How did Hizbullah succeed in under a month? Where did “Israel” go wrong?

Picking at open wounds
How did Hizbullah succeed in under a month? Where did "Israel" go wrong?
3 senior Israeli officials had warned: harsh "Israeli" attacks have consequences
Source: Haaretz, 02-4-2007
It will take a few more weeks before the interim report of the Winograd Committee on the Second Lebanon War is published, but we can already state that the method of work chosen by the committee will allow for only partial answers to the major question that has bothered most "Israelis" since last summer: What went wrong?
What caused the "Israeli" Military, that same army that only two to three years earlier demonstrated such skill in bringing to a halt most Palestinian self-sacrifice (so-called) `terror`, to fail so completely in the face of the Hizbullah Katyusha attacks? How did the Lebanese organization succeed, in under a month, in firing off an average of over 100 Katyushas a day on the communities in the north of the country, without "Israel" being able to stop it?
The committee will not provide complete answers, because the interim report will be "cut" chronologically on the sixth day of the war. Until the Winograd Committee provides its consensual, final answer to the mystery of the summer (something that is liable to take several more months), we can try to formulate it on the basis of the mountains of material documenting the events of the war. Military investigations, (partial) minutes of proceedings, testimony and interviews with ministers and officers - this time they are all relatively available to journalists and investigators.
It is doubtful whether there has been any other war waged by "Israel" for which such comprehensive information was so accessible, and so quickly. The information is filtering out for public discussion with surprising speed.
This is a phenomenon that stems both from the changing times, when almost any move takes place under a spotlight, with microphones and cameras, and from the outcome of the war. When everyone knows that the bottom line is disappointing, almost every person involved has an interest in providing information, most of it intended to convince the public that he was actually doing his job properly, and that it was his superiors, or his colleagues, who screwed up the works. It is from this Rashomon-like collection of testimony that one must try to arrive at as accurate a description as possible of the true developments.
The soul-searching is accompanied by a great deal of collective self- flagellation, some of it certainly exaggerated. Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, the deputy chief of staff, claims that had the "Israeli" media covered the Six-Day War in the same detail and with the same skepticism, the 1967 victory might not have been achieved either. Correspondents would have described the casualty-heavy battle on Ammunition Hill, in Jerusalem, as a disaster and a failure, and who knows how the following days of the campaign would have developed?
In the process of gathering information for a book on the Second Lebanon War, to be published a few months from now, we spoke to most of the central personalities involved in the war. They all have one thing in common: a sense of anger and sadness both about the way it was conducted and its outcome. "It`s simply a tremendous frustration. There`s no other word to describe it," said a brigade commander who participated in the battles. "We could have defeated Hizbullah - and we didn`t do so. Only at a very late stage did we understand that the main problem requiring attention was the short-range Katyushas."
The journey among the heroes of last summer`s drama is somewhat similar to a meeting with the casualties of a pile-up road accident. For them, it is still a matter of picking at open wounds: battles that failed, bloody traumas, brilliant careers that are coming to a premature end because of the war.
Failed decision making:
During the war, and mainly after it, politicians, generals in the reserves and commentators tried to provide a large number of various explanations for the failure. Among the explanations: the cessation of training exercises, the neglect of the reserve system, the chaotic emergency warehouses, the lost spirit of battle, the flight from Lebanon in 2000, the corrupting occupation of the territories, the impossible professional language adopted by the "Israeli" Military, division commanders who lost control, brigade commanders who remained stuck in front of the plasma screens. All these apparently contributed to the outcome, although the contribution of some of them was inflated beyond their true importance. But apparently if we have to pinpoint one central reason for the failure, it would be the decision-making process during the war: The "Israeli" Military, even from the problematic level at which it was operating last summer, could have won the war had it received appropriate orders. But the behavior of those who were at the ship`s helm, principally the troika at the top - the prime minister, defense (War) minister and chief of staff, who subsequently resigned - simply made that impossible.
