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"It's like mowing the lawn of the pavement, it's a long and hard job."
This is a quote written by David Weinberg, who works at the Institute for Strategic and Security Studies in Jerusalem, in Israel's Jerusalem Post. He then explains why this is a long and painstaking job: "If you don't, weeds will grow wildly, and snakes will crawl around in the bushes." ”
Why did David Weinberg make such a comment in Israel's Jerusalem Post? This is because this assertion is precisely based on the feeling of the Palestinian-Israeli situation. The mowing of the lawn proposed in his assertion is a new combat tactic adopted by Israel against the armed forces in the Palestinian areas, especially the Hamas militant regime: the "mowing strategy".
So, what is a "lawn mowing strategy"? Will this new tactic of war allow Israel to deal a devastating blow to its armed forces in the Palestinian areas? Is it in Israel's long-term interest?
Let's start with the "lawn mowing strategy".
1. What is the "lawn mowing strategy"?
The so-called "lawn mowing strategy" refers to Israel's regular punitive strikes against the Hamas forces in the Palestinian areas in order to weaken their military power and achieve certain political and military goals.
This strategy can, to a certain extent, deter the Hamas forces and bring a period of calm to the border areas. However, this will not fundamentally resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Analysts point out that the lawn mowing strategy is a military innovation shown by Israel in Gaza, which includes both technological and tactical innovations, highlighting Israel's attempt to respond to Hamas's changing and various challenges in the fighting through continuous military innovation.
According to the Washington Post, Af Gallant, a former military commander in Israel's southern theater of operations, publicly stated in an interview as early as 2014: "This kind of work needs to be done from time to time, and maybe it will become more frequent in the future." ”
Back in 2007, after Hamas forces seized control of Gaza, Israel was caught up in a never-ending "lawn mowing operation". In military operation after military operation, Israel does not want Hamas to threaten its national security, nor does it want to launch a full-scale invasion of Gaza.
Why, then, does Israel not choose to directly occupy Gaza and solve the Gaza problem once and for all?
This has to be analyzed from the perspective of Israel's multiple military and political considerations.
2. Why choose the "lawn mowing strategy"?
First of all, let's look at why Israel does not dare to settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict once and for all, solve the Gaza problem, and directly destroy the Hamas armed forces. There are two main reasons for this.
First, Israel, which is quite self-aware, realizes that it is impossible to fundamentally solve the Gaza problem by itself, because the Hamas armed forces are deeply rooted in the Palestinian areas and have an extremely broad mass base. Second, Israel's unwillingness to bear the enormous risks and heavy costs of launching a full-scale war, as well as the condemnation and various sanctions imposed by the international community, are unbearable for Israel.
It is for this reason that Israel has carried out a protracted and intermittent military operation against armed forces such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Just as flowers and plants need to be pruned regularly in order to maintain their beauty forever and not grow wildly, Israel also needs to regularly punish the Hamas armed forces in order to weaken the ability and will of the opponent, to maintain relative calm, and to avoid plunging Israel into the quagmire of all-out war.
However, for Israel, armed forces such as Hamas in Gaza are not weeds in nature after all.
Israel's response strategy is innovating, and Hamas's armed forces are constantly strengthening and improving.
In the past decade, Hamas has continuously strengthened its armed forces, so that it has more powerful and diversified advanced weapons such as rockets, missiles, and drones, as well as its combat killer weapon: tunnels. In addition, the dense population, complex terrain and weak infrastructure in Gaza make it very difficult for Israel to carry out air strikes and ground attacks on the area.
For the armed Hamas regime, tunnel warfare is a trump card in their hands that Israel is deeply afraid of, allowing them to counterattack the Jedi.
In Gaza, Hamas has built a complex underground network of more than 500 kilometers. The width of the tunnel is about 1 meter, up to 1.8 meters, and the depth is 22-30 meters. These winding underground fortifications are a headache for Israel.
According to the Israeli military, as early as 2010 and 2014, Israel used various high-tech means to destroy a total of 200 kilometers of Hamas's tunnels.
Subsequently, however, Israel changed its ground warfare with Hamas to an offensive mode of air strikes on the one hand and small forces on the other hand. From this, we can infer that the Israeli military's claim to have destroyed 200 kilometers of Hamas's tunnels is not very convincing, and it is even more obvious that it has changed the traditional ground combat mode, and it is even more obvious that it is deeply afraid of Hamas's tunnels.
