On Wednesday morning, when the extent of the catastrophe on the northern border began to become clear, Chief of Staff Dan Halutz left his office in the General Staff building in the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv and went to the nearby air force "pit" to run the campaign from there. The pit, deep underground, has no cellular phone reception. Nonetheless, barely an hour passed before Web sites and radio stations were detailing just what had been said in the closed, secret meeting of the generals. The participants described the abduction as a "turning point" in the region and demanded the Lebanese government pay a high price. One of them, it was reported, said Israel must punish Lebanon and blast its civil infrastructure "30 years back." By yesterday, the army was already beginning to implement this approach. The Beirut airport was bombed, as was the Hezbollah television station Al-Manar. Lebanon was also placed under a full sea blockade.
On Wednesday afternoon, when Halutz was making his way back from the pit - to the Defense Minister's Bureau, which is near his office - the reports streamed into the press once more: The chief of staff is planning to recommend harsh action in Lebanon that will "change the rules of the game" on the northern front. Before Defense Minister Amir Peretz had managed to make an initial public statement about the new crisis, we already heard what exactly the chief of staff thinks about the issue and what he will recommend to the minister and to the government. Very few politicians are capable of withstanding the double steamroller of losses and humiliation of the Israel Defense Forces on the one hand and, on the other, advance leaking of military recommendations to take drastic measures. Peretz and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are apparently not among those few politicians.
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he General Staff has been angry for a long time about the situation on the northern border since Israel's May 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon, especially over the last three years. This time, after the deaths of eight soldiers and the abduction of two others, it appears the army is not planning to let this opportunity for change pass by. And it's not that the generals don't have a case.
Hands tied
When then-prime minister Ehud Barak decided to leave the security zone in south Lebanon, he said that if Hezbollah were to dare to cause harm, Lebanon would suffer a "blow that it won't forget." But when Hezbollah kidnapped three soldiers on Har Dov in October 2000, Barak saw his hands as being tied. On the morning of the Har Dov abduction, the Palestinians set alight Joseph's Tomb in Nablus. The second intifada, which had broken out a week earlier, changed Barak's plans. The importance of deterrence in Lebanon made way for a consideration that appeared more urgent: keeping a second front from opening.
The Barak legacy on the Lebanon question was adopted by his successors, Ariel Sharon and Olmert. Israel responded to Hezbollah's periodic provocation by continuing the containment policy. The response was always measured, and did not generally extend beyond the border zone. Beirut and Damascus did not feel Israel was truly angry over the killing of its soldiers (and in a few instances, its civilians as well). Events unfolded according to set procedure: the destruction of Hezbollah posts, a few symbolic bombings in the north, and then speedy international intervention that brought calm. Officials in Jerusalem said that with all due respect to deterrence, one must not forget the packed bed and breakfasts in the Galilee.
Meanwhile, Hassan Nasrallah was waiting for his chance. The Hezbollah leader's previous efforts to reconstruct his organization's success at Har Dov and with the abduction of businessman Elhanan Tennenbaum did not pan out. Time after time, his militants found the IDF prepared. But the difficulties in the north remained: Despite the technology put to use there, there were still many "dead zones" along the border fence. The patrols that passed by were exposed to attack - and because a minimal routine is necessary for ongoing security, Hezbollah would always have ready targets a short distance from its posts near the fence.
"This is the reality here," a Northern Command official said Wednesday evening. "You have also taken pictures of us more than once moving along the border with the barrels of Hezbollah [weapons] aimed at us." The IDF came into this conflict facing poor conditions: no depth, in either space or time. The attack always starts whenever the enemy decides, along the fence. Until it begins, the army is not authorized to act north of the fence to neutralize the threat. And in addition, the IDF has for years been having a tough time breaking through the intelligence compartmentalization of Hezbollah.
The attack was planned and carried out by a special unit of the Shi'ite group, which apparently began the operation by coming in from the Lebanon valley. Israel will not be surprised if it turns out that the affair bears the fingerprints of Imad Mughniyeh, who is in charge of Hezbollah attacks abroad, or at least the identifying marks of one of his students. Organizations in Lebanon trade information accumulated on the battlefront with those involved in the extensive terrorism and guerrilla activity in Iraq, and this information then makes its way to the territories.