From the manner in which they embarked on the war, up until the last, desperate move toward the Litani River during the conflict`s last 60 hours, the defense (War)-political leadership made a series of mistaken decisions. Reactions were formulated on the basis of gut instincts, possible methods of operation were analyzed superficially. Arrogance was often the prevailing attitude. Two blatant examples: a critical meeting with Defense (War) Minister Amir Peretz a few hours after the kidnapping (capture) of the two soldiers, and the report by Major General Udi Shani about the conduct of the Northern Command and the General Staff during key stages of the war.
Dagan wanted to wait:
In descriptions of events on the day of the kidnapping (capture), July 12, two major meetings have been perceived as being of considerable importance: The cabinet meeting in the evening, during which a heavy aerial attack on Hizbullah targets was approved, and a meeting of the minister`s forum (the "septet") that followed it, during which the targets were discussed in detail, foremost among them the organization`s array of medium-range rockets. But that same day a no-less crucial meeting took place, which to a great extent determined the conduct of events during the following month. This was a security situation assessment in the office of Defense (War) Minister Amir Peretz, which began at about 2:30 P.M. At the meeting Peretz decided in favor of an attack on a wider scale. No less important, he ignored the recommendation of a number of senior officials, led by Mossad chief Meir Dagan, to wait and to make preparations on the home front before attacking.
The defense minister, who had begun his term less than two months earlier, first learned about the kidnapping (capture) at around 10 A.M., about an hour after the start of the incident. His military secretary, Brigadier General Eitan Dangut, entered the room where Peretz was meeting with senior members of the defense (War) establishment. That discussion was focused on an earlier kidnapping (capture), that of Corporal Gilad Shalit in the Gaza Strip on June 25, and the situation created as a result of it. Now Dangut handed Peretz a note containing a report on an incident at line 105 on the northern border. The meeting was cut short, as chief of staff Dan Halutz and a number of other officers went out to the nearby "pit" (the General Staff command center) so as to be able to keep track of events in the North from there.
Senior "Israeli" Military officers met at 1 P.M. to formulate their recommendations. The head of the Operations Branch in the General Staff, Major General Gadi Eisenkot, presented recommendations on the basis of an existing plan, called "Breaking the Ice." The "Israeli" Military would respond with a strong and focused aerial attack, with a series of attacks on Hizbullah targets lasting for several days. At the same time, Eisenkot suggested preparing for the possibility of calling up the reserves, beginning on July 16. Halutz approved the aerial attack, decided that there was no need at that stage to call up the reserves, and emphasized the importance of attacking infrastructure targets belonging to the Lebanese government (electricity, fuel and water installations).
At the end of the discussion some of the officers proceeded to Peretz`s office. They included Halutz, Kaplinsky, Eisenkot, air force Commander General Elyezer Shkedy, Home Front Command chief Yitzhak (Jerry) Gershon, head of Military Intelligence (MI) Amos Yadlin, Mossad head Dagan, head of the Shin Bet security services Yuval Diskin, and director of policy and political-military affairs in the Defense (War) Ministry, Major General (res.) Amos Gilad.
Halutz presented the so-called "menu," a bank of targets for attack. Alongside the infrastructure and Hizbullah targets, there was also a proposal to attack the medium-range rockets (Iranian Fajr missiles and some other models in Hizbullah`s possession), which Halutz was inclined to leave as an option for a later stage. Peretz however decided in favor of attacking the Fajrs immediately. "He suddenly interrupted us," says one of the participants in the discussion. "Peretz said: `Wait a minute, I don`t understand. Why not do it already? Why wait for them to continue firing Katyushas at us?`"
Another participant says that the minister summed up the discussion on the issue with this statement: "Friends, a conflagration is extinguished with an explosion." The senior officers saw logic in the minister`s diagnosis. That same night, after approval by the cabinet and the septet, the air force attacked the array of Fajrs. The operation was considered the most successful military strike of the war, but apparently it also spurred Hizbullah to respond with the first barrage of Katyushas, which escalated the situation along the border.
Among the words exchanged in the room, the diagnoses of the three senior officials who were not in uniform - Diskin, Dagan and Gilad - are particularly enlightening: The three warned of the consequences of a harsh "Israeli" response. There will be a price to pay, they said, a serious attack on the home front.