Rubicon3: Asymmetrical Warfare

When editorialists decry Israel's "disproportionate" response to Palestinian rockets, other facets of asymmetry are always completely ignored. First, Israel follows a moral code and tries to spare civilians, whereas the Palestinians deliberately target innocents. Then, Palestinians use Western media openness against the Israelis, while they themselves answer to no one. Additionally, Israelis care about world opinion and doing the right thing, while their opponents care only about winning. These differences form the basis of a psychological imbalance that all the military might in the universe cannot remedy.

From the Middle East Quarterly:

Most analysts acknowledge that Israel enjoys military superiority over its Arab neighbors,[2] a status preserved in part by the U.S. commitment to Israel's qualitative military edge relative to the Arab states.[3] Many Arab commentators and academics use this asymmetry for propaganda. Pro-Palestinian polemicist Edward Said juxtaposed "Israeli power" and "Palestinian powerlessness."[4] Nabil Ramlawi, the permanent observer for Palestine to the United Nations in Geneva wrote in 2002 of an alleged massacre in which Israel used "tanks and armoured vehicles, under a barrage of heavy gunfire from Apache gunships," and further committed a "long list of massacres" and "war crimes, State-sponsored terrorism and systematic human rights violations against the Palestinian people."[5] But Israel's technological edge does not mean that it enjoys every advantage in its battles with terror groups: While Israel subscribes to traditional restrictions on its battlefield conduct, its Islamist and jihadi adversaries, who eschew international humanitarian law, enjoy an asymmetric advantage born of psychological impunity.
The Israeli military faces a serious dilemma because it adheres to a specific moral code. Despite Arab propaganda to the contrary, Israeli military planners respect human life.[6] Tel Aviv University philosophy professor Asa Kasher and current Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intelligence chief Amos Yadlin write that, even when dealing with terrorists, Israeli soldiers conduct operations "in a manner that strictly protects human life and dignity by minimizing all collateral damage to individuals not directly involved in acts or activities of terror."[7] When trying to oust terrorists from Jenin in April 2002, for example, Israeli commanders decided to pursue a house-to-house ground strategy rather than employ the kind of airpower that would keep Israeli soldiers out of danger but would heighten the risk of collateral civilian casualties.[8] This decision cost the lives, in one incident, of thirteen IDF soldiers in an ambush in the Hawashin district on April 9.[9]
The Israeli judiciary also provides a check on the military. Israeli courts regularly impose restrictions on military tactics, despite the "price paid by the limitations put on the army's actions."[10] Arab petitioners have a voice. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz wrote that Israel's courts represent an "independent judiciary willing to stand up to its own government."[11] In 2004, the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled for petitioner Fatma al-Aju against the Israeli military in a case that called for the IDF to take into consideration obligations towards civilians, such as allowing medical teams to enter combat areas, and other humanitarian needs when planning military operations.[12] The court also sided with Palestinian Arabs regarding the routing of Israel's security barrier.[13] Arab states have no such judicial independence nor are their leaderships subject to the rule of law.
Comparative prisoner treatment also highlights the discrepancy: The Israeli government provides access to and information about captured terrorists, opening itself to criticism of their treatment,[14] whereas neither Hamas nor Hezbollah even acknowledge whether captured Israelis are alive, let alone allow international monitors access to them.
The result is an asymmetry in which Israel restricts itself in accordance with international law from indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets while groups such as Fatah, Hamas, and Hezbollah intentionally target Israeli civilians and employ their own civilians as human shields to deter an Israeli response. Avi Dichter, Israel's public security minister, spoke to this predicament in the context of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war: "You can [conduct military operations] in a short time; you can flood southern Lebanon with ground troops, and you can bomb villages without warning anyone, and it will be faster. But you'll kill a lot more innocent people and suffer a lot more casualties, and we don't intend to do either."[15] Maj.-Gen. Giora Eiland, Israel's national security advisor from 2005 to 2006, explained the Israeli decision-making process: "We are forced to kill someone only when four conditions are met: Number one, there is no way to arrest someone. Number two, the target is important enough. Number three, we do it when we believe that we can guarantee very few civilian casualties. And number four, we do it when we believe that there is no way that we can delay or postpone this operation, something that we consider as a ticking bomb."[16]
Israel is further harmed by the invocation of international law to implicate the legitimacy of its fight against its adversaries. International law is routinely misconstrued by the media commentators and non-specialists who cite it. Some journalists, for example, describe Israeli treatment of Palestinian terrorists as a contravention of international law. This is misleading. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, among others, fail to meet the criteria required for full protection under the Geneva conventions.[17] More broadly, human rights groups selectively quote international law but fail to note that "protected persons" (i.e., citizens under occupation) may not participate in violent activities against the occupying power.[18] Despite rhetoric to the contrary, there is no "right of resistance" under international law to either civilians under occupation or irregular forces that purport to challenge an occupier.[19]
Conventional war between armies may favor Israel, but the fact that Islamists do not differentiate between civilians and legitimate combatants creates an asymmetry in favor of those who are eager to use any method available to advance their cause.

There's a lot more. Good article.

Addendum:

A few minutes after posting this, I came across a BBC article that completely misses the boat as described above. It is even titled, "The Middle East's Asymmetric Warfare." They discuss the frustration of the Israeli military in dealing with the Palestinians, unable to answer their puny rockets.

Completely ignoring the reasons why.

The BBC article states:

What is going on between the Palestinian rocket squads in Gaza and the Israeli army is a classic fight between the strong and the weak - which is known these days as asymmetric warfare.

The thing about it is that the weaker side can exert leverage far beyond the power of its weapons.

That accounts for some of the rage and frustration in Israel's defence establishment.

They are big, they are strong, and they have some of the most sophisticated weapons systems in the world. And they are struggling to stop rockets that are the lowest of low tech.

It is not because they can't stop the rockets.

It is because they choose not to, in order to spare civilians.

Why does the BBC draw a moral equivalence between the two sides? They can't be that stupid. There's an agenda involved.