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An attack waiting to happen By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff Tags: Nahal Oz, IDF, Hamas, Gaza Out of a number of Palestinian attacks on border crossings and on Israel Defense Forces near Gaza (at Nahal Oz, near Kibbutz Be'eri and at Kerem Shalom), one incident was chosen to teach a lesson and send a message: the terrorist attack in which two tanker drivers from the fuel depot at Nahal Oz were killed on April 9. The chief of staff, Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, decided to remove the commander of the 9th Armored Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Yair Baranes, from his post. Baranes, who was commanding the forces dispatched to the fuel depot when the terrorists infiltrated it, did not lead a charge against the enemy in time. The two terrorists were finally killed only after a pursuit in the Gaza Strip. Ashkenazi found that Baranes did not "strive to engage" with the enemy, as required, and, in a particularly expedited process, brought to a conclusion his term as battalion commander. The last time a battalion commander was removed under similar circumstances was six years and three chiefs of staff ago. But by focusing on the mistake of this commander, and conducting a discussion of "values" in the wake of his removal, the IDF top brass spared itself public discussion of two failures that are no less distressing: the sloppy guarding of the fuel depot, despite repeated warnings by officers and civilians, and the hasty pursuit of another terrorist squad, a week later, which cost the lives of three Givati Brigade soldiers. Advertisement From Sunday until midday Thursday of this week, the Gaza front was relatively quiet, apparently due to the combination of the Egyptian initiative to obtain a cease-fire and the Israeli desire to get through the Passover holiday peacefully. In the 10 previous days - from the Nahal Oz attack until Hamas' ambitious attempt to execute a killing-and-abduction operation at the Kerem Shalom crossing, six Israelis and dozens of Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip. This is a limited war. Israel has recorded substantial tactical successes, but in a campaign that is mainly defensive, there are bound to be losses. In the face of the attacks, much depends on the judgment of the commander in the field, who often makes split-second decisions. Major Wahid al-Huzeil, the Bedouin deputy battalion commander, whose intelligent reaction saved soldiers' lives in the Kerem Shalom attack, was this week the momentary hero of the media. Lieutenant Colonel Baranes, who hesitated for a moment under fire, was portrayed (unjustly) almost as a coward. The fuel depot, it is gradually emerging, was a terrorist attack waiting to happen. As Haaretz reported the day after the incident, there were no guards posted specifically at the site, even though there were Israeli civilians there, at a distance of just dozens of meters from the Gaza border. The IDF accused Dor Alon, the fuel company that manages the depot, of over-economizing - in light of the company's refusal to post paid civilian guards at the site. The other companies that run depots (at Erez, Sufa and Kerem Shalom) have guards, the army noted pointedly. There is no doubt that the permanent presence of an armed guard at the depot would have allowed for an immediate response to the terrorists' infiltration. But the fact is that the territorial brigade in the northern Gaza Strip, whose headquarters are not far away, signed off on the security plans for the site. Why did the brigade agree to authorize them? During the weekly situation-appraisal meetings, a company commander from Givati who was subordinate to Baranes had warned that a serious terrorist attack could be expected at the fuel depot, because of the gaps in the security deployment. The Givati officer also complained constantly about the presence of shepherds and their flocks in the area close to the security fence. The Palestinians, like Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in an earlier period, use shepherds to locate "dead zones" in the IDF observation setup. Another officer suggested opening fire at the shepherds, to drive them away. In the end authorization was given for warning shots, at a secure distance from the flock, subject to divisional approval. About a month before the attack, the Popular Resistance Committees in the Gaza Strip distributed a video clip showing members of that organization shooting machine guns at fuel tankers near the depot. The committees were one of the groups that took credit for the attack on April 9. In another case, a bullet struck a fuel tanker. Depot employees said they were not being adequately protected, and threatened to go on strike. "The whole depot will be lifted into the air if a tanker is hit," they warned. Sources in Southern Command say that during this period a fierce disagreement broke out between the depot's manager and the territorial brigade commander, Colonel Ron Asharov. In its wake, the required response time for the military force responsible for perimeter security in the region to get to the depot was reduced. In practice, however, when the attack occurred, the force deployed in the area was pinned down in a nearby stronghold by terrorists' mortar fire, launched to cover