Lose-lose in Gaza

Hamas and Hezbollah will have picked up interesting information from the IDF’s performance.

By YOSSI MELMAN
Hamas victory 521 (photo credit: Ahmed Zakot/Reuters)
Hamas victory 521
(photo credit: Ahmed Zakot/Reuters)
Lionel Messi, an Argentinian who plays for Barcelona is probably the best soccer player in the world. In American terms, he can be compared to Joe Montana, the legendary quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers.
Both are intelligent athletes, combining physical skills with excellent intuition. As playmakers they perform excellent passes, but what has made them tower above their peers is their timing skill – the ability to create a surprising move, to pass the ball in a critical split second. If you are late, the defense closes in on you; if you pass the ball prematurely, you won’t find that small crack to penetrate your rival’s defenses. And timing is what the Israeli government was lacking in the last war – its second in four years – in the Gaza Strip, against Hamas.
The war, called “Operation Pillar of Defense” by Israel, began Wednesday, November 14 in perfect style. Israel killed Ahmad Jabari, the military commander of Hamas, and a few minutes later destroyed more than 100 Fajr-5 missiles, the long-range missiles, smuggled from Iran via Sudan and Egypt to Gaza.
Based on precise HUMINT – intelligence collected from agents operated by the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) – as well as SIGINT (bugging phones and computers) and VISINT (photos taken from the air and on the ground), the Israel Air Force was able to destroy the underground bunkers where the missiles were hidden and their camouflaged launch pads.
Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIA), as well as some small splinter pro-Al- Qaeda groups that kept shelling Israeli cities and rural communities along the border for weeks prior to the operation, were taken by surprise. This unique intelligence capability shocked both the political and military leaders of Hamas, comparable to the “shock and awe” military doctrine, which US General Norman Schwarzkopf effectively executed in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq.
In the Gaza context, after the first crucial 24-48 hours, Israel should have taken an example from Messi and Montana on the art of timing. Israel should have declared victory and unilaterally announced a cease-fire.
But Israel did not. As in previous military campaigns – in summer 2006 in Lebanon and in winter 2008-9 during the first Gaza war (Operation Cast Lead) – it superfluously prolonged the second Gaza war for an additional six days. During those six days, Israel muddled through in a battle of mutual pounding and attrition. The statistics tell the story: Israel launched 1,500 air strikes against various targets in Gaza, killing 152 Palestinians, over half of whom were combatants. Most of the targets hit were not “quality” objectives.
Hamas and the PIA launched 1,506 rockets and missiles against Israel. Of that number, 480 were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-rocket system, which turned out to be the hero of the day together with the life-saving shelters. Fifty-eight rockets hit buildings, and two Israeli soldiers and four civilians were killed by rocket fire.
But what is really significant in the missile launches from Gaza is that 12 Iranian-made and homegrown missiles were fired in the direction of Tel Aviv. It was the first time in 21 years (since Iraq’s Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War) that an enemy has dared to rocket Tel Aviv – the symbol and the pulse of modern Israeli life. Hamas showed resilience under the Israeli bombardment and kept launching its rockets and missiles, averaging 190 per day.
Iran and Lebanese Shi’ite movement Hezbollah were watching with curiosity and growing interest as the battle progressed.
A news analysis in The New York Times last Friday claimed that the Gaza campaign was a trial for the “real thing” – an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites. This is a naïve analysis. If anything, the Gaza war proved how difficult – impossible – such an assault would be for Israel.
If there is anything to be gleaned from Gaza, it will most probably be by Iran and Hezbollah, who could reach the following conclusions about the Israeli performance.
Israel was unwilling to deploy its ground forces. And despite its tremendous success, Iron Dome and its future upgraded versions would have great difficulty intercepting 40,000 missiles and rockets fired from Lebanon and 300 Shihab missiles from Iran.
Shihabs carry a warhead of 750 kilograms compared to the 7 kilograms, which the average Hamas rocket carried. The Israeli sensitivity to casualties and the home front are having a paralyzing effect on military planning and the political decision-makers.
This sensitivity is Israel’s soft underbelly.
