(Re-posted from Trepennwitz.com with the author’s permission)
I have to admit that there don’t seem to be many palatable options open to Israel in this classic asymmetric conflict in which we’ve been engaged (against our will).
We’re like a big kid on the playground who has been attacked by a much smaller kid. We only have two options open to us:
Option 1: Beat the sh*t out of the little kid who has taken a swing at us (and be condemned for beating up a little kid).
Option 2: Turn the other cheek and let the kid bloody our nose, blacken our eyes and pretty much do whatever he wants (and be ridiculed for getting beaten up by a little kid).
So far we’ve been trying to walk a path somewhere between those two options; by trying to block as many punches and kicks as possible, while hitting back with enough force to try to injure the little kid just enough to get him to lose interest in continuing to hit and kick us for awhile.
But this approach has sort of blown up in our faces, and has gotten us a double dose of condemnation: On the one hand we are ridiculed for being a full fledged country at the mercy of a rogue terror organization AND on the other hand, we’re berated for picking on a defenseless proto-state.
Enter Professor Yisroel Aumann, who received the Nobel prize for economics in 2005 for his work on conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis. Professor Aumann has come up with a novel approach to dealing with what seems like an un-winnable conflict: Instead of hitting the opponent… step back and allow the opponent to hit himself.
His suggestion is as simple as it is brilliant:
In a recent lecture he suggested Israel design and build a fully automatic system that would fire a rocket back at Gaza immediately, whenever Gaza terrorists fired a missile at Israel. Presumably, these missiles would be randomly or automatically aimed in a way that would inflict civilian casualties on the Arab side, just as Hamas seeks to cause civilian casualties on the Israeli side.
He stated that “The goal is truly that the system will be without any human involvement, no human control. This is very important, because if there is control, they will tell us that we are criminals and murderers and cruel… However, if there is no control of the system on the Israeli side, the responsibility for civilian deaths caused on the Arab side falls on the people who fired the missiles that set off the Israeli system”. [source]
Technically, this should not be a difficult system to design and implement. In fact, all of the radar, command & control, computer and missile components already exist. Someone just needs to give the order to combine them into a self-contained closed system that can be set up to operate autonomously like a house alarm that is armed when the home owner goes out.
Obviously, it would have to be an order of magnitude more reliable than a house alarm so that it can’t be accidentally triggered by anything except an incoming rocket or mortar from Gaza.
In my humble opinion, this is the best and only solution for dealing with asymmetrical threats such as Israel is currently facing from Gaza. At least, until such time as the world decides to remove the financial incentive for these terror organizations to continue their belligerency.