HERZLIYA, Israel — With Israeli elections just five weeks away, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hardline rivals are ratcheting up security-centric rhetoric in their bid for the role as strongman-in-chief against the raging threat of radical Islam.
For fourth-term-aspiring Netanyahu, the Shiite axis of Iran-Hezbollah-Syria; Sunni Hamas and ultra-extreme Sunni al-Qaida and the Islamic State are all "branches of the same poisonous tree" that which must be defeated by unrelenting force.
His Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is accusing accuses Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a secularist committed to nonviolent resistance, of "diplomatic terrorism." Israel must respond to attacks with "disproportionate" force, he said, if it expects to defeat terrorism.
As for Naftali Bennett, the economic minister who urged Netanyahu not "to take the foot off the pedal" by accepting the cease fire that ended last summer's 50-day Gaza War, "a government that hides behind concrete blocks and does not defend its citizens … has no right to exist."
Bennett's Jewish Home party insists on the right to settle in all areas of the West Bank, Israel's ancient homeland. His campaign slogan: "No apologies."
But as political take-no-prisoners rhetoric grows increasingly strident, military officers and experts last week warned of the limits of the to use of force.
At a Feb. 1 conference attended by members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) General Staff and dozens of colonel-level students of the Command and Staff College, many embraced the need for a new national security strategy of "No Surrender."
Coined by Ami Ayalon, a former Israel Navy commander of the Israeli Navy, director of the Shin Bet security service, and member of the opposition Labor Party, the No Surrender strategy is a holistic approach to national security based on military might, diplomatic strength and the rule of law.
"Today we're operating in three domains … and the military one is losing its added value," Ayalon told participants of the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center event called "The IDF and Israeli Society."
According to Ayalon, not always should Israel should not always give accord equal weight to the three domains. Sometimes, he said, "We'll need to subordinate military achievements in order to realize more important objectives."
"Operational achievements don't always deliver political achievements. And sometimes, achievements in battle push us further away from political objectives," he said.
The IDF, Ayalon said, understands the there is no more strategy of decisive victory is no more. "The concept of decisiveness doesn't exist anymore in their lexicon.… But in the public and the government, we're still thinking in terms of victory; of the [enemy raising the] white flag."
The former Shin Bet chief insisted that the terror threat won't go away, and Israel can't rely on military might to contain it in the decades to come.
As such, Israel should take a page from President Barack Obama, he said, citing his the US President's Comprehensive Counterterror Strategy spelled out in a May 2013 address at National Defense University.
"Obama did something that no government of Israel has ever done; he announced a policy of limiting force.… He's saying that part of the definition of victory is to preserve democratic values by fighting terror where possible through other means.
"Our strategy — and our definition of victory — must deal with the day after [a military operation] and every other day after that. This strategy, in essence, is No Surrender.
"Every day that we're not vanquished; that they didn't succeed in unraveling our moral fabric; that they didn't succeed in instilling fear in us to a level that we prefer security at the expense of civil and human rights.… Every day that we don't do those things, we will win in a war that will continue for another 40 years," Ayalon said.
When asked if such a strategy is feasible or even desirable in Israel, Maj. Gen. Yossi Baidatz, commander of the IDF Command and Staff College, replied:
"To my understanding — not from the campaign this past summer or the campaign [that may come] next summer, but from the long-term perspective of our Jewish and democratic values — there are limits on us. And we accept this.
"So because of [the inherent limits to use of force], I am deeply in agreement with this," Baidatz said.
The proposed force-limiting, No Surrender strategy was similarly endorsed by Maj. Gen. Yishai Beer, a former corps commander and president of the Israeli Military Court of Appeals.
Now a professor at the IDC's Radzyner Law School, Beer said IDF — as a professional warfighting organization — should welcome the involvement of Israel's High Court as an ally in maintaining professionalism, rooting out anomalies and preventing pathology.
"In light of international developments, judicial involvement is critical before, after and also during the fighting," he said. "We should not be afraid to hold ourselves up for reflection in the mirror."
Dorit Beinisch, a former chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, also welcomed the principles inherent in Ayalon's proposed No Surrender strategy.
"Authorities cannot allow or — even worse — rely on the open-ended use of force. In this wild world, it is forbidden for a state to act and behave like the terrorists."
Email: bopallrome@defensenews.com
Opall-Rome is Israel bureau chief for Defense News. She has been covering U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation, Mideast security and missile defense since May 1988. She lives north of Tel Aviv. Visit her website at www.opall-rome.com.
