The Second Intifada and the Lessons of Jenin

Center for Strategic and International Studies ^ | April 24, 2002 | Anthony H. Cordesman

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The Second Intifada and the Lessons of Jenin Dealing with the Grim Realities of Urban Warfare

Anthony H. Cordesman Arleigh A. Burke Chair for Strategy Center for Strategic and International Studies April 24, 2002

Copyright Anthony H. Cordesman, all rights reserved.

The cliché that truth is the first casualty of war is often all too accurate. The same, however, can be true of efforts to analyze war and to assign blame for military action. This has already been a major problem in the Second Intifada, where the asymmetric character of the fighting leads Israel and the US to focus on “terrorism,” and the Arab and Islamic worlds and most of Europe to focus on “excessive force.” The reality that both sides are employ what they regard as the best tactics available, with equally legitimate (or illegitimate) results is being lost. The images of both sides are becoming “suicide bombing” versus “atrocity.”

The Real World Problem of Fighting in Cities

The UN analysis of events in Jenin may or not make this situation, and the escalating war, worse. The analysis of urban combat is a nightmare under the best of circumstances. There are only three ways to fight in cities and all of them are bad ones:

The first form is “urban warfare light,” and this means using air or missile power to strike at key targets, plus limited, quick raids against very selective targets. This kind of surgical effort, however, requires light opposition in the city being attacked, a population that is largely neutral or passive, a reasonable degree of tactical surprise, and that the objective can be accomplished quickly and without occupying the urban area involved.

Israel did not face any of these conditions, and once it set the goal of “rooting our the terrorist infrastructure,” it had to occupy virtually all of the area, make major sweeps to arrest suspects, and conduct systematic house to house searches.

! The second form is to “fight on near equal terms,” avoiding the use of heavy weapons. This means fighting house to house until the opposition is defeated. No solider will chose this option against a significant enemy. Ever since Stalingrad, battles have shown that a competent defender can take advantage of his knowledge of the ground and the fact cities force short-range combat under such conditions, to inflict major casualties on the enemy. The IDF might have been able to use this approach against the virtually unarmed

Palestinian forces in the First Intifada (although it did not have to do so), but such an approach means major Israeli casualties today, and sensitivity to casualties is the one Achilles heel of the Israeli Defense Forces.

! The third form is “decisive force,” and it today means using heavy weapons and air power to smash a way in secure positions, destroy defended strong points, and enforce security during an occupation based on sweeps and searches. Military analysts like to avoid being frank about what this kind of urban warfare really means, but it effectively means smashing a lot of things flat, significant collateral damage and civilian casualties, and the use of heavy weapons to deny a more lightly armed opponent that ability to force short-range light combat on terms of near parity. This is the option the Russians used in Chechnya, it is the option we used in much of the fighting Korea (plus massive air bombardment), and it is the option the IDF seems to have used in Jenin. Given Israel’s strategic objectives, it is the military option of choice. It is also the option we might have to use in any similar case, for example in Iraq if Saddam chose a city-oriented defense this time, instead of desert combat.

Determining What is and Is Not Legitimate Acts of War

There are no real standards for judging what level of force is really legitimate under these conditions. We are used to the experience of the Gulf War, Kosovo and Afghanistan, and the US dodged the problem are an initial defeat in Somalia. The fact is, however, that urban warfare is probably the most difficult single form of warfare, and potentially one of the bloodiest. It is also the form of war that politicians, human rights activists, and media are least likely to understand and most likely to condemn.

Looking at the initial videotapes of the fighting, the problem may also have been compounded by poor discipline within the IDF. This kind of close fighting leads to a break down in fire discipline even with the best troops (Saving Private Ryan is almost certainly accurate in the scene showing this in the case of US fighting in World War II.) The fact the IDF was not fighting a uniformed opposition made things worse; any civilian was a potential combatant. Younger Israeli troops and officers also seem to increasingly be willing to trash what they occupy and to try to “punish” their enemy. The anger coming out of the “suicide bombing” versus “atrocity” views of war is eroding restraint on both sides. This means that regardless of how one views the legitimacy of urban warfare per se, there probably were cases of real “atrocity,” although how many, and with what results, may never be determined.

