Another fatal attack on Sderot yesterday, the shocking loss of a loved-one. Only the winter gales cool the missiles on the wings of fighter jets and helicopters. I shudder to think what will follow, not because it's horrible but because it has become horribly banal.

And nothing will change. Why?

Because what is so conveniently described as a Clash of Civilisations is really a clash of two national behavioural systems – those of chaos and order.

What is an ordered national behavioural system? It's a system that is outlined and run by a central government with legislation, court system and law enforcement authorities. In military conflicts, the ordered system has a regular army that can engage in battle with enemy regular armies. The obvious examples are the United States and Israel.

In a chaotic system the central government is replaced by factional, militant groups that fight one another and/or a foreign enemy. Inevitably, they are embedded in civilian populations and act from civilian areas. The Palestinians and the Iraqis come to mind in this context.

What is less obvious in this division, is that the so-called ordered system is far-less orderly than what its leaders would have you believe. The system keeps working at its order, but the need of order means that it has to suppress the chaos that underlies it.

That is why a chaotic system is perceived as such a menacing threat – it provides the ordered system a live example of what can happen if it fails. The chaotic system can also pose a genuine threat on the population of the neighbouring ordered system, as in our case of Gaza and Sderot.

This seemingly detached theorising has very real implications. If an ordered state like Israel has to engage in conflict with a chaotic society such as the Palestinians, it has no effective means to rein in the chaos.

Since it can only try to enforce order by military means it will wreak havoc, kill and destroy and never secure stability. So long as the members of the chaos society will have no genuine incentive to cooperate with the might of military order, chaos will prevail.

So when the IDF is bracing for yet another ground operation in the Gaza Strip, and we are licking our wounds once again in the face of the random carnage of Qassam fire, we must stop and think not of the strike that would put an end to all of this. We have no choice but think of the incentive that would motivate the Palestinians to turn their backs on chaos and opt for an order of their own, for which they will be responsible and reap the benefit of.