True, the equation between Israel and Hamas is not a zero-sum game, nor is an Israeli loss necessarily a Hamas win.
Actually, the rules of the game between the two sides dictate more of a lose-lose situation for Israel. It cannot win the battle – which is asymmetrical in nature – against a terror group. Hamas benefits if blood is spilled, and the more the better. If it kills Israelis it excels; if the Israel Defense Forces kills civilians by mistake, Hamas uses the images to promote its cause.
The Israeli sensitivity for casualties dictated from the outset that the goals of the operation would be limited. That was one of the reasons (but not the only one) why Israel was in no hurry to send its ground forces into Gaza as it did four years ago. The desire to minimize casualties was one of the lessons of the 2008-9 campaign, in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed. Four years ago, Israel was accused of using superfluous fire power indiscriminately. This time, the number of civilian casualties, which Israel terms “non-involved,” was relatively low, less than 70. This helped Israel to fend off international pressure.
In such an environment, it is no wonder that Israel had to settle for the limited goals it achieved in the first 48 hours – killing Jabari, destroying 1,500 rockets including the long-range Fajrs, inflicting heavy damage on Hamas’s military workshops, bunkers and government buildings – “terror infrastructure” in the military parlance.
And above all, it restored tranquility – if the cease-fire indeed holds for many months or even a couple of years – to the one million inhabitants of southern Israel who have been beleaguered for nearly 10 years, exposed to an ongoing barrage of rockets and missiles that made daily life intolerable.
Yet important as they might be, these are tactical achievements. The true strategic gains are surely shared by Egypt, led by President Mohammed Morsi, and Hamas, led by Khaled Mashaal. Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood is emerging from the eight-day clash as the “responsible adult” in the region. It is not only the “guarantor” and arbitrator of the Israel-Hamas cease-fire agreement, but it also upgraded its status visà- vis the US administration, since the two states laboriously helped to clinch the deal.
On Israel’s side, the cease-fire was negotiated by Mossad chief Tamir Pardo and his assistants, together with senior officers from the IDF General Staff. They were sitting in Cairo, talking to their Egyptian counterparts from the General Intelligence Service headed by Major-General Mohammed Rafaat Sheheta. Khaled Mashaal and his colleagues were sitting in another room and also talking to the Egyptians.
Officially there was no direct exchange between Pardo and Mashaal but, in effect, Israel was negotiating with Hamas. It was a historic irony. Sixteen years ago, Mossad agents failed to kill Mashaal in the Jordanian capital Amman, and now they were negotiating indirectly with him. Another irony is the fact that four years ago as a leader of the opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu lambasted the Ehud Olmert government for being soft on Hamas. He defined the reality in Gaza as “Hamastan” and promised to destroy it. Now he has de facto recognized the Hamas state.
The two big losers of the war are Iran and the Palestinian Authority (PA) led by Mahmoud Abbas. Iran armed Hamas with rockets and missiles, sent engineers and military experts to train Hamas personnel to manufacture homemade rockets and drones, and build underground bunkers and launch pads and, in the end, Egypt reaped the political dividends of the improved military capabilities of Hamas.
The PA, which controls the West Bank, was sidelined and once again nakedly presented as irrelevant in the context of the Israeli- Arab conflict. The PA is on the verge of disintegration and only bold steps can salvage it. What is needed is the ambitious goal of creating a pro-peace, pro-stability coalition in the Middle East.
Some American officials speak of using the recent crisis and its aftermath as leverage to create two parallel alliances in the region, sponsored by the US. One will consist of Sunni states Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey; the latter’s Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan and intelligence chief Hakan Fidan played a constructive role in helping achieve the cease-fire. Its aim will be to confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its aspirations for regional hegemony.
The other alliance must be of Israel and the PA, in order to stop Hamas, renew the peace process and achieve an agreement.
Otherwise, Hamas may soon also rule in the West Bank, with Mashaal as the president of the PA in place of Abbas.
Yossi Melman is a commentator on security and intelligence matters for Walla, a Hebrew news website, and co-author of the recently published "Spies against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret wars" Levant Books, NY.