundred rockets into Israel; Israel replied with attacks on more than fifty sites in Gaza [7].

The administration of Donald J. Trump has made concluding an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty a top foreign policy objective. In 2018, the Trump administration cut funds to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, assisting Palestinian refugees. It moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, reversing a long-standing US policy. Israeli authorities applauded the decision to relocate the US embassy, but Palestinian leaders and others in the Middle East and Europe opposed it. Israel regards Jerusalem as its capital in its entirety, while Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. The Trump administration presented its long-awaited "Peace to Prosperity" plan in January 2020, which was rejected by Palestinians owing to its support for potential Israeli annexation of West Bank settlements and rule over an "undivided" Jerusalem.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and then Bahrain decided in August and September 2020 to restore relations with Israel, making them only the third and fourth countries in the region to do so, following Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. The agreements, dubbed the Abraham Accords, occurred more than eighteen months after the US hosted Israel and seven Arab states in Warsaw, Poland, for ministerial negotiations on the Middle East's future peace. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas both rejected the arrangements.

Concept of Military Effectiveness

Numerous researchers in the subject appear to concur that military effectiveness is inherently difficult due to the multiple factors, aspects, and variables involved [8]. While there is a correlation between military effectiveness and war outcome, it is critical to recognize that the two must be distinguished [9]. To illustrate this, the performance of the German Wehrmacht throughout the Second World War is an excellent illustration. The Wehrmacht's performance and efficacy were widely acknowledged as flawless, particularly during the invasion of and swift victory over France. However, although being less effective than on the Western Front, the Wehrmacht was still more effective than the Soviet forces on the Eastern Front but still lost the campaign [10]. Simply put, the Wehrmacht was insufficiently successful in bringing the battle to an end before it devolved into an attrition war.

While military capabilities, or the number of troops, equipment, and supplies, are critical components of military effectiveness, they are not the most vital because they become relevant as a campaign progresses. As Biddle puts it in his book, "assessments that rely exclusively on equipment will significantly overestimate well-equipped but badly managed armiesand vastly underestimate poorly equipped but well-managed troops [11]. It is also seenas the capacity to achieve desirable combat results in and of themselves, including those of little conflicts at the technical level of war and those of wars or even long-term politico-military confrontations at the strategic or grand strategic levels of war. A more limited interpretation links "effectiveness" with competence, the capacity to maximize one's supplies, or with characteristics such as "absorption" and "adaptiveness." irrespective ofthe terminology, military effectiveness,is a crucial problem in foreign politics and is at the center of critical policy disputes. lately, itelicited little prolonged academic interest. Nonetheless, future innovativescholars have begun to pay more attention to the subject, with novel methodology and developmentalalgorithms. The theoretical literature on effectiveness classifies candidate factors into three categories: statistical predominance, innovation, and military deployment. Despite theincreased attention on effectiveness as a whole and on non-material elements to effectiveness, especiallyforced participation, a number of topics warrant more investigation in future works.

To summarize, military effectiveness is the military's capacity to effectively employ the capabilities at its disposal by inflicting more casualties on the adversary's army while conserving its own, overcoming technological gaps, and adapting to changing conditions or environments.

