China views Taiwan as an inseparable part of its territory, a stance that gained international recognition in 1971 when the UN recognized the People's Republic of China as the official representative of the Chinese people. Recently, China has been intensifying military pressure on Taiwan, violating its sovereignty and territorial boundaries both at sea and in the air.
While previous assessments predicted a Chinese invasion of Taiwan by 2035 or 2049 at the latest, new approaches suggest a different strategy. This strategy, known as the "Three Warfares," includes psychological warfare, public opinion warfare, and legal warfare. It focuses on activities in the "gray zone" - sustained military pressure, tightening blockade, political manipulations, and cognitive warfare, aiming to disrupt Taiwan's ability to make autonomous decisions in foreign relations, economy, and security, and to weaken Taiwan from within. This approach reflects the Chinese context-dependent thinking style and its "strategic patience" based on a long-term historical consciousness. However, it's important to note that China doesn't rule out the possibility of direct military action.
In this context, it's crucial to address the concept of "strategic culture," which describes how different countries think about and respond to strategic threats and opportunities. This concept includes, among other things: cultural values, historical perceptions and national experience, political institutions and organizational structures, geography and resources, and perceptions regarding military roles and use of force.
Two main thinking styles can be distinguished that influence strategic culture:
1. Eastern thinking: Context-dependent, flexible, holistic, capable of containing contradictions and internal tensions. It tries to leverage these tensions and find a comprehensive solution, even if imperfect. (Characteristic of China, Russia, Arab countries)
2. Western thinking: Less context-dependent, more rigid, struggles to contain contradictions and tends to break down the whole into parts. It tries to fix each part separately and reassemble them in a perfect form. (Characteristic of Israel, USA, and European countries)
Israeli society, characterized by a Western thinking style, struggles to grasp complex situations like Hamas's conduct, which combines aspirations for improving living conditions in Gaza on one hand with planning a suicide attack that brings long-term disaster to Gaza on the other. Similarly, Israeli leaders in 1973 struggled to understand Sadat's dual strategy - conducting peace negotiation contacts alongside readiness for war.
In light of this understanding of different strategic cultures, a new approach to the Gaza issue can be proposed, leaning more towards the Chinese model of coercion against Taiwan. This is based on a long-term strategy instead of seeking a quick solution, using a variety of military and economic tools flexibly for gradual weakening of the opponent instead of attempting a quick decisive victory, and exploiting internal weaknesses and tensions within the society to disrupt and undermine the opponent from within.
Instead of full occupation and long-term military rule, Israel is suggested to manage a strategy of warfare in the "gray zone" - less kinetic and more based on soft means. These include:
1. Unilateral declaration of the ״end of the war״, and readiness to lift the siege on Gaza under clear conditions of releasing all hostages and the Hamas leadership leaving Gaza.
2. Until these goals are achieved, Israel will continue to control strategic routes like the Philadelphi Corridor and Netzarim to prevent weapons smuggling. It will impose a sea and land blockade, with raids and targeted eliminations of Hamas members to prevent its re-empowerment.
3. Israel will increase humanitarian aid to residents but prevent the reconstruction of the Strip until Israel's conditions are met.
Implementing this strategy may extricate Israel from the deadlock it has reached in trying to reach an agreement with Hamas on the release of hostages.
Simultaneously, coordination with the US and gaining international legitimacy for these steps are required, along with internal expectation management and broad national consensus in Israel.
Since the beginning of the "Iron Swords" war, the Israeli government has avoided determining a strategy for managing the conflict with Hamas.
The course of action of using military force alone is not compatible with Western culture and it is doubtful whether it is compatible with the Eastern one.
This is strongly reflected in the prevention of any discussion the "day after" - or in other words the avoidance of setting a strategy.
During the "Iron Swords" war there were several opportunities to take strategic moves of the type proposed here.
All opportunities were rejected.
These postponements manipulate Israel into substantial problems on the security level, international and legal isolation, and problems in the economic situation will not be far away today either.
At a level that requires formulating a different strategy than that of "taking a response to every action or event".
The strategy proposed in this article can be a solution provided that the Israeli government finds the way to adopt it, announce it and implement it.