Three Years on July War, Israel Still Divided over Defeat

Monday 13 July 2009

Three Years on July War, Israel Still Divided over Defeat

Three Years on July War, Israel Still Divided over Defeat
Hussein Assi Readers

13/07/2009 Three years have passed on the Israeli devastating war against Lebanon…

Three years have passed on the Israeli humiliating and unprecedented defeat and the Divine Victory achieved in Lebanon thanks to the Resistance heroes…

Three years have passed… Yet, the Israeli political and military leaders are still divided over the defeat, its interpretations and its repercussions on the army that was, once, believed to be the strongest in the region…

HALUTZ: SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO 'GO CRAZY'

In the third anniversary of the war, Israeli former Chief of Staff sought to defend the war decision despite everything that happened afterwards, claiming that it was the "right decision" to make at the time going on to say that he would take the same decision in case the same scenario repeats itself.

"Even today, given the same figures, I would have recommended the same course of action," Halutz told a conference at the Tel Aviv University's Center for Strategic Research on Sunday.

"The course of action that I recommended on July 12 was well-considered, not trellised on the day of the capture" by Hezbollah of two Israeli soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid, said Halutz, who led the army at the time of the war.

The former Israeli chief admitted, meanwhile, that the decision to launch the Second Lebanon War was not derived directly from the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser by Hezbollah fighters. "The idea was to push Hezbollah over the edge. Yes, we could have continued burying our heads in the sand, we could have made do with a surgical action and we could have waited longer and launched an even wider operation," he claimed.

"I believed that if we crave life in this Mideast arena, we have to sometimes just 'go crazy'. The government's decision to launch the campaign was right and expressed an understanding of reality," he went on to claim.

'WE FAILED TO DEFINE WAR'S GOALS'

Prior to Halutz, his former deputy, Major-General Moshe Kaplinsky, took the podium and told the audience that in his opinion, one of the greatest failures of the Second Lebanon War was the fact that the military campaign lacked any clear operational goals.

Kaplinsky, who served as the Israeli army's deputy chief of staff during the 34-day war, said that both the army and the government made numerous mistakes. He noted that the Israeli military did not employ its preplanned reaction in case of soldier capture and rocket fire.

"The first mistake we made, our first failure as commanders, was that we were unable to change the general perception of the government and of the public, but mostly that of the military. We couldn’t properly explain that this was a war – not the continuance of what we'd been doing in the West Bank for the past six years."

He also said that the army also failed to utilize all of the units and tools at its disposal and was too slow at calling up reserve units.

'WE LOST WAR BECAUSE WE FAILED TO CLEARLY DEFINE GOALS'

Also taking part in the conference was Giora Eiland, former head of the Israeli National Security Council. Eiland criticized former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government, saying that the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip were two occasions in which the political echelon ordered a military campaign without setting clear operational goals.

Eiland believes the Gaza offensive was troubled by the same symptoms which led to the failure of the Second Lebanon War: "That government meeting on July 12 (2006) failed to clearly define the goals," he said.

According to the former National Security Council chief, the best course of action Olmert could have taken at the time was "to order a forceful retaliation. Use the Air Force for two or three days, and make Hezbollah pay a high price."

'SECOND LEBANON WAR A MISSED OPPORTUNITY'

However, Kadima lawmaker Shaul Mofaz, a former defense minister in the Israeli cabinet during the 2006 war, said that Israel had achieved only limited success during the war.

Mofaz termed the war a missed opportunity for the Zionist entity and told Israel Radio that Hezbollah now has more missiles than it did prior to the military operation. He also said that the Resistance group had increased the range of its rockets.

Ex-IDF chief admits 2006 Lebanon war not because of kidnappings

During the outbreak of the 2006 Lebanon war, Israeli apologists left, right and centre were using the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah as an excuse to bomb the country into submission. The truth always comes out in the end, though:

Halutz added that the decision to launch the Lebanon campaign was not derived directly from the kidnapping of IDF soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, but "was based on the need to mount a forceful campaign."

Posted by Bilal at 18:48

Labels: hezbollah, israel, lebanon