Description:
Since its last confrontation with a regular army (the 1982 Lebanon War), Israel has been at war with semi-military organizations in a battlefield of limited war. The purpose of the limited war is to reduce, undermine, suppress, or eliminate the concrete threat against the State of Israel. The enemy defined by the government and the security establishment is the terrorist organizations. This is explicitly not war against the civilian population, which is not the enemy, but the paradox is that the civilian population is the source from which the guerilla and terrorist organizations draw their strength. In addition, these organizations justify their actions morally and politically by operating in the name of that population. At times the civilian support is based on genuine conviction; at times it is coerced. History shows that in warfare of this type, terrorism and guerilla – and certainly popular uprisings – have no life without the support of that population.