Concept of War

War, according to international law, can take place only between sovereign political entities, namely States. Thus, war serves as a mechanism of resolving conflicts amongst units of the highest political structure. The bulk of people who have studied war as a sociopolitical phenomenon have also assumed as a core premise that there is a fundamental distinction between internal conflicts, which typically have means for a peaceful resolution, and foreign conflicts, which occur under anarchy. Wars have been observed to directly involve State organizations such as the foreign ministry and military forces. Due to the worldwide nature of conflict, the stakes may include the life and death of States[12]. Regardless of their professional background as political scientists, historians, sociologists, psychologists, or military analysts, many students shared this broad perspective on war as an international or inter-State phenomenon. According to the school of political realism, nation-states can only advance their national interests by displaying their willingness to fight and employing wars of various magnitudes as a tool of national policy to accomplish legitimate goals [13]. [14] described war as a "political act by which States, unable to resolve a conflict over their commitments, rights, or interests, resort to armed action to determine which state is the stronger and so can impose its will; on the other." [15] appears to favor a political definition of war when he writes: "If war is defined as an armed conflict between two or more sovereign institutions deploying organized military forces to accomplish certain goals, the critical term in the definition is 'organized.'" He continues by stating that this structure of the opposing armed forces extends beyond the battle lines and tends to encompass all civilian operations, including industrial, productive, and commercial enterprises, as well as social interests and individual attitudes, in modern warfare. [16] critiques [17] definition of war as "an act of violence intended to coerce the adversary into doing what we want" as being overly broad and imprecise. He asserts that "this concept may also apply to a great deal of what is referred to as peace, notably in sport, business, and money." It could apply to any act of violence, regardless of when it occurs. It is applicable to pre-Napoleonic and pre-industrial eras and purposes when war was a castle enterprise and a gentleman's game". Also, Wright in1942;attemptedto synthesize the juridical, political, military, and mental perspectives on conflict (war). The subsequent definition states that war is a state of law and a type of conflict characterized by a high levelof legal equality, hostility, and violence in the relationships of organized human groups. In simpler terms, war is the legitimate situation that allowsmore than twoviolent factions to engage in armed conflict on an equal footing. Identical concepts are used at various points in this terminology. In one, he claimed that war can be defined "from the perspective of each belligerent" as an extreme intensification of military activity, psychological tension, legal power, and social integration; and "from the standpoint of all belligerents" as an extreme intensification of concurrent conflicts involving armed forces, popular sentiments, legal dogmas, and national cultures; he also reiterates his definition of war as a legal condition in this section. In another, he says that war is a unique legal condition, a phenomenon of intergroup social psychology, a species of conflict, and a species of violence all at the same time. Each of these perspectives is represented in these definitions, but the judicial perspective is given precedence. Furthermore, several psychologists, like Durban and J.Bowlby, have contended that humans are essentially violent. This aggression is driven by displacement and projection, in which individualsconverts theircomplaints into prejudice and hatred toward other cultures, faiths, nationalities, or beliefs. According to this idea, a countrymaintains order within its localitywhile providing a channel for aggression via conflict.

Franco Fornari, an Italian psychotherapist, and Melanie Klein disciple believed that war was the psychotic or projective elongationof grieving. He furtherbelieved that conflict and violence arise from our "sensual desires" andour desire to safeguard and protect the precious itemsto which we are bound. Some war researchers,regard societies as sacred artifacts that produces conflict. Finally, Fornari emphasized commitment as the heart of war,individuals' astounding readiness to fight for their country, andto sacrifice themselvesfor their country.

Materials and Methods

Ethnonational conflict theory is used in this research as a framework of analysis. Ethnonational or ethnopolitical conflict can be characterized as one in which one or more contestants define themselves communally and assert claims on behalf of the group's collective interests against the state or other communal actors. Ethnic conflict is typically characterized by irredentist, separatist, or anti-colonial activities. Three factors are used to classify ethnonational conflicts:

1. that they take place within a state's internal borders, 2. that one of the combatants is the ruling government, and 3. that the opposition can prolong resistance.

Conflicts between ethnic groups that do not match these conditions are referred to as communal violence or internal regional battles. We divide the intrastate conflict into ethnic, religious, and ideological subgroups in this study. These organizations are approximately equivalent to what we refer to as ethnonationalism. Ethnic strife has been a pervasive occurrence. Since the end of the Second World War, there have been several examples of such intrastate conflicts: Korea, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cyprus, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Sudan, Angola, Zaire, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Chad, to name a few. The focus on ethnic conflict is justified because the majority of these conflicts have occurred in impoverished countries. As a result, they compound these countries' already dire poverty levels by eroding their shaky economic foundations and torturing generations of people with unending pain.

Additionally, there is a risk that some ethnopolitical disputes would become international, jeopardizing global peace and security, making techniques for avoiding or resolving them peacefully and imperative. The parameters of conflict theory are examined in this study. The advent of the Enemy System, Human Needs, and Conflict Resolution theories to explain conflict is particularly significant. The analysis of conflict theory is critical for comprehending the nature of the political conflict. This theoretical domain must be thoroughly researched to find solutions to many of the world's seemingly intractable challenges. Hopefully, advancements in this sector will aid researchers in gaining a better understanding and assisting in the quest for solutions. There is a three-step method. The first step is to identify an appropriate explanation for the nature of conflict; the second step is to apply this model to explain the war in a particular setting; the third step is to seek solutions.

Disputes between Israel and Palestine

The following positions define the two parties' stated viewpoints; nevertheless, it is critical to note that neither side has a single position. Both the Israeli and Palestinian sides contain moderate and extremist bodies, as well as dovish and hawkish.

One of the biggest impediments to settling the IsraeliPalestinian conflict is the conflict's participants' deep-seated and rising distrust. Unilateral policies and extreme political sides' rhetoric, combined with violence and incitement of citizens against civilians, have bred mutual hatred and a lack of faith in the peace process. Hamas enjoys widespread support among Palestinians, and because its members continuously call for Israel's destruction and violence remains a threat, security becomes a primary concern for many Israelis. Israel's settlement construction in the West Bank has led the majority of Palestinians to believe that Israel is not devoted to achieving a deal but rather to maintaining permanent rule over their land [18].

