The
No way to
go to war, says Ya’alon
In June 2005, Ariel Sharon replaced
Moshe Ya’alon as Chief of Staff by his deputy, air force general, Dan Halutz,
who was in charge of Israeli military assault on
The title of the interview - No way to go to war - gives the flavour
of it. Ya’alon tells an astounding tale
of a failure to implement the plan he had drawn up, when he was Chief of Staff
to respond to an event like the one that occurred on 12 July 2006, when
Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, and of a growing delusion amongst the
Israeli political leadership (nourished by Halutz, he says) that Hezbollah’s
military capacity could be destroyed from the air.
Ya’alon may have an axe to grind as
a commander who was replaced, but the tale he tells is consistent with other
information that is in the public domain.
And, when it was put to him that, since he had been chief of staff or
deputy for 5 out of the last 6 years, he must accept some responsibility for
the debacle in
(Prime Minister Olmert has set up
two commissions of inquiry, both reporting to the government. The first, headed by former Israeli Defense
Forces Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, is supposed to investigate the
military’s role in the war. Lipkin-Shahak was a senior adviser to
Ya’alon was opposed to
“I thought that the very
existence of negotiations with
Asked if he would be ready to cede
the
“I never sanctified any
piece of ground. If a territorial concession will bring about true peace and
full recognition of
As regards Hezbollah, Ya’alon takes it
for granted that Hezbollah cannot be destroyed by Israeli military action
alone. As he explained in his interview:
“… it was clear to me
that Hezbollah is a rooted phenomenon and will not be eradicated by military
action. It was also clear to me that there is no unequivocal military solution
against the rocket deployment. I therefore encouraged political activity, which
in the end would lead to the disarming of Hezbollah as a result of an internal
Lebanese process, and concurrently I drew up a military plan intended to
address a scenario of a Hezbollah offensive that would oblige us to deal with
the organization militarily.”
The plan was to make a military
response of limited duration and seize the opportunity to get the
“That the IDF [Israeli
Defence Forces] must act in a way that would set in motion a political process
that would lead to the disarming of Hezbollah, the removal of the Iranians from
Lebanon and perhaps also the imposition of sanctions on Syria and Iran. In a
scenario of the abduction of soldiers, exactly as occurred on July 12, the IDF
was supposed to respond with an aerial attack and the mobilization of reserve
divisions, which would act as a threat to the Syrians and to Hezbollah and
would encourage Lebanon and the international community to take action to
achieve the desired goal.”
Then:
“If the threat itself did
not achieve the goal, a ground move would have begun within a few days aimed
primarily at seizing dominant terrain as far as the
A dominating theme in Ya’alon’s
criticism is that in the ground assault Israeli soldiers’ lives were squandered
by tactics that left them vulnerable to Hezbollah anti-tank missiles.
Asked why the plan was not
implemented, he replied:
“I don’t know. That is
one of the questions that the state commission of inquiry will have to
investigate. In my opinion, the aerial offensive was correct. The air force
delivered the goods. In a few areas it even provided favorable surprises. But
the activation of the ground forces was a catastrophe. There was no defined
goal. There was no required achievement. They jumped from one idea to the next
and introduced new missions all the time without any logic.”
Asked when he recognised that something
had gone wrong, he said:
“At the end of the first
week. Until then things were conducted reasonably well. I was critical of the
fact that the reserves were not mobilized, but I understood more or less what
the goal was. But then, instead of plucking the political fruits of the aerial
offensive, they continued to use force. They over-used force. And instead of
coordinating with the Americans for them to stop us when the operation was at
its height, and setting in motion a political process to disarm Hezbollah, we
asked the Americans for more time. We let the Americans think that we have some
sort of gimmick that will vanquish Hezbollah militarily. I knew there was no
such gimmick. I knew the whole logic of the operation was that it be limited in
time and not be extended.”
This removes any illusion that the
Asked if he had tried to warn the
political and military leadership, he replied:
“… I discovered that the
political level had the feeling - which was nourished by the chief of staff -
that the matter could be wrapped up from the air. And when it turned out that
the aerial move was not going to deliver the goods it was never meant to deliver
in the first place, frustration set in. A desperate search began for some kind
of move that would produce some sort of feeling of victory. The delusory idea
of a one-kilometer ground move developed.”
Ya’alon reserves his harshest
criticism for the final Israeli ground attack, which was launched on
The conversation on this went as
follows:
Q And the final ground move that ended the war?
“That was a spin move. It
had no substantive security-political goal, only a spin goal. It was meant to
supply the missing victory picture. You don't do that. You don't send soldiers
to carry out a futile mission after the political outcome has already been set.
I consider that corrupt.”
Q You are saying a very serious thing.
Thirty-three soldiers were killed in that operation. Were they killed to
achieve a spin?
“Yes. And that is why
people have to resign. For that you don’t even need a commission of inquiry.
Whoever made that decision has to assume responsibility and resign.”
Q Does the prime minister have to resign?
“Yes. He can’t say he did
not know. …”
Q Must the chief of staff resign?
“Yes. He should have
resigned immediately after the conclusion of the campaign.”
Labour & Trade Union Review
www.david-morrison.org.uk
References:
[1] www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/762890.html
[2]
www.david-morrison.org.uk/other-documents/shtrasler-haaretz-20060818.htm