A long-scheduled interview with Israel Air Force chief Maj.-Gen. Eliezer Shkedy, timed for the IAF's annual "Air Force Day," happened to coincide with this week's "Operation Summer Rains" offensive in Gaza, launched after the killing of two soldiers and the capture of Cpl. Gilad Shalit near Kerem Shalom.
Commander in Chief of the IAF, Maj.Gen. Eliezer Shkedy.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski
Seated behind a completely clear desk in his office in the "Kiriya" military headquarters in Tel Aviv, Shkedy, who was appointed to his position two years ago, radiates a palpable sense of calm and reassurance, even when discussing the most acute challenges facing the IAF. During the more than an hour he spent with The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, the Gaza offensive was developing, and his pilots had hours earlier targeted bridges and power installations in the Strip. Yet he was entirely unruffled throughout, and at no point interrupted our conversation to hear an update of external events.
The air force chief, who is married with three children and turns 50 next year, had drawn up handwritten notes on some of the subjects he suggested we might want to cover. But he was readily amenable to other areas of discussion - proving notably forthcoming on the dilemmas faced by his hierarchy in the war on terrorists in Gaza, given those terrorists' increasing "cynicism" in surrounding themselves with civilians in the hope of thus ensuring immunity from air attack.
While such cynicism was making it ever harder for the IAF to hit alleged terror kingpins without harming civilians, Shkedy said, the IAF's solution was emphatically not to relax its own limitations on when to open fire. It was, rather, to constantly refine the capabilities and accuracy of its weapons systems to better pinpoint the targets.
What is the air force's role in what's happening in Gaza now?
We are truly in a very complicated war against terror. In many respects, I think we are trailblazing for the world in fighting terror from the air. Not long ago, hitting terrorists form the air was very marginal. Lately, the overwhelming majority of hits on terrorists has been from the air. It's a dramatic change, achieved through the development of intelligence capabilities, planning, control, accuracy of fire and more.
For the State of Israel, in principle, going back into Gaza has great significance - political implications, military implications. IDF soldiers potentially being hurt on the ground and people being hurt on the other side, too. And therefore any such move requires weighty consideration. We're talking today after soldiers have been killed and a soldier captured, and this is one of the possible alternatives: whether to go in on the ground and, if so, how to go in and how to get out...
But we have now gone back into Gaza with some ground forces?
Yes, but that's still entirely different from in the past when we stayed there and Israeli settlements were there.
The hope was that we'd never have to do even this.
Correct. Anyway, what I was saying was that such decisions are extremely weighty. And in this situation, air power has tremendous advantages. You can carry out a range of different actions, with differing force, without remaining in the field. You carry out the action and then you return. Just to underline this for you, in the last nine months, we have carried out more air actions of the various kinds than we had over the previous five years.
Specifically, what is going on now in Gaza?
Activities stemming from the kidnapping of the soldier. But other things have also happened recently: We've had hundreds of Kassams fired at Israel. And we've just intensively attacked the bridges between the south and north of the Strip to prevent the movement [of those responsible]. We hit a power station. Intensively. I assume you've seen the pictures. The government of Israel has decided on a complex action. As regards scale, well, for years we haven't attacked the bridges. Now we've hit the three central bridges in the Strip. As for power stations, you know the idea had been raised in the past a few times and it was decided not to do so. This time, the decision was yes.
While the imperative is primarily to get the soldier back, is there also specific anti-Kassam activity?
That goes on all the time, because they're firing at us all the time. We act to prevent the fire or hit their laboratories or their transfer routes or the terrorists themselves who were going to fire. That connects with what we're doing now.
Is this going to be similar in scale to Operation Defensive Shield [in the West Bank in 2002], an effort to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure?
I wouldn't define it like that. Gaza is very complex. It can develop in all kinds of directions. There's a group of terrorists there and fighting them can develop into directions that are far from simple. Things can stay at the level they are now or develop into things of great weight. Of course, that's a decision for the political echelon. When ground forces go in with the air force, it's a matter of a [political] decision as to what level the state wishes to go to in this struggle.
We're truly making great efforts to find this soldier and bring him home, but this is an ongoing war [against terror] in many fields that is currently coming together. It has been going on for years. The air force is working every day, day and night, 24 hours.
Can you guarantee that his captors won't be able to smuggle him out of Gaza?
I can't say that now.
But we're doing the maximum to prevent that?
Yes.
You've mentioned the increased capability of the air force to hit terrorists from the air. Why has there been a spate of misses of late? Is there a specific reason?
We carry out a follow-up analysis of every operation, successful or unsuccessful. We reexamine everything on a weekly basis. And every now and then we have a deeper investigation - what can be improved, which improved capabilities do we need. Overall, if you look at the big picture, there has been no change [in the proportion of success].