the infiltration. The soldiers arrived late - and the two drivers were already dead. Battalion commander Baranes was the first to reach the scene, but he stopped at a distance of 150 meters from the depot, from which he began an exchange of fire with the terrorists. Instead of charging them, he chose to wait for a tank that was about a minute's drive away. When the tank arrived, Baranes was concentrating on managing the activity of his troops. It is doubtful that his behavior had anything to do with the casualties in the incident. The drivers, who were hit very soon after the terrorists reached the depot, were killed because there was no security guard at the site. The problem lay elsewhere. If Baranes had adhered tenaciously to his mission to conclude the incident as quickly as possible, he would have had to charge the terrorists immediately and kill them. Baranes himself admitted, in a conversation with his company commanders after the incident, that he had made a serous mistake. Nonetheless, his advocates recall that the battalion under his command killed more than 30 armed Palestinians in previous incidents in the northern Gaza Strip. The 9th Battalion, which is part of the 401st Armored Brigade, is hardly synonymous with cowardice. This is the battalion that was the first to cross Saluki River in the Second Lebanon War, taking casualties in the process. Six of its fighters were awarded citations. Lieutenant Colonel Effy Daprin, Baranes' predecessor, was seriously wounded but recovered and resumed his post for an additional year. Rifle-strap tourniquet Many senior officers this week said they backed Ashkenazi's decision to remove Baranes, but the move remains controversial. "We have to beware of ascribing exaggerated sanctity to 'strive to engage' [with the enemy]. It's all a matter of judgment: how to conclude an incident in the best and fastest way possible," said a brigade commander who opposes Baranes' removal. "We have to put a lid on this before it costs us unnecessary losses." It may already have done that. On April 16, two terrorists were spotted opposite Kibbutz Be'eri, in the 9th Battalion's sector, approaching the fence with the intention of laying an explosive device. A Givati force that set out quickly to give pursuit walked into a Hamas ambush. Three soldiers were killed and three wounded. The company commander, who was in charge of the force that was hit, pressed to set out rapidly after the squad. The territorial brigade approved the request. As far as is known, Baranes did not play a significant part in the decision this time. So great was the urgency that the force departed without a paramedic or medical equipment. When the soldiers were hit, the first to give them first aid was a sharpshooter who had taken a paramedics course. Improvising, he used a rifle strap to staunch the bleeding artery of one of the soldiers. Southern Command admits that the lessons of the earlier incidents, including the fuel depot attack, influenced the decisions in this case, but also insists vehemently that giving pursuit was the right thing to do. As in the previous - opposite - instance, the deciding consideration here was striving to engage with the enemy. The commander of the Gaza Division, Brigadier General Moshe Tamir, conducted the first, trenchant debriefing of the incident at the fuel depot. Baranes, who saw which way the wind was blowing, quickly announced that he was stepping down. Still, the resignation was frozen until the decision by the chief of staff. In the meantime, the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth learned about the incident and reported it the day before the pursuit near Kibbutz Be'eri. If Baranes had any thoughts of changing his mind, it was too late. Even before Baranes was summoned to the chief of staff, he learned that an officer who was in line to be appointed the commander of a different battalion in the brigade this summer, had been instructed to prepare himself to replace him. In the background, as usual in such cases, Baranes's name was also dragged through the mud. Some of his friends are calling it a "summary execution." There is a thin line between offering support and assigning responsibility, and the chief of staff, who in the end is responsible for maintaining the right balance, decided that it was important to send a signal to field commanders as to what is expected of them. The trouble is that focusing on this issue, without clarifying the flaws that were revealed in the security situation at the depot or in the incident of the pursuit, is only half the job. The media complicated the situation by interviewing retired generals, some of whom militantly and simplistically attacked the army for having lost its values, "already in the Second Lebanon War." Indeed, lack of adherence to the mission and of striving for engagement were identified as basic problems in the 2006 war, but it would be a major mistake to pin exclusive blame for the IDF's failure on those alone. A senior officer who took part in the war in Lebanon gave a more accurate description this week of what happened to the IDF in that conflict. "The root of the matter lies not in values, but in a mistake in identifying the situation. For too long we thought we were engaged in yet another routine-security skirmish and did not understand that it was a war." In contrast, what