You Can’t Deter a Terrorist

In the volatile cauldron of the Middle East, Israel’s strategy against Hamas has long revolved around the concept of deterrence. The idea was simple: Israel aimed to convince Hamas to refrain from its violent pursuits by imposing threats and limited force. However, as we now witness, this strategy has proven to be a catastrophic miscalculation.

The core predicament of deterrence lies in its ability to credibly threaten military action or nuclear retaliation despite the significant costs it entails for both parties involved. In this context, Israel’s Achilles’ heel is Hamas, an actor seemingly impervious to the logic of deterrence.

Israel attempted to establish deterrence through coercive measures. Israel wanted Hamas to believe that the failure to maintain peace would have dire consequences. But here’s the rub: Hamas doesn’t care about those consequences. They welcome the violent Israeli response as a propaganda tool to rally their supporters. Incursions and embargoes were employed as instruments of deterrence, yet they failed miserably. Diplomacy was shunned, as Hamas believed war served their cause better than peace. With Gaza already in dire economic straits, the prospect of war with Israel held little economic risk for them. The elites in Gaza safeguarded their families from the conflict’s horrors while leaving the average Palestinian behind—a staggering display of moral corruption.

Israel sought policy changes from an organization whose charter explicitly calls for eradicating Israel. They hoped for a leadership shift from an organization whose leaders are irrevocably committed to destruction.

Instead of bowing to Israel’s attempts to weaken them, Hamas has grown more defiant. Pundits and analysts have suggested that Israel must “cut off the head of the snake.”

Deterrence theory, as a concept, has faced significant criticism from scholars over the years, and Israel’s recent experience highlights some of its fundamental shortcomings. One of the key criticisms revolves around the questionable assumption that decision-makers are always rational actors. In reality, leaders often act irrationally, driven by emotions and psychological biases that can lead to losing self-control and humanity.

Hamas, in this context, emerges as a profoundly irrational actor. The Palestinian cause is in disarray, with competing factions and varying commitments to violence. Hamas’s cost-benefit calculation seems to discount the value of both Israeli and Palestinian human life, making it increasingly difficult to negotiate with or contain them.

Israel has reached a point where it is no longer interested in deterring Hamas. Instead, it appears determined to force the people of Gaza to either expel Hamas themselves or completely eradicate Hamas.

Realistically, the only way to bring an end to the conflict with Hamas may well be the end of Hamas itself. Even then, we must recognize that other militant Palestinian factions will likely fill the void, perpetuating the cycle of violence. Together with the destruction of Hamas will be the death of many people, Israelis and Palestinians.

Warfare kills, and modern warfare kills citizens. The Geneva Convention’s “rule” against killing civilians, and even Jewish law, may be ineffectual and counter-effective to the difficulties of this situation. You can’t end the Hamas reign of terror without collateral losses – the death of innocent people. If you aren’t willing to take that chance, you rely upon a failed deterrence policy and further cycles of death and destruction.

Israel’s leadership appears to have underestimated the true nature of Hamas. Hamas banked on Israel’s extreme reaction to their provocations, and their resolve to bring about war has proven far more potent than Israel’s resolve to secure peace.

We must ask how Israel could have pretended that rational actors governed Hamas. Prior conflicts, as recent as 2021, clearly demonstrated that Hamas actively invited a violent resolution of their differences with Israel.

In confronting this reality, Israel now faces an unenviable choice: to find a way to compel Hamas to change or to prepare for a future where the only resolution is the end of Hamas itself. Whichever path it chooses, one thing is sure: the failure of deterrence has left an indelible mark on Israel’s security landscape, and its leaders must grapple with the sobering lessons of this failure as they chart their course forward in this turbulent region.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame