ANALYSIS: In Lebanon, government hamstrung troubled division
Task force finds Division 91 warned IDF General Staff that reserve battalion was unfit for duty along border.
By Amir Oren and Haaretz CorrespondentThe regular division in the Galilee warned the Israel Defense Forces General Staff that captured IDF soldiers Udi Goldwasser and Eldad Regev's reserve battalion was not fit to operate along the northern border, according to interim findings by a task force investigating the abduction.
Division 91, headed by Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, even asked the General Staff to remove the battalion from the border and replace it with better trained troops. The General Staff rejected the request, and insisted the reserve battalion remain on the border until it finished its tour of duty on July 12 - the day Goldwasser and Regev were abducted.
The task force, headed by Major General (Res.) Doron Almog, also found that the division asked that surveillance positions be placed overlooking the area where the abduction took place, as well as 15 other vulnerable areas. The General Staff delayed implementation of this request.
Of the four Israel Defense Forces divisions that fought in this summer's Lebanon war and which are the subjects of military inquiries whose findings will be presented to top IDF leaders this week, three were exempted from responsibility for both holding the line and being ready to fight Hezbollah.
The three - an elite reserve division headed by Brigadier General Eyal Eisenberg and a division in the regular army headed by Brigadier General Guy Tzur, both from the Central Command, and a Northern Command reserve division headed by Brigadier General Erez Zuckerman - were also not brought into combat in the first days after Hezbollah abducted reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev on July 12.
Instead, a double burden was placed on Division 91. That division was saddled with both the day-to-day responsibility of defending the north as well as of engaging in non-stop combat from the moment of the abduction until the last IDF soldier left Lebanon two weeks ago. An investigation of Division 91 that will be presented to the top brass today focuses on the combat following the kidnapping. An inquiry of the abduction itself is slated to be completed in two weeks.
Until July 12, Division 91 was forced to carry out its mission while its hands were tied by government policy and military orders. The division was sentenced to wait passively for Hezbollah aggression - whether on Har Dov, in Ghajar or anywhere else along the 120-kilometer-long border. It was not permitted any preemptive moves that involved opening fire or crossing the border. The contradiction-laden policy set at the top was to protect the cities and towns of the north (including leaving the roads open so as to safeguard economic and social life there), to foil abduction attempts, and to suffice with a response to any Hezbollah initiatives that were not delayed - there was no illusion that they would be called off - by the stratagems employed by the division.
In light of warnings that stemmed from intelligence information, albeit vague and ambiguous ones, Hirsch put his troops on alert - and they foiled four of Hezbollah's abduction attempts. The division's success put the politicians and top military leaders at ease; they wanted quiet, and didn't act to change the volatile reality along the Lebanese border.
Division 91 was like an abused wife who manages to hold back her violent husband time and again, until one day he manages to carry out his plans. Each time, he is arrested, given a warning and released, leaving him free to plan the next assault. And when he succeeds, people wonder how it is that the victim did not learn her lesson from the previous incidents.
The abduction itself was first investigated by a task force appointed by outgoing GOC Northern Command Udi Adam, and those findings are among the information being collected by Almog's task force.
The task force is expected to assign responsibility for the abduction to five military ranks - the general staff, the Northern Command, the division, Brigade 300 and the reserve battalion - as well as to the government. It is also expected to determine whether it was an intelligence failure or an operational failure that bears most of the responsibility for not preventing the kidnapping. Interim findings indicate that many people share the blame.
The questions that continue to disturb the investigators have to do with the conduct of troops along the border in the hours preceding the abduction. At 2 A.M. the troops received an unusual warning: The border fence had been cut. A commander in the division said before the patrol went out that he thought 20 Hezbollah militants had infiltrated overnight. The two vehicles on patrol were less than 200 meters apart, instead of a kilometer, as the rules require, to prevent a simultaneous attack on both of them. The abduction became known when the driver of one of the vehicles found a hiding place in a nearby ditch, called his brother, who also serves in the standing army, and asked him to report the incident to the war room.
The Almog task force is expected to submit half a dozen systemic recommendations, including a call for a mobile deployment in place of a stationary one, and the return of the field intelligence corps to Military Intelligence. That unit would be responsible for collecting all combat information and for maintaining contact with the commanders responsible for this intelligence collection in their respective sectors.
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Division 91 commander Brigadier General Gal Hirsch. (IDF) |
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just because something seems too 'fantastic' or 'insane' to be true, doesn't mean it isn't true.
The "secret plot thing" is at least as old as the "coincindence thing". hezbollah never hid its intention to kidnap soldiers and was trying to for quite a while. Except by NOT putting soldiers (which is of course a stupid proposition) on this border could have the attempts been ALL defeated... It had to succeed once, that's all hezbollah needed and it finally did on that fateful day, what's more to say ?
Hezbollah had made 4 previous attempts. Any military man worth his salt would have realized that each foray would be adjusted to avoid previous mistakes. Hezbollah kept making the adjustments until they got it right. General Hirsch probably knew this and that is why he made his request for Division 91 to be replaced by troops that were more capable of countering such adjustments. It will be interesting to find out if it was an urgent request, a lukewarm request or a vague request. All anyone can do now is wait to see which lower echelon officer is blamed and thrown to the dogs.
you said to maral:so when did you last have a bath maral?better take marilyn with you that is a really intelligent answer, you must be proud of yourself.
Sorry, you are wrong. If there were dirty dealings Israel would use some other mechanism than captured soldiers. It's just not credible knowing the way we feel about our soldiers.
