Waning international legitimacy, an exhausted army and war in Lebanon will push Israel to the edge
Fires blazing in and around Kiryat Shmona on 3 June 2024u
Amos Harel writes in Haaretz on 7 June 2024:
As the Gaza war enters its ninth month, it’s hard to report that there are good news on the horizon. A series of discussions held in the past few weeks with ranking figures in the defense establishment increasingly indicate that Israel is headed for a magnificent multidimensional failure.
Strategically, we are stuck in all arenas. The biggest and most important of them (against Hezbollah in Lebanon) is in danger of morphing into a conflagration which, if it happens, will overshadow everything that happened before it. The talks on a hostage deal with Hamas are apparently in crisis again, after it seemed for a moment that U.S. President Joe Biden’s speech might extricate us from the morass. And the military activity in the Gaza Strip, which is now focused on Rafah and the refugee camps in the center, is exacting a price from Hamas but not advancing a victory in the war in the foreseeable future.
The past few days were marked by an escalation in the north. On Monday, huge fires broke out in Kiryat Shmona and around the nearby kibbutzim after Hezbollah launched volleys of rockets and drones southward across the border. Two days later, the terrorist organization let loose an effective drone assault on a reserve force that was deployed in an open area near the Druze village of Hurfeish. One soldier was killed and 10 were wounded. Betwixt and between, Israel’s television channels sent teams to the border and broadcast from special studios on “Losing the North” (a play on words in Hebrew, denoting “losing our way”); the government mouthpiece Channel 14, which is stingy with both expenditures and bad news, chose to leave its staff in the center of the country.
Like in the old American movies, Israel and Hezbollah are playing chicken on the edge of a cliff. Perhaps that the old cliché that neither side wants an all-out war is still true. But they are liable to get to that stage, largely as a result of miscalculation. Like in Gaza, Israel is not succeeding in translating a high accumulation of tactical achievements into a strategic victory. At the beginning of the war, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah made a decision to wage a participatory effort in the north, thereby pinning down large numbers of Israel Defense Forces soldiers and helping Hamas in Gaza without being pulled into an all-out confrontation. Following the collapse of the first cease-fire agreement at the beginning of last December, he declared that he was resuming hostilities and would hold his fire only when the war in Gaza ends.
Palestinians check a UN-school housing displaced people that was hit during Israeli bombardment in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, on 6 June 2024
What Hezbollah is fomenting – the evacuation of 60,000 Israelis from their homes along the border, a continuing trickle of fatalities in the north, the launching of dozens of rockets and drones every day – is sufficient to heighten the public’s frustration and step up the pressure on the government to act. This birthed the idea, which is still being mulled by the top political and security echelons, to considerably ratchet up the attacks on Hezbollah in hopes of getting it to stop shooting while still avoiding a general war. When you’re holding a giant hammer, every problem looks like a nail. But the proponents of this idea still can’t explain why they think Hezbollah will necessarily be deterred and won’t, on the contrary, conclude that Israel is bluffing, so the attacks can continue without igniting a war.
Some Likud and far-right cabinet ministers want to go even further and launch an all-out offensive against Hezbollah. This week marks the 42nd anniversary of the (failed) 1982 war in Lebanon, and it looks like these people haven’t learned a thing from that Israeli attempt to impose order in Lebanon. For some of them, it’s also urgent to bomb Iran and put an end to the nuclear threat that’s developing from there. It’s obvious that they don’t have the faintest notion about the IDF’s true situation and capabilities.
Israel is likely to find itself in a war without international legitimacy (which faded after the October 7 massacre when the dimensions of the destruction and killing in Gaza became clear), without solid U.S. support and with a burned out, weary army that is struggling to maintain orderly supplies of munitions and spare parts. A delegation led by the director general of the Defense Ministry, Maj. Gen. (res.) Eyal Zamir, visited Washington this week to discuss with the Pentagon and the State Department the crisis that was created in the wake of Biden’s decision a month ago to delay a shipment of 3,500 smart bombs earmarked for the Israel Air Force. The Defense Ministry is talking about positive progress, but the problem remains unresolved.
