With no grand solutions either violent or peaceful at hand, the IDF's preferred option remains conflict management. At its core lies the old, ugly but useful concept that has always been central to Israel's security doctrine: deterrence, writ large.
Everything that could go wrong went wrong with a vengeance on the night of September 17, when four Israeli Air Force F-16s launched a successfully destructive raid on a warehouse in Latakia where sensitive military items destined for delivery to Hezbollah in Lebanon were apparently stored.