Why does Israel confuse peace with surrender?
National security depends more on the ability to unilaterally secure Israel on the battlefield than on the willingness to engage in dialogue with neighbours and seek a mutually satisfactory balance. Since its foundation, Israel has been driven by the idea that overwhelming power equals security and whoever shoots first is almost certain to shoot last and win. This leads Israel to develop a preference for deterrence by punishment rather than deterrence by denial. While the latter seeks to countervail aggression by making it more difficult for an aggressor to achieve their objective and convincing them that they will not attain their goals on the battlefield, deterrence by punishment raises costs on the aggressor by damaging civilian targets. Deterrence by punishment often involves threatening to destroy large portions of an opponents civilian population and industry. In other words, for Israel, the threat of disproportionate retaliation will convince the enemy to refrain from aggression. This offensive doctrine has been practiced through successive conflicts, institutionalised through organisational reforms and professional military training, and codified in official publications, including the official Strategy of the Israel Defense Forces of 2015 (updated in 2018). Mowing the grass  The novelty of the recent attacks on Gaza is their conception. After the 2006 war with Lebanon, Israel developed the strategy of the campaign between wars (also called mowing the grass), which constitutes its long-term strategy and the context in which it operates towards its non-state adversaries. For Israel, it is unlikely to be able to purge Hamas from Palestinian society, nor is a political solution likely to be achieved. Against an implacable, well-entrenched, non-state enemy like Hamas or Hezbollah, Israel simply needs to mow the grass once in a while to degrade the enemys capabilities. A war of attrition against Hamas and Hezbollah is probably Israels fate for the long term. Keeping the enemy off balance and reducing its capabilities requires Israeli military readiness and a willingness to use force intermittently, while maintaining a healthy and resilient Israeli home front, despite the protracted conflict. A review of Israeli military strategy reveals that the current situation reflects a natural progression in Israel's approach to war. The legitimacy of excessive force grows the more Israel wants to reduce the risk to its own soldiers. The strategic adjustment that followed the 2006 war was visible in Gaza, as soldiers avoided entering the enclave to avoid being trapped as happened in southern Lebanon. For Israel, enemy civilians are at the bottom of the hierarchy of death and as the recent Gaza offensive demonstrates, this has opened it up to global criticism.Failure to respect the notions of proportionality and discrimination in military engagement constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law. The Dahya doctrine  Governments target civilian populations for two main reasons: to reduce their own military losses and avoid defeat, or to seize and annex enemy territory. Israel is content with a status quo in which the Palestinian national movement is physically and politically divided between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. For Israel, Hamas cannot be eradicated militarily, because it is not just a resistance organisation. "Hamas is an idea [...] no idea has ever been defeated by force," as Amos Oz wrote.