Above all, and despite the increasingly unsubtle hints being dropped by talking heads on television, the public apparently hasn’t yet grasped the difference in terms of the damage that Hezbollah’s rockets can cause as compared to Hamas’. Some 20 civilians were killed as a result of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip in the first two days of the war – a disaster that the public repressed against the backdrop of the unprecedented scenes of the massacre in the southern communities and army bases. But the number of rockets Hamas fired on the first day – 5,000 – can be replicated by Hezbollah every day for a month; and many of those rockets are heavier, have a longer range and are also more accurate.
It’s very possible that estimates of tens of thousands of victims in the rear from a war with Hezbollah are exaggerated (a lot depends on the degree of citizens’ obedience to the Home Front Command’s instructions). But in any event, the cities of the north and the center will encounter a threat of a scale and intensity never seen in the past. We need to hope that Hezbollah also understands the enormity of the danger and grasps how much damage will be inflicted on Lebanon’s infrastructure and on the Lebanese people, and that this will restrain its behavior.
Contrary to the impression created by some recent reports, it’s difficult to say that the Israeli leadership is gung-ho for a war in the north. Yet there is the danger that an over-effective display of the IDF’s abilities will lead to the opposite of the hoped-for result and will make an all-out war more likely.
Israeli minimum, Palestinian maximum
A week has already passed since Biden’s speech, and as of Thursday evening no official reply has been received from Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, to the Israeli-American proposal for a cease-fire and a second hostage deal. Senior figures in the U.S. administration are emphasizing that Israel responded positively to the proposal (despite the objections it has raised since the speech) and that the ball is in Hamas’ court.
According to reports in the Arab media on Thursday, Hamas will focus its reservations on the critical issue that has been undermining an agreement for some months. This is a case of the Israeli minimum not meeting the Palestinian maximum. The gulf between the sides lies in the transition from the first to the second stage of a deal. After 42 days of a cease-fire during which the hostages who meet the “humanitarian” criteria (women, the elderly, the ill and the wounded) will gradually be released, accelerated negotiations are supposed to be held on the return of the remaining hostages and the bodies of those killed in captivity, in exchange for a general cessation of the war and the IDF’s full withdrawal from the Strip.
A wall in Jerusalem with photos of hostages who were kidnapped during the October 7 Hamas attack.
Hamas is apprehensive, and not without a degree of logic, that Israel is setting a trap for it: the negotiations will founder and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will resume the war as he did in December. Biden is effectively saying to Sinwar and his aides, “Trust me, the fighting will not resume.” But Hamas wants more solid guarantees that will ensure the end of the war – and, effectively, the organization’s victory (by virtue of the fact that its rule in Gaza survived). That is something Netanyahu will have a very hard time providing as long as he wants to remain in power. So far, all the attempts to bypass this obstacle via creative legal formulations have failed.
Two or three months ago, when Israel’s situation in the war appeared to be better, it missed a chance to strike a deal because of Netanyahu’s insistence on avoiding a decision. The situation now is more complicated, not least because Hamas thinks that time is on its side and the IDF’s operation on the ground is becoming entangled. In the light of the circumstances, it seems that the right thing to do is to strive as much as possible for a hostage deal, even at the price of stopping the war. The greater danger lurks in Lebanon. Israel needs to use this time to calm things down in the north, to play out the possibility (which is apparently limited) for a political settlement that will distance Hezbollah’s Radwan Force from the border and to prepare for the possibility of an all-out war there. The units also need a break.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is trying to promote the idea of an alternative governing body to Hamas, one that might become part of the American effort to further an Israeli-Saudi deal. Here, too, the prospect of success of creating “governing islands” of a Palestinian entity that is not Hamas (and which will be connected in a roundabout way with the Palestinian Authority) doesn’t look too good. The other possibilities – Hamas’ continued rule, an Israeli military government, Somalia-like chaos – are even worse.
On the ground in Gaza, Hamas is not breaking. Many of its military capabilities (armed militants, command systems, rockets) have indeed been degraded, but they have been replaced with smaller and more flexible systems that are focused on surviving and attempting to inflict losses on the Israeli troops. It’s hard to say that the death of tens of thousands of Gazans at the hands of the IDF really bothers the terror group. The killing has been leveraged well for the benefit of the Palestinian struggle internationally, and to date Sinwar hasn’t displayed an iota of grief for the disaster that befell his people.
