On weakness, political and military - Zvi Bar'el in Haaretz:
‘The slogan “The IDF is prepared for any scenario” has become a horrifying disaster, and not only since Saturday. It’s false in its attempt to instill confidence not only in the Israel Defense Forces but especially in its understanding of the possible scenarios. And it’s hollow because it lacks the answers to three key questions.
The first is not whether the IDF is prepared but rather how it is prepared for any scenario. Second, what happens when a scenario isn’t even on the analysts’ desks? And third, what happens when a scenario exists but the government isn’t willing to accept it?’
(…)
‘The heads of the army and the Shin Bet security service were aware of the gap between the government’s delusional ambitions and the situation on the ground. That doesn’t absolve the IDF, the Shin Bet and other monitoring and analysis agencies of responsibility for the colossal failure. But this failure was born of dynamics that successive Israeli governments, not just the current one, created for the IDF.’
(…)
‘The IDF was ordered to create a false reality. In Gaza, it was asked to prove that a suffocating blockade can be imposed on 2 million people for years while preventing any resistance, whether civilian or armed. In our political leaders’ imaginations, there’s no contradiction between fighting a terrorist organization and supporting, encouraging and funding that organization if doing so foils any diplomatic process.
The separation that successive governments have created between the West Bank and Gaza – between the Palestinian Authority, which made us uncomfortable by threatening to put a diplomatic solution on the agenda, and Hamas, which seemingly forged an alliance with successive Israeli governments to block this threat – put the army in an impossible situation.
It was tasked with creating an animal whose body parts don't match, both in Gaza and the West Bank. It had to convince itself that this was possible and invent scenarios proving the feasibility of this invention because it couldn’t tell the government “enough.”’
(…)
‘This concept had to exist even after IDF operations in Gaza proved its futility. Each of these operations was followed by a lull during which Israel licked its wounds, negotiated over reconstruction and tightened the weakened screws of our delusional conceptual framework.
The balance of deterrence created between the IDF and Hamas couldn’t exist without “understandings” for supporting Hamas’ political and economic aspirations. That was the necessary condition for the group's continued existence and ability to play its role in Israeli policy.’
(…)
‘Now the IDF will bear the blame for two serious failures. The only scenarios it was aware of and prepared for were the ones it created to assuage the government. In this way, it spawned the ridiculous “concept” that just collapsed with a thunderous boom and is taking an enormous toll.
And the government? Well, what does it know? After all, it only gave the order.’
Read the article here.
The failure was made by successive governments and I’m not saying this to absolve Netanyahu.
Also, and this is rather important, in order to create deterrence Israel needed Hamas and Hamas needless to say needed Israel. A long, long time ago Israel supported Hamas, because it thought that it would weaken Fatah. But that’s well-known and now not so important.
After that the mutual dependence had its own dynamics and delusions.
Besides that, who wasn’t under the impression that you could live well with a frozen conflict? After all, there were and are many more frozen conflicts than just this one.
Hamas was needed to protect Israel against ‘diplomatic’ solutions, which all in way or another go back to the old formula land for peace. There was no desire to give up land, and one could do without peace as long as the conflict was frozen. The same can be said about Hamas, peace or anything that resembled peace would have unmasked Hamas as a dictatorial, brutal and corrupt organization. The time that Hamas could claim to be uncorrupted unlike Fatah is a while ago.
The Israeli military doctrine has been to avoid large wars and to opt for smaller, often preemptive operations, aided by what was believed superior intelligence.
The intelligence was less superior than was thought, both at human and technological level that assumption turned out to be hubris. But the spy services will adapt quickly, and so will their enemies. (There are rumors that Egypt warned Israel ten days ago that something going to happen in Gaza. Maybe. Maybe not.)
We ‘ll have ground war with thousands of deaths, mora Gazans than Israelis, Hamas will be curtailed, but in the end there’s no alternative for Hamas from Israeli perspective, nor from any other perspective.
The idea that after this war Fatah can replace Hamas in Gaza is delusional.
Everything is on the table, but as I said before I’m afraid that all the bloodshed will not alter reality, the same problems and dilemmas will exist after the war, and probably the same unwillingness to face these dilemma’s.
The fact that political Messianism is very popular in the region only makes things worse.