From the crisscrossing tunnels of the Gaza Strip, we can judge that the armed regime of Hamas and Israel are engaged in guerrilla tactics worthy of the name, and Israel's "mowing strategy" is a strategy and tactics tailored to Hamas's guerrilla tactics.
Why is Israel adopting this new strategy?
In fact, this is another new strategy adopted by Israel after learning the lessons of the United States' failed war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Israel has noticed that when the United States attacked Iraq, it hit standard security posts. It will take control of Iraq's cities, towns and transportation arteries, and then begin targeted killings while pacifying Iraqi civilians. As a result, Iraq's anti-US forces continued to launch endless bomb attacks on US military checkpoints and garrisons, and snipers were active in US military strongholds, large and small, and carried out targeted sniping attacks on US generals like hunters, making the US troops unbearable.
In Afghanistan, the US military has learned the lessons of Iraq and has placed its garrisons and important military bases in large cities, while it has adopted the methods of setting up important bases and patrolling large areas in surrounding towns and villages to control and strike at them. This style of play has allowed the Afghan Taliban to control most of the villages and large and small county towns in a logical manner, so that the US troops who are huddled in military bases in big cities do not dare to leave the city at all, because once they leave the city, they will face the continuous and relentless bombardment of countless bombs set up on the roadside on the patrol road. According to statistics, up to 80% of the US military casualties in the Afghan war are due to roadside bombs.
It is precisely because of the lessons learned from the failures of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan that Israel, which thinks it is smart, has adopted a completely different "lawn mowing strategy." In the Gaza Strip, there are no checkpoints, no grass-roots control, no puppet army, no puppet, no military bases, but regular targeted killings by military means like "mowing grass", so as to maintain Israel's long-term military presence and military control in the area.
However, Israel's "lawn mowing strategy," which thinks it is the best at it, is suffering an unprecedented failure.
3. The "lawn mowing strategy" will fail
This is because, first of all, in the Gaza Strip, in the Palestinian areas, and even in the entire Middle East, the majority of the population supports the Hamas forces, which leads to the fact that this "lawn mowing strategy" will continue endlessly, and will become more and more frequent, so that Israel has to face both internal and external pressures, and is overwhelmed.
Let's look at one set of data, the average age of Gaza's population is 19.6 years old, almost half of the adult population is unemployed, and the region's population is expected to reach 3 million by 2030, which dooms Israel to a "lawn mowing strategy" that drags Israel into endless war.
Second, in the international community, most countries in the world, led by China, have constantly called for the implementation of the "two-state solution" to completely resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and even civil society forces in Western countries have been exerting pressure on the authorities through demonstrations in support of Palestine. For example, since April 17, 2024, large-scale protests have erupted at Columbia University in New York City, USA, and this protest in solidarity with Palestine has swept many universities in the United States. All this has put great political pressure on Israel, and it has no choice but to be afraid and be caught in a dilemma in the "lawn mowing strategy" military action that it is prone to blame.
Finally, the world of those who win the hearts and minds of the people. More than 13,000 people have died in the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, more than 40 percent of them children. According to an analysis by the US "Business Insider" website, civilian casualties mainly come from Israeli air strikes. According to a study by the RAND Corporation of the United States, only 7 percent of non-government fighters have been defeated by the regular Israeli army in the past 40 years, in other words, Hamas in the Gaza Strip has been wiped out.
The crux of the long-standing protracted resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli issue lies in the failure to implement the two-state solution, which has been eroded by Israel as the occupying power for many years. Since the outbreak of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict last year, the Palestinian Gaza region has been plunged into a serious humanitarian disaster.
As U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin put it, "In a battle like this, the focus is on civilians." If you drive them into the arms of the enemy, what awaits you will be a strategic defeat, not a tactical victory. ”
Clearly, Israel's seemingly clever "lawn mowing strategy" is doing exactly that.
Reference: "It is not feasible for the United States to "transform" the Middle East, and increasing troops is the worst option" reference news2017-3-2
Su Xiaohui, "From "mowing the grass" to "pulling the weeds", it is difficult to balance the removal of Hamas and the rescue of hostages"