is happening now in Gaza is not a full-scale war. Losses, caused also by tactical errors, are almost inevitable. However, the army also needs to take into account the fact that a large number of losses diminishes its public "back" and, accordingly, also the maneuverability it will enjoy in combat. Fueling the situation On Wednesday, A. finally found what he was looking for. After a few hours of intensive searching on the Internet, he located one of the dealers who sell fuel on the black market in Gaza. Because they knew each other, the dealer agreed to supply him with fuel at a reduction: 18 liters of diesel oil for only NIS 280. A. can count himself fortunate. Most of the private cars in Gaza are idle, along with most of the taxis and buses. Even a donkey-and-cart is not an appropriate solution: It turns out that the price of animal feed has skyrocketed lately. Anyway, there is no place to go: In the absence of jobs and in the absence of money for entertainment, Gazans prefer to stay close to home. The impact of the fuel shortage is far-reaching and was not anticipated. Most of the hothouses in which tomatoes were grown are irrigated by means of pumps that are operated by electricity generators. As a result of the fuel shortage, some of the pumps have stopped working and the yield from the hothouses has decreased. Within a few months, the price of tomatoes has leaped from 75 agorot a kilo (three-quarters of a shekel) to NIS 6. It is hard to move the small amount of produce from the hothouses in the former Gush Katif settlement-bloc area to the northern part of the Strip, so tomatoes are cheaper in Khan Yunis, in the south. Power is cut every day for three hours, without advance warning. This week there was also a shortage of cooking gas. True, there is no shortage of food, but it's not clear how the food can be cooked. Even the price of sardines doubled in the past year. The fishing boats rarely go out to sea because of the fuel shortage. Hamas figures are almost the only ones not to be affected by the fuel crisis. The well-guarded convoy of the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, continues to drive through the streets of Gaza. Activists of the operative force were also seen this week traveling in the unit's vehicles and distributing food to their pals. In the past weeks, Hamas filled the organization's gasoline and diesel reservoirs so that it would be able to continue its daily activity without interruption. Even with the economic crunch in Gaza, Hamas has been successful at hiding from the Palestinian public its growing internal disputes over the past month. The East Jerusalem-based Jerusalem Media and Communication Center this week presented data showing only a minor decline (2 percent) in support for Hamas, as compared to last November, whereas support for Fatah plunged by 7.5 percent. According to the survey, support for Haniyeh is higher than that for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). The reasons for the decline in Fatah's popularity are many and varied: the rickety diplomatic process conducted by the Palestinian Authority with Israel, the continued construction in the settlements, the checkpoints - and, on the other hand, the indirect and advanced negotiations that Egypt is conducting between Israel and Hamas for a cease-fire. The meeting this week between former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and the top officials of Hamas reinforces the Palestinians' feeling that Hamas has the last word in the arena. However, the main reason for the fall in support for Fatah (though it continues to be far ahead of Hamas in the polls) lies in the organization's failure to demonstrate change. Fatah is as usual split and divided. The secular organization at present lacks a leadership that can gain victory in the next elections - apart from Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms in an Israeli prison. Elections to the Fatah leadership are not on the horizon, and talk of injecting young blood sounds more like a joke than a real possibility. Hamas, by contrast, is making an effort to drag Israel into a cease-fire agreement. It continues with terror attacks, but at the same time presenting a kind of political plan in regard to Israel. Haniyeh, who spoke this week at a gathering in Gaza, explained that his organization supports the establishment of a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, with the right of return for the refugees, in return for a long-term hudna (cease-fire). He added that Hamas will agree to put to a referendum any political agreement that is reached with Israel in the negotiations being conducted by Abbas. Haniyeh noted that Hamas has several prior conditions for such a referendum: It must be conducted both in the territories and in the Palestinian diaspora. In addition, a vote must be held among the members of the new Palestinian National Council (in which Hamas claims it merits a majority), and even this only after conciliation is achieved between Hamas and Fatah. At this stage, it is more than unlikely that those conditions will actualize. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Hamas on the Holocaust Al-Aqsa TV claims Jews concocted the Holocaust. Grasping genocide How a non-Jew in Israel came to understand the Holocaust.

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