Last update - 00:00 07/01/2007
GOC Central Command says Ramallah raid was 'error of judgement'
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
Israel Defense Forces GOC Central Command Yair Naveh admitted Sunday that the timing of the IDF operation in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday, in which 4 Palestinians were killed and 20 others wounded, was an "error of judgment."
The raid was conducted a short time before Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Thursday at Sharm el-Sheikh in Sinai.
During a meeting with Defense Minister Amir Peretz and IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, Naveh asked for new guidelines to be set for approving "sensitive" operations - carried out in areas where there is a high likelihood of glitches, and especially when the timing corresponds to diplomatic moves.
According to the existing regulations, daytime arrest raids in West Bank city centers are approved by Judea and Samaria Brigade Commander Yair Golan, while undercover operations are approved by Naveh.
It appears that Peretz would like sensitive operations to be subject to the approval of IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz or even his own. Senior IDF sources, however, downplayed the importance of the issue, saying the new regulations were barely discussed during the meeting.
Peretz called the meeting to determine why he was not informed of the arrest operation before it was carried out. Peretz learned of the skirmish from his advisors, who had read about it in Internet news sites.
Earlier on Sunday, another senior officer at the IDF Central Command admitted the timing of the raid was a mistake.
"We were wrong," the officer said, "we thought the operation would go smoothly and that the force would leave the city before anyone noticed. In practice the operation became a thorny affair."
According to the officer, Olmert's meeting with Mubarak was taken into account by the Central Command, as well as the presence of foreign press in Ramallah. But the operation had been approved because it was believed that the arrest can be carried out without complications.
The officer said also that Rabia Hamid, the wanted Fatah militant, was suspected of involvement in eight recent shooting attacks in the Ramallah area in which an Israeli-Arab man was killed and several soldiers and other civilians were hurt.
Hamed was seriously wounded in the raid but managed to escape.
Officers to debrief Peretz
Senior officers in the IDF brief Defense Peretz Sunday on the errors in the Ramallah raid.
The undercover troops, wearing civilian clothing to blend in with the locals, sought to arrest Hamed but he managed to escape.
Following the shooting, the force was recognized as Israeli and was attacked by gunmen and by civilians throwing stones and firebombs. Four Palestinians were killed during the fighting and 20 others were injured.
During an initial debriefing soldiers in the force said the fugitive was armed with a pistol, but threw it away when he saw the IDF troops and ran off. Once their identity had been revealed, the force walked to the front of the building and waited to be evacuated, but by then they were caught in a hail of gunfire and firebombs.
Brigadier General Yair Golan, commander of IDF forces in the West Bank, will hold a detailed investigation into the incident in the coming days.
Meanwhile, Peretz asked Chief of Staff Dan Halutz for a briefing - on the basis of the interim findings - on what went wrong in the operation.
Defense sources said Saturday that Peretz has no intention of confronting the military over the operation, even though he was initially very angry that he was not informed of it.
At the IDF, they maintain that there is nothing flawed in the fact that the defense minister was not aware of the operation. Military sources described it as a "fairly routine" mission.
However, a daylight operation in the center of Palestinian cities requires the authorization of GOC Central Command, Major General Yair Naveh. Naveh had okayed the operation.
The same sources said it would be a mistake for Peretz not to confront the senior military officers on this matter because the risk inherent in the mission should have been obvious to them, and they should have been more sensitive to the timing, coinciding with the Olmert-Mubarak meeting in Sinai.
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