Sar Shalom
This is not specific to Israel's struggles, but it is something affects Israel's decision-making. During military, and other, campaigns, courses of action of invariably described as either "strategic" or "tactical." However, there is not much agreement on what is meant by "strategy." I would like to suggest a brief description of strategy and then a few words about how to evaluate Israeli strategy within that framework.
Tactics are the actions and procedures undertaken in order to achieve an immediate objective. Strategy is a chain of objectives where fulfillment of one objective on the chain facilitates the fulfillment of subsequent objectives. Tom Ricks described the division between strategy and tactics as incorrect tactics for the correct strategy will eventually correct themselves whereas an incorrect strategy directing correct tactics will never correct itself. The framework I propose would explain why this is so. If you have an intermediate objective that if fulfilled will create the conditions to fulfill your ultimate objective but your tactics are failing to fulfill your intermediate condition, once you adopt tactics that fulfill your intermediate objective, doing so will deliver your ultimate objective. However, if your reasoning behind what intermediate objective will help you fulfill your ultimate objective is faulty, no matter how effective your tactics are in fulfilling your intermediate objective, they will never help you fulfill your ultimate objective. Another way to view it is that you need sound tactics to win your battles, but you need a sound strategy for winning your battles to help you win your war.
To put this understanding into practice, consider the objective of convincing non-activists that Fatah is not a suitable partner for a peace agreement. A tactical approach would start with looking for examples of actions and words from Fatah-officials contrary to readiness for peace and try to present as many of them to the audience. A strategic approach would start by trying to identify what it is that leads people to view Fatah as a partner. An example was shown in a debate between Daniel Gordis and Jeremy Ben-Ami in which Ben-Ami responded to Gordis' argument that even if Abbas were to agree to something tolerable for Israel that he would be unable to bring his people along with, “I just find that so depressing.” In other words, the obstacle to considering that Fatah may not be partner for peace is that if Fatah is not a partner, then there is no partner, and it is too depressing to think that there is no partner at all.
This obstacle to accurately viewing Fatah can be attacked by attacking the notion that if Fatah is not a partner then there is no partner at all. It is true that if Fatah is not a partner then there is no partner at all who can put an end to the war now, now, now. However, if ability to bring the Palestinian population immediately is not required, there are Palestinian Arabs such as Sheikh Jabari of Hebron and Mohammed Daoudi Dajani of Wasatiya who are suitable. If Fatah's current boosters could be convinced to redirect their efforts to building Palestinian public esteem for the suitable peace partners in their society, and to be patient for the time it would take to build their public esteem, the chief obstacle to a level-headed assessment of Fatah would disappear. Further strategy might be needed in order to achieve those two conditions, but the point is to start from the objective, think of what conditions would make that objective feasible, how can those conditions be created, and then repeat until you have immediately actionable items.