Another aspect of urban warfare also presents problems for any objective analysis. Securing an urban area means containing the population. Locking down occupied cities is the key to conducting safe sweeps for arms and large numbers of arrests This also means curfews, shooting anyone who moves in restricted areas, and preventing access for emergency personnel and medical services.

Questions also arise because the IDF has charged that Palestinians have used UN, Red Crescent, and other emergency vehicles in the fighting. This may well be the case, given the desperate need of the Palestinians to find cover and maneuver. Once again, the use of such military tactics may also have been accompanied by Israeli use of excessive force. Fire discipline is again extremely hard to enforce, there is a tendency to get trigger happy, and there is a tendency to punish and seek revenge. There are no laws of war that set limits to urban war per se, although the advocates who seek to expand the Geneva Convention and its protocols may claim there are. As long as the fighting involves direct combat against armed opponents, and securing occupied areas without deliberate and unnecessary harm to civilians and civilian property, the decisive force approach to urban warfare is as “legitimate” as any other form of intensive combat.

This does not mean that the world should not begin to analyze the cost and risks of such forms of combat, and to try to find new standards. It does mean, however, that condemning Israel broadly for “atrocities” is both unfair and a political act, rather than one based on any previous standard of what is or is not permissible in war. Similarly, extending the long-standing debate over Israel’s claims to be acting in legitimate self-defense versus the Palestinian claim to the rights guaranteed to an occupied power to a specific form of combat, is to confuse broad legal and moral issues with the grim realities of war.

Conducting an Objective Analysis It is not clear that the UN, or anyone else, is capable of conducting an impartial analysis of Jenin or the other areas of intense fighting over the last few weeks. The UN has strong institutional biases, and little history of bring military expertise to bear on such issues, versus political and human rights judgments. Israel may well be right in fearing any investigation that goes beyond fact finding. At the same time, both sides really do need to know both what actually happened and understand the potential cost of repeating or escalating such combat. This may well be a case where a major investigative effort is needed by the media, and where the US should press hard for a broader approach than the UN usually takes.

To be specific, such an approach requires:

! An analysis of the size of the Palestinian armed infrastructure in the urban areas in the West Bank, of the provocation given to Israel in terms of self-defense, and the origin of various attacks on Israel from the areas attacked.

! A historical analysis of urban fighting tied to an analysis of the tactics used by the IDF. The fighting needs to be put in historical and tactical context.

! A realistic analysis of the limits imposed by the various agreements and conventions affecting acts of war.

! A detailed chronology of the fighting along each major IDF line of attack, analyzing the level of force used on each side, and what the IDF did or did not do.

! Detailed mapping of the damage done, and the location of civilian casualties, to provide an accurate picture of damage to the urban area versus the kind of impressionistic reporting coming out of the media and charges and countercharges being made by each side. This means before and after comparisons of satellite imagery and some form of helicopter overflight and photo mapping.

! Investigations of charges the IDF carried out unnecessary killings and damage that are done on an incident-by incident basis and that objectively analyze the tactical pressures on IDF forces and any Palestinian provocation.

! The tactical reasons for preventing emergency service access, for curfews and restrictions on civilian movement, and the end results. Evidence, not emotion, must be brought to bear. Battlefield forensics must be developed and not a list of charges and countercharges. Both sides must be made to see their common responsibility for the chain of events, as well as made to face the fact that each side is committing acts it may long regret.

It is probably not a judgment that the UN should make, but it is also far from clear that what Israel has done can achieve anything but the most limited success. If one ignores all of the passions surrounding Jenin, the fact is that “destroying the terrorist infrastructure” is a virtually hopeless mission. It repeats the mistakes of virtually every other failed counterinsurgency effort that attempted to deal with a determined people, and it ultimately makes no more sense than Operation Phoenix did in Vietnam.

Nothing Israel does, short of a virtually endless occupation, can prevent more arms smuggling. Every “terrorist” it has found is likely to be replaced by several more – as yet unknown and a part of what may be far more dispersed and decentralized cells. Seizing the components of suicide bombs is like making drug seizures, comforting but ultimately pointless. There will always be more. At the same time, it is brutally clear just how much the Palestinians have to pay for each bombing and “victory”. Both sides are still escalating to nowhere.

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A sober and none to cheering analysis.