Though short, the war in Gaza touched on nearly every dilemma of asymmetric conflict raised in the preceding chapters. Searching for a military solution to the threat posed by long-range Grad missiles, Israel struggled with the boundaries of disproportionate harm; the ever-present danger of unnecessary civilian suffering; the inability to distinguish between combatants, noncombatants, and participating civilians; the lure of new weapons; the complexity of fighting in built-up areas; and a less than friendly media. Facing massive firepower and no chance of fighting anything close to a conventional war, the Palestinians confronted dilemmas of their own as they deployed their fighters among the civilian population, stored military supplies in mosques, placed command and control centers in hospitals and civilian enclaves, mounted indiscriminate attacks on mixed civilian/military targets, and manipulated the media. These dilemmas are emblematic of asymmetric conflict, displayed in all their complexity in the Gaza War. But there was more to this war. In Gaza, and in contrast to the conduct of many earlier asymmetric conflicts, the state power tried to fight a ground war with zero tolerance for military casualties. Remarkably, the attempt was largely successful, but the cost to noncombatants may have been intolerable.

FIGHTING A ZERO-TOLERANCE GROUND WAR

Sensitive to public concern for military casualties, NATO forces fighting in Yugoslavia in mid-1999 successfully waged a zero-tolerance air war as they flew thousands of sorties without the loss of a single pilot.