Israel-Gaza conflict: Unthinkable security lapse on Netanyahu’s watch
It’s the biggest military setback and intelligence failure in 50 years — and when it’s over, there is likely to be ‘the mother of all blame-fests’
Half a century and a day after the surprise attack by Egypt and Syria on Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel suffered what was without a doubt its biggest military setback and intelligence failure in 50 years
www.thetimes.co.uk
Half a century and a day after the surprise attack by Egypt and Syria on Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel suffered what was without a doubt its biggest military setback and intelligence failure in 50 years.
Unlike the Yom Kippur War when it was attacked by two large Arab armies, Israel this time is not in existential danger. There is no questioning its military superiority over Hamas and the other Palestinian militias which have attacked it from Gaza. But as far as the chaos on the ground, with teams of Hamas fighters blowing up sections of the border fence, others infiltrating using motor-gliders and powerboats on the shore, streaming into Israel under the cover of a massive barrages of rockets launched from within Gaza, it is as stunning a setback as then.
The shock of 1973 is a lingering national trauma but over half a century later much has been done to restore Israelis’ rock-solid confidence in their military, and especially their intelligence services. They are routinely regaled by its success in foiling terrorist attacks and reaching deep inside Iran to eliminate nuclear scientists. Surveillance of Gaza, the coastal enclave which has since 2007 been under control of Hamas, is particularly intense. Israeli intelligence has hundreds of electronic sensors focused on the narrow strip of land and all phone communications go over Israeli networks.
The shock of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the surprise attack on Israel is a lingering national trauma
KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
That
Hamas managed to prepare this operation — which would have taken months of planning and training — without Israeli intelligence getting wind of it is almost unthinkable. Once the dust settles, which may not be for a while, there will be a massive reckoning within Israel’s military and political leadership. One former senior intelligence official put it simply: “Heads will roll at the very top.” It may well be like the upheaval after the Yom Kippur War which eroded confidence in the country’s leaders and led ultimately to the resignation of Golda Meir as prime minister and her Labour party, which had been in power since Israel’s foundation in 1948, being voted out of office four years after the war.
How will that affect Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister who returned once again to office just nine months ago? It is much too early to calculate the political fallout while the fighting is still raging.
Netanyahu, 73, is the only figure in today’s Israeli leadership old enough to have experienced the chaos of the Yom Kippur War close up. He was at the time a student at MIT in Boston but had recently completed five years of service as an officer in an elite special forces unit. He rushed to JFK airport where he boarded one of the first planes back to Israel and joined the fighting, though he was shuttled back and forth between the Egyptian and Syrian fronts as the Israeli military hierarchy was uncertain on where to commit its forces.
The memories of that period of uncertainty and the political turmoil and finger-pointing that ensued once Israel had fought back its enemies, at the cost of more than 2,000 dead soldiers, will be at the front of his mind now. This time he won’t be able to simply board a plane and get back to civilian life once it is over. He will be the one who has to deliver answers to the Israeli public and while he can expect them to unite while the fighting is still raging, he knows just how quickly opinion can turn against the politicians.
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Who are Hamas and why are they attacking now?
There is no way around the conclusion that what is without a doubt Israel’s worst military setback in 50 years has happened on his watch. Netanyahu’s supporters have called him in the past “Mr Security”, but that title sounds echoingly hollow right now.
Netanyahu with Joe Biden in New York in September
SUSAN WALSH/AP
Netanyahu’s political comeback and his new far-right coalition’s time in power so far has been rocky. The government has been buffeted by massive protests against its plans to weaken the Supreme Court, thousands of army reservists have threatened to suspend their service in protest. Meanwhile there has been a breakdown of law and order in Israel with sky-rocketing murder rates. And now this.
For at least the next few days, Netanyahu can rely upon a rare period of Israeli unity. The country will draw together as it goes to war, and the dead, numbering probably in their hundreds, are brought to rest. Much will then depend on how the Israeli campaign in Gaza unfolds over the next few weeks. If the Israeli army goes to war, with many casualties on both sides but fails to eliminate the Hamas leadership and free the Israeli captives, public anger over the initial failures that led to Hamas’s successful attack will boil over. If somehow, Israel can reverse fortunes on the battlefield in Gaza, Netanyahu will try to make do with a commission of inquiry that will blame the intelligence chiefs but shield him and his government.
“Once this over, there will be the mother of all blame-fests,” predicted one former Israeli general. “Netanyahu will obviously pin this on the army because he knows how it will taint his legacy, but history remembers whoever was leader and this is ultimately his responsibility.”
