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‘Mowing the Grass’, Israel’s strategy in the twenty-first century against hostile non-state groups, reflects the assumption that Israel finds itself in a protracted intractable conflict. The use of force in such a conflict is not intended to attain impossible political goals, but a strategy of attrition designed primarily to debilitate the enemy capabilities. Only after showing much restraint in its military responses does Israel act forcefully to destroy the capabilities of its foes, hoping that occasional large-scale operations also have a temporary deterrent effect in order to create periods of quiet along its borders. The Israeli approach is substantively different from the current Western strategic thinking on dealing with non-state military challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Moshe Dayan was Israel's most influential and original soldier. He shaped the Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF's) culture first as chief of staff in the 1956 campaign and later as defense minister during both the conventional wars of 1967 and 1973. However, before, between, and during these large conventional engagements, the IDF conducted ‘Current Security Operations,’ small military operations against Arab insurgency. After 1967, the IDF faced the challenge of controlling the population in West Bank and Gaza. Moshe Dayan was instrumental in setting the policy toward the population from the foundation of the IDF to the crucial time after 1967; his ideas on and practices in counterinsurgency form a tradition in themselves. Dayan's attitude toward the population developed first under the mentorship years of Charles Orde Wingate, the British Army, and the Palmach (the Jewish strike units) during the British mandate in Palestine; then the reprisals period in the early 1950s, subsequently as a reporter and an observer in Vietnam in 1966, and finally in the ‘open bridges policy,’ developed by Dayan immediately after the Six-Day War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the difficulties associated with third-party nation-building efforts and the transfer of authority from occupying military forces to local military and police forces. It is written in response to the article "The Promethean Dilemma: Third-party State-building in Occupied Territories" by Keith Darden and Harris Mylonas from the present issue. Darden's and Mylonas' views on counterinsurgency in occupied areas are evaluated, with the present authors noting the importance of population security in creating loyal local forces. They also use the example of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) to demonstrate that effective local forces can be created prior to successful nation-building.