‘Parts of Gaza are extraterritorial’
On the ground in Gaza, Hamas is not breaking. Many of its military capabilities (such as armed fighters, command systems and rockets) have indeed been degraded, but they have been replaced with smaller and more flexible formations that focus on survival and attempting to inflict losses on Israeli troops. It would be difficult to argue that the deaths of tens of thousands of Gazans at the hands of the Israeli military disturbs the organization. The killing has been successfully leveraged to gain support for the Palestinian cause internationally, and Mohammed Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, hasn’t displayed a shred of regret about the catastrophe he has brought upon his people.
Before dawn on Thursday, the air force bombed a school used as a shelter for refugees in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. The Palestinians reported that dozens had been killed, most of them women and children. The military’s account is radically different. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit insists that it was a precision operation that targeted dozens of armed members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, some of whom took part in the October 7 slaughter. The military maintains that the attack used relatively small, precision-guided munitions and was preceded by the thorough collection of intelligence.
Israeli soldiers embrace after returning from the Gaza Strip on 5 June 2024
The battle between the two versions will continue, echoing a similar bombing raid in Rafah last week. A detailed paragraph has recently been added to official military statements about attacks like these, saying the operations had been carried out with the utmost caution and in accordance with the international laws of war. The shadow of the court in The Hague is already looming over events. In some recent discussions held by the government and by the defense establishment, participants paled when they discovered that international arrest warrants can also be issued in secret. Theoretically, a senior military officer or a cabinet minister could visit a foreign country and find themselves a wanted suspect upon landing.
The military’s offensive action is now taking place in three areas. The 98th Division has left Jabalya and is operating in the refugee camps in central Gaza. The 99th Division is holding the east-west Netzarim Corridor, from which it mounts attacks to the north and the south. The 162nd Division is on the offense in Rafah. But don’t be misled: this is limited activity that frequently has marginal and diminishing value.
The 98th and 99th divisions are staging short raids followed by a departure from the area that has been attacked. In Rafah, the advance is limited and slow, in the wake of prohibitions (“understandings”) conveyed by the U.S. for fear of civilians being killed in large numbers. Israel has taken complete control of the Philadelphi route on the border with Egypt and hopes to thereby block most of Hamas’ arms-smuggling channels.
Advancing into Rafah is limited to just a few hundred meters (yards), and commanders are complaining of dawdling and inactivity. It’s worth noting that lately, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rarely been mentioning destroying four remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah. The battalions are gradually being degraded, but it looks as though many of their personnel have left the city. They will not be fully taken out of action soon.
The absence of clear goals in the war is intensifying feelings of burnout and attrition in both reserve and regular units. Commanders in the reserves are noticing a steep drop in the performance of regular battalions from the Engineering Corps, the 401st Armored Brigade and the infantry brigades (Givati, Nahal and Paratroopers’), which have been bearing the brunt of the fighting in Gaza almost continuously since the hostilities began.
One division commander was told that instead of sending battalions on a three-day refreshment furlough outside Gaza, if he wanted them to keep operating properly, he should start with a month-long furlough. Restlessness is growing among the reservists’ ranks over the fact that the burden of military service is not being shared equally among the population and because the military isn’t able to plan more than one step ahead and is relentlessly sending units into service without almost no prior warning.
When high-ranking officers arrive at the front and try to boost the spirit of reservists’ commanders with sermons on Zionism, the response they get is a shrug, at best. On top of this, a prolonged decline in operational discipline has set in, which is being manifested in part by a failure to uphold the military’s declared values in combat. Soldiers are reporting unjustified firing at civilians who draw close to areas under military control (even when no salient danger is seen from them) and the use of the “neighbor procedure”: forcing Palestinians to check suspicious sites before the soldiers enter.
