How the Palestinians build the deterrence equation with Israel: Reading the situation of the attack on Jenin

 

Jenin Black Box. What is Israel looking for in the West Bank?

How the Palestinians build the deterrence equation with Israel

Reading the situation of the attack on Jenin

Publication Monday July 10 2023 - Last Updated Monday July 10 2023

A few days ago, an officer in the Israeli army described the operations launched by Israel in Jenin as the American film The Black Hawk down; "Every simple arrest in Jenin turned into a situation similar to Black Hawk Down," in a recall to the catastrophic ambush that the film shows, in which an American force entered Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia in the nineties.

The statement made by the senior officer reveals what we might call a Jenin complex in the Israeli security mentality. The camp is emerging as a "capital of terror," prompting Israel from 3 to July 5 to carry out the largest security offensive in the West Bank since the 2002 storming of Jenin. This operation caused the first Jenin complex in the Israeli security strategy after the death of 23 Israeli soldiers, 13 of whom were killed in one day and on one street. The Jenin of Gaza looks miniature but near the heart of Israel.

In the latest operation, Israel deployed hundreds of elite units to the city and its camp and, for the first time in two decades, carried out about ten airstrikes in the West Bank on what it said were command and control rooms of Palestinian resistance forces, and washed away roads to detect any booby-traps on the way.

Misreading leads to wrong conclusions.

Israel's Jenin security complex has worsened despite all attempts to integrate it into the Israeli economy, partly due to the growth of the so-called Iranian obsession. According to Israeli security sources, much of the unrest in the West Bank is due to Iran's use of Palestinians in its proxy war against Israel. Based on this doctrine, most of the resistance in Jenin is an extension of Iran's attempt to gain new ground in its low-cost war with Israel.

The Palestinian Authority seems to be absent from the camp with its apparatus, and this is a correct Israeli conclusion.

Israel's view of the West Bank differs from its view of Gaza, as the latter as a relatively isolated enclave whose security threat can be contained even at great cost. It views the West Bank as a direct backyard close to its beating heart. So, Israel named the last operation "House and Garden."

According to this perception, Iran's presence in the West Bank is an existential threat that should not be tolerated. Tel Aviv's obsession with Tehran escalated after the June 19 Israeli armored vehicle bombing, which brought about a qualitative shift in the conflict, proving that there was an evolution at the level of armament, which became dependent on high-explosive booby-traps, and at the level of tactics, the armored vehicle was caught in a Palestinian fire ambush, forcing the army to intervene by air to evacuate the wounded armored crew.

The Israeli reading of the situation in the West Bank is guided more by wishes than facts and is based on blaming external factors rather than looking for objective reasons.

This operation fueled the myth of Iran's obsession with Iran and its ability to supply the resistance with more sophisticated weapons and settled the Israeli decision to launch an expanded operation to search for Iran's black box in Jenin and dismantle its alleged networks.

Iran does not exist in the West Bank compared to the capitals loyal to it, and the West Bank is not in its vital area in the strategic sense, as Israeli analysts argue, but there is coordination of interests between some Palestinian resistance factions and Iran. So, Israel's attempt to dismantle the Iranian presence in the West Bank looks like an attempt to break up the vacuum.

Some see the absence of the Palestinian Authority from Jenin and its weak capacity as one of the causes of the unrest. The PA, which was weakened by Israel first and secondly corrupted, seems to be absent with its apparatus from the camp, and this is a valid Israeli conclusion. But Palestine is strongly present as an issue, and security solutions do not work if political solutions are shot.

Wishes rather than facts guide the Israeli reading of the situation in the West Bank. It is based on blaming external factors instead of searching for objective reasons, accusing Iran at times, the fragility of the Palestinian Authority at times, and the spread of propaganda of resistance factions at other times so that it monitors all factors except the main factor that causes the crisis. It is the same Israeli practices and the replacement of the two-state solution with the solution of the dominant state by the force of a fait accompli.

So, exaggerating external factors gives the Israeli government an imagined pretext to create an imagined solution.

The balance of harm. And the proportion of panic

Despite the imbalance of harm in Israel's favor, and its ability to harm the Palestinians is nothing compared to the ability of the latter party, what the resistance seeks is a balance of panic, that is, its ability to convince Israel that there is a high price to be paid with every significant damage inflicted on the Palestinians.

The resistance is trying to create a logic of deterrence counter to Israel's power. Beyond using guerrilla tactics against a regular army, which damaged Israeli armored vehicles until the last day of fighting, the Palestinians demonstrated a capacity for coordinated operations rather than just random individual actions.

The Palestinian responses undoubtedly did not balance the damage, but they created a temporary balance in panic.

There were several Palestinian attacks on soft and hard targets in the West bank and Gaza going parallel with the Israeli attack on Jenin.  The Palestinians expanded the scope of their operations to include the Green Line to resist Israel's attempts to isolate and dismember Palestinian areas from security, and the diversification of the targeting areas threatened to get things out of geographical control and turn the process into a costly comprehensive confrontation, adding more challenges to the Israeli right-wing government, which is pressed with internal challenges due to its conflict with the opposition and the street following the Judicial Authority Law, and external confrontations with Israel's allies who are wary of the government's right-wing orientation.

Who wins and who loses?

Jenin operation is a collision of the wills of two parties that each aim to maintain its deterrence equation. The Israeli side bases its security equation on the fact that the situation will improve by using more force, inflicting more damage, and abusing a resistance model to prevent new hotbeds from emerging.

This equation has proved to be a failure over the past year, the bloodiest year of conflict in the West Bank in a decade. The active confrontation was not contained but moved from Gaza to Jenin, Nablus, and the Green Line. The factions, which acted individually, formed joint command and coordination rooms supported by modern means of communication.

At the operational level in Jenin, according to the IDF, Israel succeeded in dismantling six explosives manufacturing facilities and three operations rooms and confiscated large quantities of weapons. Netanyahu raised the slogan, "If Jenin returns to terrorism - we will return to Jenin." But things seem more complicated than raising slogans. The objective causes of resistance still exist, as does the ability of the Palestinians to harm Israel.

The resistance's responses undoubtedly did not strike a balance in damage. Still, it did create a balance, albeit temporarily, in the panic, which they issued outside the limits of the operation. They thwarted another Israeli goal: to isolate and neutralize the West Bank from Gaza.

We are facing a clash of wills, each with strategic goals that they are trying to reach. Israel is trying to force the adversary to fully comply with deterrence based on the logic of "I am capable of inflicting unbearable harm on you." The resistance strategy is based on a counter-logic with three messages: First, whatever the damage, we can afford it. Second, they can respond with less damage, which is painful and costly. Third, this response will spread geographically so that no place in historic Palestine is isolated from the other.

Therefore, the search for an answer from the winner and loser in the recent Jenin operation depends on who can stabilize the logic of deterrence and sustain it for as long as possible.