for sf;

I hear you, but I would like to offer what I think is a more accurate view…

1) Propaganda from extremists would have you believe that a large fraction of every day muslims are eager to die for the cause. The events of the last ten years though have proven that this is false. Only a very *small* number of believers are willing to be a martyr (suicide bomber or fighter). However a very *large* number of believers are happy to support the willing-to-be-martyrs in exchange for avoiding death themselves. The palestinian tribes seem to have a higher number of willing martyrs than anyone else but it is still a relatively small number. So the use of deterrence is possible. Yes, some new recruits will result from accidents (collateral damage) but not as many as are eliminated by direct action (kinetic ops)…especially since the Israelis have become very good at avoiding accidental kills.

2) You seem not to understand the military use of the term “deterrence”. Deterrence is the use of a threat to convince a party to modify their future behavior. For something to be a deterrent it must cause the counterparty to choose to modify their own behavior. Your example (killing a person deters them) is not correct since the person killed has not chosen to modify their future behavior. Deterrence is a precise variation of the broader term “coercion”.

3) Deterrence is not aimed at the committed. The fighters/martyrs generally have to either be ordered to stop (by their own authorities) or killed (by counterterrorist forces; pick your flavor).

4) Deterrence is aimed at the uncommitted: the supporting population (who may be believers) who do not wish to die. The largest deterrence is threat of death but threat of privation can also have a large effect.

5) Deterrence relies on a willingness to actually deliver the threatened force…i.e. there has to be a real threat.

Analysis:
Threat of privation in Gaza would probably be ineffective given that they seem to be willing to put up with quite a bit due to their own efforts let alone external pressures.
Your proposal to warn people in advance of returning fire is not an example of deterrence but of waste…there would be no real threat (due to the warning) and thus no reason for people to modify behavior.
How much retaliatory fire to return 1:1, 1:20, 1:whatever would have to be determined by the Israelis based on observation. Returning one rocket would likely have little impact on behavior since it would represent little real threat (no worse than the odds of being struck by lightning maybe). The right number would likely be something where the perceived threat of counterfire was higher than the perceived threat from the local gangs. Unfortunately in Gaza that would probably take an extreme amount due to the following paragraph…
What makes (IMHO) the West Bank/Gaza problem intractable is that the terror groups are not significantly supported by the population. They are supported emotionally and by direct action of course but the real sources of money, medical care, food, weapons, etc are all outside of the territories. That makes it very difficult for the population to effectively withdraw support. The terror groups get their key supplies from elsewhere so they could continue to coerce/kill/etc internally for an extended period thereby breaking the will of the population and retaining control. It also means that the fighting groups do not actually need local support as much as they need local neutrality. As a palestinian you are basically screwed.
What outside groups maintain this hellhole for the palestinian people? Mainly the EU, with some help from the surrounding Arab nations and Iran.

I doubt the situation can be resolved without classic counterinsurgency tactics. That means that basic society must be supported directly (security, food, medical, etc) by someone so that the population is *able* to effectively withdraw support. Security is the most important (whether they would like to or not the population currently is not *able* to withdraw support from the terror groups). At the same time kinetic action against the terror groups would have to continue and the action (kinetic or other) would have to be carried against their external supporters to coerce them into cutting off that support.

Israel knows this but is unwilling to be that “someone” so they instead try to fight a war of attrition with the actual fighters themselves. This is ultimately at best a stalemate but it appears the Israelis feel the stalemate is less expensive than a full-on counterinsurgency would be.

We (America) learned this in Vietnam negatively (where we failed to either support the population or carry effective action against the supporters), in Iraq negatively (where we started to duplicate the mistakes of Vietnam), and now in Iraq positively (once we switched to securing the population and carried effective action to Iran and Syria…some kinetic some diplomatic).

This would be a good time to solve the problem. The EU is in financial crisis…worse than in America…so they could probably be persuaded to cut support funds to a trickle. Israel could finish their assault with an occupation that provides security to the population while continuing kinetic action on the terror groups. America could carry financial and diplomatic action to the terror group supporters (and probably also kinetic in the case of Iran for a two-fer as it would also help Iraq). The sand in the gears with this scenario is that Israel’s history is so long in Gaza that America would probably have to take over security duties from Israel fairly rapidly after a complete occupation. Even better would be to try this in five years using Iraqi forces with American oversight to run security long enough to exterminate the terror groups. Iraqis would be more easily able to establish a rapport with the people.

Longer than I intended…my $2 instead of $0.02. Sorry.