Dahiya doctrine

The Dahiya doctrine refers to Israeli Defense Force military doctrine in which the army deliberately targets civilian infrastructure and populations considered to be sympathetic to or supportive of the enemy, in order to harm the civilian population to such an extent that it will pressure an enemy organization, thereby increasing deterrence. Employed by the Israel Defense Forces, the doctrine is named after a Hizbullah stronghold in Beirut with large apartment buildings, which were bombed by the IDF during the 2006 Lebanon War.

The doctrine was defined by Israeli journalist Yaron London as follows:

<quote>We have failed in our sophisticated attempts to distinguish between innocent individuals and sinning leaders. We have failed in the effort to distinguish between “simple people who also have fathers and children” and those who incite those simple folk. Without saying so explicitly, we reached the conclusion that nations are responsible for their leaders’ acts.

In practical terms, the Palestinians in Gaza are all Khaled Mashaal, the Lebanese are all Nasrallah, and the Iranians are all Ahmadinejad. </quote>

A 2009 report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel defined the doctrine: "The military approach expressed in the Dahiye Doctrine deals with asymmetrical combat against an enemy that is not a regular army and is embedded within civilian population; its objective is to avoid a protracted guerilla war. According to this approach Israel has to employ tremendous force disproportionate to the magnitude of the enemy’s actions." The report further argues that the doctrine was fully implemented during Operation Cast Lead.

Israeli journalist Yaron London wrote in 2008 that the doctrine, "will become entrenched in our security discourse" following the alleged Iranian takeover of Lebanon and the mobilization of the latter country's social infrastructure in support of Hizbullah.

The 2009 Goldstone report quoted IDF Northern Command Chief Gadi Eisenkot, who said, "What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases. [...] This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved."

Some experts in international law have argued that the Dahiya Doctrine falls under the definition of terrorism. For example Princeton University professor of International Law, Richard Falk argued that under the doctrine "the civilian infrastructure of adversaries such as Hamas or Hezbollah are treated as permissible military targets, which is not only an overt violation of the most elementary norms of the law of war and of universal morality, but an avowal of a doctrine of violence that needs to be called by its proper name: STATE TERRORISM."

See also

• Counter-terrorism
• Counter-insurgency
• Fourth generation warfare
• Arab-Israeli conflict

• Israeli-Lebanese conflict
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• International law and the Arab-Israeli conflict

• IDF doctrine, IDF Code of Conduct