An Israeli Air Force jet blew up a car in Gaza. The car happened to be carrying Kassam missiles. That was a typical operation by Shabak. The Israeli security service maintains an enormous network of agents in Gaza, and supplies targeting information to the IDF.

In Lebanon, Israel lacked equally vast numbers of informants and had to rely on brute firepower. Air strikes against cars in Gaza are very expensive, but the massive use of jets against guerrillas a la Lebanon-2006 proved altogether non-feasible in economic and political terms.

America tries to fight insurgents with a regular army in Iraq. That’s like hitting a moth with a sledgehammer. A sledgehammer is only good to demolish the moth’s house. America, however, has positive, if exceedingly immoral, experience from the war in Afghanistan against the Russians. There, the United States fostered anti-Russian insurgency – to the great detriment of the locals.

Whether in Iraq or in Gaza, there are two roads to victory: through utter destruction or by fighting the guerillas at the micro-level. There are two modes of micro-level fighting: have the police intelligence pinpoint the targets for conventional forces, or prompt the locals to wage your war for you themselves. The latter option is cheaper and bleeds the target society. A protracted civil war will force many Arabs out of Gaza. No Arab country would finance such a war, but Israel can.

The Palestinians will always have enough weapons for terrorist warfare. They have no shortage of machine guns to shoot at Jews. Arming one Palestinian faction against another won’t harm Israel. Years ago, Israel nurtured Hamas to oppose Arafat. Indecision has made that policy – as many other policies – counter-productive. Israel strengthened Hamas without bleeding the PLO. The proper approach is to give money and arms specifically for fighting. No bodies – no money. We pay for the Hamas body count. Don’t allow Fatah to grow strong on Israeli aid; money or weapons must be spent as received. Perhaps Fatah won’t agree to such an escalation. In that case, foster another group. Israeli aid will make any Arab group strong.

Get the Palestinians to fight the war for Israel.