TheDahiya doctrine, also spelledDahya orDahieh,[1] is an Israeli military strategy involving the large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure, ordomicide, to pressure hostile governments.[2][3][4][5] The doctrine was outlined by formerIsrael Defense Forces (IDF)Chief of General StaffGadi Eizenkot. Israel colonelGabi Siboni wrote that Israel "should target economic interests and the centers of civilian power that support the organization".[6] The logic is to cause difficulties for the civilian population so much that they will then turn against the militants, forcing the enemy tosue for peace.[6][7][4]
The doctrine is named after theDahieh neighborhood (also transliterated as Dahiyeh and Dahiya) ofBeirut, whereHezbollah had its headquarters during the2006 Lebanon War, and which was heavily damaged by the IDF.[2]
The first public announcement of the doctrine was made in an interview with generalGadi Eizenkot, commander of the IDF's northern front, published byYedioth Ahronoth in October 2008:[8]
What happened in theDahieh quarter ofBeirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which shots will be fired in the direction of Israel. We will wield disproportionate power and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases. [...] This isn't a suggestion. It's a plan that has already been authorized. [...] Every one of the Shiite villages is a military site, with headquarters, an intelligence center, and a communications center. Dozens of rockets are buried in houses, basements, attics, and the village is run byHezbollah men. In each village, according to its size, there are dozens of active members, the local residents, and alongside them fighters from outside, and everything is prepared and planned both for a defensive battle and for firing missiles at Israel. [...] Hezbollah understands well that its fire from within villages will lead to their destruction. BeforeNasrallah gives the order to fire at Israel, he will need to think 30 times if he wants to destroy his support base in the villages. This is not a theoretical matter for him. The possibility of harm to the population is the main factor restraining Nasrallah, and the reason for the quiet in the last two years.[7][9][10][8][11][full citation needed]
In 2010, Eizenkot formulated his views in writing as follows:
The method of action in Lebanon [in 2006] was that, in the first stage targets were attacked which formed an immediate threat, and in the second stage the population was evacuated for its protection, and only after the evacuation of the population were Hezbollah targets attacked more broadly. I am convinced that this pattern was a moral pattern, that it was correct to use, and if another campaign is required it will be correct to act in the same way. It is Hezbollah which transforms the hundreds of villages and the Shiite areas of Lebanon into combat spaces. I hope this understanding will cause the organization to consider carefully before it decides to use any more terror, kidnapping, or shootings.[12]
According to analystGabi Siboni at the IsraeliInstitute for National Security Studies:
With an outbreak of hostilities [with Hezbollah], the IDF will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy's actions and the threat it poses. Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes. Israel's test will be the intensity and quality of its response to incidents on the Lebanese border or terrorist attacks involving Hezbollah in the north or Hamas in the south. In such cases, Israel again will not be able to limit its response to actions whose severity is seemingly proportionate to an isolated incident. Rather, it will have to respond disproportionately in order to make it abundantly clear that the State of Israel will accept no attempt to disrupt the calm currently prevailing along its borders. Israel must be prepared for deterioration and escalation, as well as for a full-scale confrontation. Such preparedness is obligatory in order to prevent long term attrition.[13][14]
Noting that Dahya was theShia quarter in Beirut that was razed by theIsraeli Air Force during the 2006 Lebanon War, Israeli journalistYaron London wrote in 2008 that the doctrine "will become entrenched in our security discourse".[15]
Some analysts have argued that Israel implemented such a strategy during the2008–09 Gaza War,[16] with theGoldstone Report concluding that the Israeli strategy was "designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population".[17]
The 2009United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict makes several references to the Dahya doctrine, calling it a concept which requires the application of "widespread destruction as a means of deterrence" and which involves "the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations". It concluded that the doctrine had been put into practice during the conflict.[18] However, in a 1 April 2011 op-ed, one of the lead authors of the report, JudgeRichard Goldstone, stated that some of his conclusions may have been different had the Israeli government cooperated with his team during the investigation.[19] Goldstone's three co-authors—Hina Jilani,Christine Chinkin, andDesmond Travers—were strongly critical of Goldstone's statement, releasing a statement standing by the report, claiming that in response to the pressure to change their conclusions "had we given in to pressures from any quarter to sanitise our conclusions, we would be doing a serious injustice to the hundreds of innocent civilians killed during the Gaza conflict, the thousands injured, and the hundreds of thousands whose lives continue to be deeply affected by the conflict and the blockade".[20]
The doctrine is defined in a 2009 report by thePublic Committee Against Torture in Israel as follows: "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 duringOperation Cast Lead.[6]
Commentators forThe Guardian,The Washington Post, andMondoweiss have noted that the attacks of theIsraeli Defense Forces on the civilian infrastructure of theGaza Strip during theGaza war may constitute an extension of the doctrine.[21][22]
Writing inThe Guardian,Paul Rogers ofBradford University argues that Israel's goal in the 2023 war is to "corral the Palestinians into a small zone in the southwest of Gaza where they can be more easily controlled", and that the long-term goal is to make clear that Israel "will not stand for any opposition".[23]
Sources reportedly told+972 Magazine that bombing of non military targets was to “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas".[24]
Paul Rogers argues that in their using the Dahiya doctrine in the Israel–Hamas war, Israel will fail in its goal of eradicating Hamas, which will come back in a different form, unless "some way is found to begin the very difficult task of bringing the communities together."[23]
Richard Falk wrote 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."[25]
the threat to destroy civilian infrastructure of hostile regimes, as Israel did to the Dahiya neighborhood of Beirut, where Hizbollah was headquartered in 2006
IDF Northern Command chief says in any future war Israel would use 'disproportionate' force on Lebanese villages from which Hizbullah will fire rockets at its cities. 'From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases,' Maj.-Gen. Eisenkot tells Yedioth Ahronoth
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