Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA)

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Can a Conventional Army Vanquish a Terrorist Insurgency?

January 1, 2007 | Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror

It is necessary to adopt an alternative concept of victory, which should be called “minimal victory,” in which terror is not destroyed, but is contained at a minimal level, and one must invest constant energy in order to prevent its eruption. In a continuous and uninterrupted effort since Operation “Defensive Shield” in April 2002, after it counted 132 dead in one month (the equivalent of 1,400 deaths a year), Israel’s terror casualty rate declined to 11 civilians for all of 2006.