The soldiers who encountered the elite Hezbollah unit were members of Brigade 5, a reserve infantry brigade, whose members were also attacked in the last major disaster to hit a reserve unit - the death of 13 soldiers in the April 2002 battle in the Jenin refugee camp. The army was compelled to station reserve soldiers in the north, despite knowing the dangers of Hezbollah and the disadvantages of deploying soldiers there who are not familiar with the area and who are replaced when they complete their reserve duty, before getting the chance to put into practice what they have learned. But until Wednesday, the Gaza Strip was a higher priority for the IDF.
Inferior position
As in Jenin, the reservists on the northern border, near Zarit, had also fallen into an inferior position. It was their last morning there; they were supposed to be replaced that afternoon by a company from a Druze battalion. Every reservist knows the feeling - one more patrol before the longed-for return home, possibly still feeling a bit dazed from the party the night before. And then came the fence alert. Two Hummers raced to the point where the alert was raised, but were surprised before they had a chance to respond. When the reservist company commander got there, six or seven minutes later, and saw the torched Hummers, he had no doubt. This time, unlike in the Gaza abduction, the troops reported the kidnapping right away.
If the tension in the north continues or even escalates, as the army expects, these won't be the last reservists to spend the summer up north. On Wednesday a reserve unit received an order to prepare for the possibility of being called up quickly. When there is fighting on two fronts (GOC Northern Command Udi Adam spoke of it in simpler language this week: war), the IDF does not have enough soldiers doing compulsory service. The trouble is that for years, the reservists have barely been training.
A day before the abduction, Olmert made his first visit to the General Staff Forum. Most of the generals spoke cautiously in the company of the prime ministerial guest; after all, who knows whether he will be the one to decide who will be the next chief of staff. The only one who does not make such calculations is Major General Yishai Bar, president of the military court of appeals - partly because he doesn't expect to be promoted anyway, but mostly because that's his nature.
Bar criticized the mixed messages that politicians were transmitting: talk of serious combat alongside populist decisions to shorten compulsory service and cut down reserve duty. Bar is familiar with the issue, as most of his military service was as a reservist (he used to be a division commander), and his two sons are parachutists in the reserves who serve in the division preparing to be called up. Bar hears the truth from his sons: Even in their division, they do not train as they should.
In the first phase, the General Staff is recommending heavy aerial bombing of civil infrastructure targets across Lebanon. The next stages have almost already been scripted: rocket fire from Hezbollah and an Israeli ground incursion, including reserve forces, to destroy the organization's military infrastructure - a job the Lebanese government was supposed to do, according to United Nations Security Council resolution 1559, but never actually did.
Peretz, Olmert
Until Wednesday morning, the defense minister's week had actually been quite successful. On Sunday, Peretz impressed his colleagues in the cabinet with a professional and comprehensive survey of the security situation. On Tuesday he met with reporters and left them with a similar impression. Peretz, observers said, is recovering from his terrible start at the ministry. He displays knowledge, is in command of the relevant concepts, and presents an independent position that does not rush to follow Olmert or the army. But the next day saw the failure of an attempted Gaza assassination of senior Hamas leaders Mohammed Deif and Ahmed Ghandour - the IDF said it thinks they were in a protected basement that was damaged less than the rest of the bombed-out building - and a mother and her children were killed. Peretz, unlike several of his predecessors, still finds such news hard to take. A few hours later, Hezbollah abducted the two soldiers in the north.
The defense minister views international legitimacy for IDF operations in Gaza and Lebanon as important. It's the Israel Air Force that's disrupting his plans. The string of air force misses and civilian casualties, which was renewed this week, diminishes the extent of support for the military activity. Peretz monitors international reactions and is keeping his foot on the brakes. At every opportunity, he notes his opposition to a reoccupation of the Strip and states that Israel will not take on responsibility for the fate of Gaza residents. Peretz is also not enthusiastic about the big plans of some ministers and generals to topple the Hamas government. I, he said during internal discussions this week, don't believe in engineering a government.