Jerusalem

Jerusalem's control is a complicated matter, with each side asserting its claim to the city. Jerusalem is central to the religious and historical histories of the three greatest Abrahamic religionsJudaism, Christianity, and Islam. Jerusalem is Judaism's holiest city, having been the site of the Jewish temples on the Temple Mount and the ancient Israelite kingdom's capital. Jerusalem is the third most sacred site for Muslims, as it is the location of the Isra and Mi'raj events and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Christians revere Jerusalem as the location of Jesus' crucifixion and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Israel's government, including the Knesset and Supreme Court, has been headquartered in West Jerusalem's "new city" since Israel's establishment in 1948. Israel took the full administrative authority of East Jerusalem following Israel's takeover of Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem during the Six-Day War. Israel enacted the Jerusalem Law in 1980, saying, "Jerusalem, entire and united, is Israel's capital [19].

Figure 1: Map of Jerusalem. Source: CIA remote sensing

Except for the United States [20] and Russia, numerous countries do not recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Most UN member nations and international organizations do not recognize Israel's post-1967 Six-Day War claim to East Jerusalem, nor its 1980 Jerusalem Law proclamation [21]. In its 2004 advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the International Court of Justice defined East Jerusalem as "Palestinian territory occupied [22]. As of 2005, Jerusalem was home to around 719,000 people: 465,000 Jews (mainly in West Jerusalem) and 232,000 Muslims (primarily in East Jerusalem) [23]. The United States offered a plan at the 20002001 Camp David and Taba Summits. The Arab sections of Jerusalem would be handed to the projected Palestinian state, while the Jewish parts of Jerusalem would be ceded to Israel. The Israeli and Palestinian governments would jointly regulate all archaeological activities beneath the Temple Mount. In principle, both sides agreed to the concept, but the summits ultimately failed [24].

Israel expresses fear about the security of Israeli inhabitants if Palestinian-controlled districts in Jerusalem are established. Since 1967, Jerusalem has been a primary target of extremist organizations' attacks on civilian targets. Arabs have targeted numerous Jewish neighborhoods. If Arab communities were to be included inside the borders of a Palestinian state, their proximity would jeopardize the safety of Jewish citizens [25].

Holy Sites

Israel is concerned about the welfare of Jewish sacred sites that could fall under Palestinian administration. When Jordan controlled Jerusalem, Jews were not permitted to visit the Western Wall or other Jewish holy places, and the Mount of Olives Jewish cemetery was desecrated [26]. Israel has prohibited Muslims from praying at Joseph's Tomb, a site revered by both Jews and Muslims, since 1975. Settlers erected a yeshiva, placed a Torah scroll on the mihrab, and covered it. The site was robbed and set on fire during the Second Intifada [27]. Israeli security agencies regularly monitor and apprehend Jewish radicals who plot attacks, while several significant instances continue to occur [28]. Israel has granted the Muslim trust (Waqf) near-complete control over the Temple Mount [29].

Palestinians have expressed anxiety over the safety of Christian and Muslim holy sites under Israeli authority [30]. Some Palestinian advocates have claimed that the Western Wall Tunnel was reopened to collapse the mosque [31]. In a 1996 speech to the United Nations, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs refuted this assertion, describing the statement as an "escalation of rhetoric" [32].

Casualties

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs database, 5,587 Palestinians and 249 Israelis have died since January 1, 2008 [33].Numerous research present conflicting numbers on IsraeliPalestinian casualties. Between 1948 and 1997, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that 13,000 Israelis and Palestinians were murdered in violence. Other estimates place the death toll at 14,500 between 1948 and 2009[34].2,000 PLO combatants were killed in armed fighting with Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War [35].

Table 1: Civilian fatalities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Years

Deaths

Palestinians

Israelis

2011

118 (13)

11 (5)

2010

81 (9)

8 (0)

2009

1,034 (314)

9 (1)

2008

887 (128)

35 (4)

2007

385 (52)

13 (0)

2006

665 (140)

23 (1)

2005

190 (49)

51 (6)

2004

832 (181)

108 (8)

2003

588 (119)

185 (21)

2002

1,032 (160)

419 (47)

2001

469 (80)

192 (36)

2000

282 (86)

41 (0)

1999

9 (0)

4 (0)

1998

28 (3)

12 (0)

1997

21 (5)

29 (3)

1996

74 (11)

75 (8)

1995

45 (5)

46 (0)

1994

152 (24)

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Israeli-Palestinian War: The Effectiveness of the Israeli Defense Forces - smallwarsjournal

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