On July 8, 2014, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched Operation Protective Edge against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and other violent extremist organizations (VEOs) attacking Israel from the Gaza Strip. This was Israel’s fourth major operation in Gaza since 2006, each immediately following a period of escalating, violent exchanges. The persistent, long-term interactions of this conflict, the increasingly dangerous nature of the VEO threat, and Israel’s adaptive approach to manage conflicts with such VEOs, provide a conceptual basis for “deterrence operations” as a component of a military support concept to a whole-of-government strategy for preventing and managing conflict with VEOs. The United States and Israel have well-developed, but distinct, concepts of deterrence. Although both concepts emerged in the 1950s as centerpieces of each nation’s national strategy, they were designed to address dissimilar existential threats, and they have evolved along largely separate paths in response to unique national security challenges. Although each concept shares a fundamental cost-benefit, rational-actor basis, their current approaches remain different. While the U.S. security environment has the inherent physical advantage of strategic depth, enabled by friendly neighbors and two oceans, the terror attacks of 9/11 shattered any notions that the U.S. homeland is secure from attack. Moreover, U.S. security interests, responsibilities, and threats are global and wide-ranging, and physical distance no longer ensures security from terrorism and modern threats, such as cyber, space, and missile attacks