In such a context, it seems Peretz's approval of the attempt to assassinate Def came dangerously close to unnecessary gambling. Israel could not have known ahead of time whether the Palestinians who abducted Corporal Gilad Shalit from the Gaza border last month were liable to avenge Def's death by killing Shalit. Negotiations on the soldier's release are still frozen. Israel is flooded with requests from those interested in mediating his release, and generally gives them the green light to continue talks - but then discovers they disappear without a trace.
It's doubtful whether any of them have managed to make direct contact with the kidnappers. As for the question of a prisoner exchange, one can identify a gap in the positions of Olmert and Peretz. It appears that under certain circumstances, Peretz would support the release of prisoners after the soldier's release, as "confidence-building measures," preferably in a deal worked out with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen).
Olmert's insistence on not negotiating has been sharply criticized by some professional organizations involved in the case. They say the prime minister has painted himself into a corner by closing off from the outset any possibility of negotiations, thereby acting in total opposition to his predecessor. By doing so, he also did away with the chance that the IDF could receive intelligence information about the soldier through the talks.
On Tuesday, at a situation assessment held at one of the branches of the military, some argued that Olmert has reached the point at which he must start stepping back a bit from his declarations, since insisting on sticking to them is liable to spur additional abductions because the other side wants to prove it can force Israel to compromise and negotiate. In financial terms, any economist would say: Sell now, because the price can only go down.
From the entrance to Moshav Even Menachem in the north this week, one could see the smoke rising from the northern border and hear the noise of the IDF shells and machine guns. Residents had hung a sign on the gate saying, "Gilad, we're waiting for you at home," to show their identification with their neighbors from Shalit's hometown of Mitzpe Hila. Now, though, they'll have to add two more names.
The Shi'ite crescent
In many ways, the escalation of the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas is part of a different war, an internal Islamic one. In this war, the camp that includes Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia is fighting Iran and Syria over the future of Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. Each side has allies and levers of power, by means of which it influences what's happening.
But the last few weeks, and primarily the abduction of the two soldiers in the north, symbolize the defeat of the moderate Arab nations in the struggle against the "axis of evil," which is pulling the strings of organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas. The Hezbollah abduction pushed the new anti-Syrian government in Lebanon out of the picture and placed the country, once again, in the hands of the emissaries of Iran. It would be an exaggeration to say that Hezbollah acts solely on the basis of its instructions from Tehran, but the leaders of other communities in Lebanon have no doubt Nasrallah and his men are acting today as part of the "Shi'ite crescent" (as Jordan's King Abdullah has called it), which is threatening to take over the Middle East.
The Hashemite kingdom is quite worried by the Iranian-Syrian danger. Jordan is convinced Syria is responsible for sending Hamas terror cells to collect weapons for an operation in Jordan. King Abdullah even rejected this week Syrian President Bashar Assad's invitation to a conciliatory visit in Damascus. Abdullah agreed that Assad could send his vice president, Farouk Shara, and his brother-in-law to Amman for tentative talks.
Saudi Arabia fears the Iranian nuclear project more than any other Arab country. There too, they aren't fond of the Iranian-Syrian intervention in Lebanese and Palestinian matters - whether that takes the form of assassinating Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri or supporting the abduction of Israeli soldiers in Gaza and the northern border. The Saudi government made a public statement this week calling for the bolstering of Palestinian independence and coming out against "attempts to intervene in internal Palestinian affairs."
Honorable agreement
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was more blunt. In an interview to the Al-Ahram newspaper, Mubarak said certain elements he does not want to identify had pressured Hamas not to accept an agreement with Israel for the release of Shalit in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. It was "an honorable agreement to which both sides agreed, and in that framework Israel committed to release very many Palestinian prisoners," Mubarak said. But although he did not explicitly identify the parties that exerted pressure on Hamas, Palestinian and Egyptian officials have no doubt Mubarak was referring to Syria and Iran.
Egypt-Hamas relations reached a critical point this week. For the first time in recent years, Hamas outright rejected Egypt's attempts to mediate the crisis with Israel. The messages that the Damascus-based head of the Hamas political bureau, Khaled Meshal, is sending Egypt are blunt and insulting. "The Arab states that stand up next to George W. Bush at the White House need to stand by our sides, the Palestinians," Meshal said this week. "We see you not as mediators, but brothers."
