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In the War Against Terror, the Best Defense Remains the Offensive
(Israel Defense Forces) Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon - IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon told the International Conference on Low-Intensity Conflict Tuesday: There is a tendency to state that the struggle against terrorism is an asymmetric struggle in which an armed and well-organized, large military force contends with a much smaller and weaker force. Yet, analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the sides shows that in a terror campaign, the terrorist elements actually have considerable advantages most of the time, due to the differences in the cultures of the campaign. For the terrorist any target is legitimate, whereas the military force is very selective in selecting targets; and where the military force has high visibility, the terrorist quickly fades into his environment. Creating intelligence dominance is a critical factor for managing and dominating the low-intensity conflict. Combating terrorism conducted from a civilian environment increases the necessity of hard, precise, and qualitative intelligence from various sources to provide the ability to choose the targets without inflicting collateral damage. There is an acute necessity to develop "surgical" operational capabilities based on stand-off and precise munitions, operational doctrine, and rapid response conducted by special units trained and equipped for such missions. The similarity to "classical wars" is that even in the war against terror, the best defense remains the offensive approach. We constantly try to persuade the Palestinians to change their perception and recognize that it is in their best interest to reject and fight terror. On the other hand, we have no choice but to continue fighting against terrorism on our own, while maintaining our values and mobilizing international support for our campaign. Direct activity against the terror operatives cannot on its own bring about a decisive conclusion to the confrontation. Nevertheless, the accumulation of successful actions against terror infrastructure and operatives, together with the growing damage to the leadership, and the success in preventing many attacks, do have a certain effect on the capabilities of the terror organizations.