Its like the movies when stage by stage things go wrong becuase they're meant to. And i am really begining to believe this was inevitable. Just hope the Lebanese public see this and realize that it was inevitable. It would solve a lot of divisions. Ah well, its only 1400 lives. All in a months work here in the Holy Land. Shalom Aleinu/Salam Aleina
The war was a failure, fine. The general staff screwed up, fine. But come on, do you seriously believe the garbage that these two idiots spew out? M&M, you accuse Israeli leadership, in essence, of premeditated genocide. Yet your ranting comment provides no facts in support of this baseless claim. Indeed, if legitimate investigation truly revealed such premeditated crime, its fruits would have long been forwarded to the ICJ in the Hague. But the best that people like you do is cite to notoriously antisemitic Arab publications, which have zero credibility elsewhere in a civilized world. The world hates Israel and her people. The propaganda of our enemies will attempt to spin anything against Israel. But this particular comment does not even rise to that level. Its just plain stupid. Kind regards, WP.
Israel should be training every soldier, every citizen as if they were special forces. If it is true that these new more progressive weapons the media professes to be smuggled nto Gaza and Lebanon is true, and Israel continutes to take a passive posture, then they will need every force to be special. 6 million people versus hundreds of millions. Here is the question; with all of this one wonders what the Arabs, Muslims and fanatical Islamists are waiting for. Could they simply be big talkers. Or are they simply afraid of the consequences?
although possible, i highly doubt it. For one thing, it happenned during high tourist season. For another, there are many other ways to bait Hizbullah.
so when did you last have a bath maral?better take marilyn with you.
...IDF went out of the confrontation unbalanced and wondering!!
Didn't you all hear Shimon Peres saying that the problem of Israel is that it has the Shiites on its northern border ? His dream is to push the Shiites back around 20 or 30 kilometers so that maybe Israel will be better of with whoever remains there. This explains the flooding of clusters bombs during the last days. What purpose for this other then impeding the return of normal life to the villages on the border ?
steinitz has recently said that the quality of the officers specially the colonels has never been so low.the problem is the idf has to compete with the market for talent.israel must allow the idf to retain the best manpower there is to be had.pay them what the market dictates. the best staff work can only be done by those at the highest psychometric levels.
I guess Nasrallah would never go for this deal. His best chance for winning the next round is if the IDF keeps its current General Staff in place.
there is no point in expecting armies to perform to perfection at no notice.all israel's wars have involved major problems.the present class of officers have not fought a major war.that is certainly a major major extenuating circumstance. yet we knew the enemy had massive numbers of anti-tank rockets.(they fired huge numbers during the last failed kidnap operation in gajar.)why did tanks advance against well defended positions? why were the villages not by-passed? in short the idf staff work was very poor indeed.witness the egregious operation of the logistics tail.gal hirsch should not be so easily exonerated but he is still of use to the idf.let him stay on but let him be warned.
did gal hirsch not read his history?the beaufort castle attack was cancelled but through bad staff work the order was not forwarded in real time.did gal hirsch not learn that there is no point in attacking well defended positions?
amir oren and amos harel have not addressed the major problem in this little war.why were the infantry forces thrown into frontal attacks against bint jbeil? why did gal hirsch and eyal eisenberg not ask for flat trajectory fire against the defended positions?the villages should have been surrounded and spotters used to find targets.these casualties blighted the war from israel's perspective.
Fully agree with #2. Dichter said to Russian journalist that the operation in the North had been pre-plaaned. Then Lebanon minister said that Americans amd Israelis plaaned together a three-weeks operation that failed. These comments are not coinsidence. Two reserve solders may haven been ised as ducks. This is Olmert's and Halutz planning.
I have been saying for weeks that these lads were allowed to be "kidnapped" as an excuse to ethnically cleanse the south of Lebanon of all shi'ite muslims. Danny Aitom told an Australian journalist that they had decided that in May if they had any excuse the IDF would pummel every single shi'ite and treat every single one of them as "terr'ists" and then destroy every home, every school, every hospital and every trace of ability to live in the south of Lebanon. We know very well that in 2004 the IDF were planning this with the stupid Bush team as a forerunner to destroying Iran. No matter how many ways this is spun the soldiers and the populations of both Israel and Lebanon were used as target practice for the deranged plan. The world knows all this even if the Israelis fail to understand it. It was not the failure of "intelligence" by the military, it was the lies told by the government - just like in Iraq. And it was not a war, it was an illegal invasion.
I wonder what the usual line-up of posters will make of this. The possibility of foul play from within the Israeli government has been on the table for weeks now, but it's brushed off as a coicidence. I think those soldiers were allowed to be kidnapped. In fact, I think they were used as bait, as a reason to instigate a war that had been planned a long time since. I'm willing to hear what the rest of you might put forth as theories, just please don't use the old "it's a coicidence" line; that one's getting old fast.
So, there is one 'task force' investigating the abductions, another examining 'failures of war'. Will these two never meet? And what about the Kerem Shalom 'task force'? I think it was Eiland who found weather was to blame for that one. In this article Oren makes several strong winks in the direction of the general staff indicating who he thinks is to blame, well, or perhaps just interpreting Almog's findings for us. Meatime, general staff seems dead bent on feeding several IDF BG lads to the lions to appease the public. But the question remains: how did Hezbullah get so close and become so free in its operations, and down south, how did Hamas achieve the same? The responsibility of the military should not provide politicians past and present with an excuse for their fatal failures.