Cairo received a political slap in the face when Hamas leaders leaked to the Palestinian press that there would be no more Egyptian mediation in the Shalit case and that Egypt had been replaced as mediator by Turkey and Finland. Egypt has no doubt Tehran and Damascus are encouraging Meshal to follow a militant, uncompromising line.
The Iranian-Syrian threat, with the cooperation of the Hamas leadership abroad, led Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to coordinate their efforts to save Abbas' seat as PA chairman. King Abdullah issued an urgent summons to Abbas, and sources in his bureau said the king transmitted a message from Israel stating that the release of Palestinian prisoners as part of an agreement would take place only in negotiations with Abbas, not with Hamas. Abbas was given a similar message from Mubarak, in a phone conversation Tuesday, and also from Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz.
The three Arab leaders understood that Abbas' power was weakened by the Shalit abduction and that his influence over the Palestinian arena is diminishing. Meshal's press conference generated concern in Egypt, but primarily in Jordan, because the Hamas leadership in Damascus wants to take the leadership away from the PA chairman. Rumors spread that Meshal had turned to Israel, via jailed Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yusef, leading to speculation about possible negotiations between Israel and Hamas - leaving Abbas without authority.
Amman fears that releasing prisoners to Hamas will lead to the strengthening of the Muslim Brotherhood - both in Jordan, during a month in which parliamentary elections are being held, and in Egypt. The message from Olmert, that there will be no negotiations with Hamas, relaxed the moderate Arab troika. And then came the abduction of the two soldiers on the northern border. Hezbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, managed to take control of the events on the Palestinian side and the Shalit crisis. After the abduction in the north, everyone realized that the fate of the Palestinians is now in the hands of Meshal and Nasrallah, not those of Fatah or Hamas in the territories.
Critical condition
Fatah is in a far worse condition than Hamas, almost a critical condition. A Fatah leader told Haaretz that the abduction of Shalit and the two soldiers in the north rendered Fatah and Abbas, along with Olmert's convergence plan, irrelevant.
"We in Fatah are now at the zero point," the Fatah official said. "The political platform of Abu Mazen and the movement as a whole is already pointless. In addition, Fatah did not do a thing to improve its situation in the public eye in this period, while Abu Mazen worried about gathering around him a group of advisers identified with Fatah corruption."
Hamas, by contrast, was seen as the one taking the initiative in the kidnapping, although the Hezbollah operation proved the initiative was taken away from Hamas activists in the territories.
Some Palestinian analysts view the alliance between Hamas and Hezbollah as an alliance of the downtrodden. Both groups have been persecuted not just by Israel, but also by the old elites in Palestinian and Lebanese society. Beyond that, the alliance unites two groups that are under Iran's wing. Indeed, the events in Lebanon and Gaza have completely distracted world attention from the Iranian nuclear program. The answers to the adventures of Hezbollah, and occasionally those of some of the Palestinian organizations, can be found in Tehran. But as of now Israel has refrained from adding Iran to its list of declared targets.
Hannibal command
Major General (Res.) Giora Eiland, who headed the team investigating the abduction in the south, did thorough work, as usual. In a report submitted to the chief of staff, Eiland details each of the failures in the incident, from the tank level to the General Staff level. One of the incidents he describes relates to the conduct of a tank called to the scene a short time after the attack. The tank commander wanted to fire a shell at a group of people he saw crossing the border into Gaza, but was unable to reach a battalion commander for authorization. In the end, the deputy commander approved machine gun fire only. The tank was too far and did not hit the group. Eiland's comments indicate that this was a missed opportunity.
It turns out that the figures the tank commander saw were Gilad Shalit and his two captors. Should the tank commander have opened fire on them? In the past, the Hannibal command, which relates to abduction, stated that the political and security damage stemming from abduction obligates troops to use any means to prevent it - even at the cost of risking the life of the captive. When reservists protested this policy, it generated a public outcry. The General Staff discussed the issue again last year, and made an unequivocal decision: If you know that a captive is among those escaping, it is forbidden to fire on the escapees. This is, of course, a terrible ethical dilemma, not just a strategic calculation. But on the basis of the two latest incidents and the crisis into which they have embroiled Israel, it is not impossible that the matter will once again come up for reconsideration
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