Defence and strategy

Miroslav KALOUS

The study is concerned with the Israeli invasion to Gaza (named by Israelis operation Cast Lead) which was launched in December 2008 and provoked a lot of controversy. One particular stream of public discussion which perked up at the time of pulling back Israeli forces has been dealing with the question if the operation was successful in terms of improving Israeli deterrent potential. The study also asks this question but in a more profound and structured manner. In order to do so it sees the operation and a few preceding and following months through the lens of four different conceptions of deterrence which can be found in Israeli security thinking (and were laid out by Uri Bar-Joseph in 1998). More specifically, the study tries to answer these questions: Which strategy of deterrence had Israel used before operation Cast Lead? Which strategy could have been strengthened by the operation? Did this strengthening actually occur?