It’s internationally accepted that Israeli sponsored settlements in the West Bank are illegal. Israel have, nonetheless, made them a central policy for their coalition government. Settler townships only exist because of this political commitment. The full panoply of surveillance drones and military action defend them. West Bank Palestinians aren’t a significant military threat to settlers but live in a consistently threatening environment. This is the classic environment for asymmetric warfare.
Palestinians use first phase asymmetrical warfare to defend themselves,1(see addendum) such as stone throwing and drive-by shootings. Stone throwing youths often suffer gunshot wounds and death. They accept this as a price worth paying. Settlers, meanwhile, are ramping up the conflict.
Hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Turmusayya [sic] in the West Bank on Wednesday [21st June 2023], the day after the killing of four Jewish settlers nearby, according to the mayor of the village. Those killings had been in response to an Israeli military operation in the Jenin area.2
Turmus Ayya is a paradigm of the West Bank’s grim tit-for-tat violence. Settler violence is turbocharged by Moral Hazard.3 They know they’ll be bailed out, with lethal force by the overwhelming power of the Israeli military, if Palestinians get the upper hand. There’s no incentive to show restraint. And they don’t.
Will this gruesome cycle of violence continue?
Asymmetric warfare has been institutionalised by the Israeli 2022 elections. The new coalition ensures diplomacy won’t be given a chance,
“…the new government will include Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the extremist-aligned Religious Zionist party, who has been accused by Israeli security forces in the past of plotting violent attacks against Palestinians. Like Ben-Gvir, Smotrich will also likely be given a newly created ministership role in Netanyahu’s government to oversee Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank — a move which liberal groups say would lead to “de facto annexation” given his desire to expand settlements and deny Palestinian claims to the area.”4,5 (my emphasis)
The Israeli military is haunted by the eventual transition of Palestinians to second and third phase asymmetrical warfare. The conflict would become military as opposed to civilian. This would exponentially grow the violence and casualties. Palestinians hope settlers will become demoralised by endless conflict and vote with their feet as the quality of life goes negative.6 The analogy here is the USA’s retreat from Vietnam, when they no longer accepted huge numbers of casualties.
During asymmetric warfare, entire communities are targeted ending any possibility of peaceful coexistence.7 West Bank settlements are outside the defence wall and at the mercy of changes in political commitment. Changes might occur as the fiscal burden escalates over decades of campaigns. Settler townships are a running sore where the option of ‘ethnic cleansing’ might be seen as the only viable solution with unquantifiable international consequences especially in the USA.
The West Bank conflict is a tragedy. A continuing war becoming a ‘way of life’ can only be resolved by dynamic leadership, such as was provided by Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Tony Blair’s in Northern Ireland. In an atmosphere where any negotiation is viewed as treachery that seems profoundly unlikely but hopefully after 56 years8 the political atmosphere will change before escalation happens.
Addendum One: Asymmetric warfare in Britain, 1969-98
Asymmetric warfare is an escalation from quasi-spontaneous conflict to planned, militarised attacks. Asymmetric warfare during the British civil war ended with political agreement after nearly 30 years. This is a rough overview of escalation in asymmetric warfare, which more-or-less holds good across most examples.
Phase One: Stone throwing, Molotov cocktails and sectarian violence
Phase Two: Attacks on property, targeted assassinations and ambushing of police, prison warders and soldiers.
Phase Three: Dramatic attacks such as the attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher and senior government politicians in Brighton, 1984. The Baltic Exchange bombing in the city of London, 1992 was another ‘spectacular’. This building was valued at £800m and, allowing for inflation, about £1.7bn in 2023.
The British governments response: Assassinations, state approved terrorism, internment without trial, agent provocateurs, trials without jury and militarised policing. Tit-for-tat brutality ended with Tony Blair’s government, 1997, seizing the initiative and negotiating the Good Friday Agreement, 1998.
Addendum Two: The birth of Israel, 1948
Jewish terrorists bombed the King David Hotel, 1946,9 in a phase three attack. This successful attack demoralised the British who made the political decision to abandon Palestine and allow the Jewish and Arab populations to slug it out.10 Jewish terrorists were led by Menachem Begin who later became Prime Minister of Israel.
Notes
1 Suspected Palestinian shooting attack at West Bank car wash kills 2 Israelis (msn.com)
2 Growing alarm at rise in violence in occupied West Bank | CNN This was on the 23rd June 2023 see also Palestinian killed as Israeli settlers attack West Bank village | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera There are numerous YouTube videos available of which this is one Bing Videos
3 “…a moral hazard is a situation where an economic actor has an incentive to increase its exposure to risk because it does not bear the full costs of that risk.” Moral hazard – Wikipedia
5 Israeli West Bank barrier – Wikipedia
6 Asymmetrical warfare never wins war on its own terms but it contributes to loss of willpower and a desire for a negotiated conclusion. The 9/11 bombings are a classic example of third phase asymmetrical warfare that didn’t conclude anything.
7 Peaceful coexistence – Wikipedia Basically it just means ‘agreeing to differ’, which is a lot harder than it seems.
8 1967-2023 For comparison the Anglo-Irish conflict began in the 16th century.
10 See The Exodus Incident: when emotion met geopolitics | Odeboyz’s Blog (oedeboyz.com)
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