There are some reserve companies, particularly those in which a clearcut religious ideological thrust prevails on the command level, that simply operate on their own accord on these issues. “Parts of Gaza are extraterritorial,” says an officer in the reserves serving in a command post there. “From the point of view of some of the commanders of these units, at the junior levels, the laws of the military and international law don’t apply there. The combat values we preached have been eroded. The senior command level isn’t aware of this or isn’t really bothering to address the matter.”
Elephant in the General Staff
A certain suspense in the political world was evident on Thursday ahead of the approaching deadline. Saturday, June 8, was the end date set in the ultimatum by National Unity Party Chairman Benny Gantz, who has threatened to quit the wartime coalition unless his demands are met, mostly dealing with the running of the war. Netanyahu chose to respond to them derisively and rejected them in full within hours of Gantz’s press conference in mid-May. Gantz’s pondering in the past few days isn’t related to a possible softening in the prime minister’s stance, but to the impact of the events in Lebanon and Gaza. If we are facing an all-out war with Hezbollah, or if a hostage deal is struck against all odds, wouldn’t it be better for Gantz and his party colleague Gadi Eisenkot to remain at the war cabinet table?
Officials in the Biden administration are making the same case. The Americans would very much like to see Gantz and Eisenkot remain close to the helm in Israel and hoped that President Joe Biden’s public speech would create that result, among others. If Gantz nevertheless decides to resign on Saturday and doesn’t follow his custom by declaring another delay, that could mean he thinks the realization of either scenario is not an immediate possibility: neither a flareup of war in Lebanon nor a hostage deal.
While Gantz is preparing to leave, at his own pace, Netanyahu is encountering a flanking action on the right, as ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich vie with each another in throwing inflammatory and bizarre declarations. The prime minister continues to wage a rearguard battle on a host of fronts: against the state prosecutors in his trial, against attempts to dismantle his coalition, against the protest movements in the streets and against the demands for the establishment of an effective, nonpartisan commission of inquiry to investigate the failures that led to the October 7 attack and the outbreak of the war.
About this last issue, and not unusually or coincidentally, the prime minister feels that he is a victim. People who speak with him come away with the impression that to him, the defense establishment and, above all, intelligence officials, tripped him up on the morning of October 7, entangled the country in a war and endangered his continued rule. Had they had only called him in the middle of the night, when the first intelligence reports arrived about Hamas’ preparations, he would have stepped forward and prevented the disaster.
That’s a question for alternate history, one that can’t be decided and that will haunt us for years to come. But questions about the fateful phone consultations that night in the Shin Bet security service and in the military are shared by members of the General Staff. Among those who made decisions that resulted in minor and totally insufficient measures of defense and preparedness being taken were IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Herzl Halevi, Shin Bet director Ronen Bar and a small group of high-ranking military and Shin Bet personnel.
The military’s investigations have already started to deal with a series of subjects regarding the terrorist attack on October 7 itself, but the elephant remains in the center of the General Staff’s headquarters. Only Halevi and the officers who took part in those conversations know exactly what went on there, during those terrible hours. Their fellow officers and subordinates have yet to hear an account of what happened, which is likely to be a central part of investigations.
As this column has noted in recent months, frustration is growing among common soldiers toward the senior ranks, whose officers, while taking early responsibility for blunders at the start of the war, haven’t yet translated this into practical steps in the form of dismissals and resignations (with the exception of the director of Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, who is set to leave soon). The tension is already sometimes spilling over into acrimonious exchanges between the chief of staff and the generals.
At the heart of the tension is Halevi’s decision to make an extensive round of appointments in the General Staff, including the coerced departure of many majors general and brigadiers general without the conclusions of the investigations having been published and without steps being taken against those who have been labeled as responsible for the failures. The criticism is trickling between the various ranks and between the Kirya defense headquarters in Tel Aviv and the front.
Col. Hanoch Dauba, who last week published a fiercely critical article about the military’s performance in the war, was reprimanded by his superiors this week. That repeated a case at the start of the war in which a brigadier general hurled criticism in a private WhatsApp group. The reason for that reprimand was that the group included civilians.
Former lawmaker Ofer Shelah, who is currently a fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, wrote on Thursday in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that what’s necessary now is “a command act of dismissal from office” in regard to those responsible for the October 7 debacle. Only a move like that, Shelah said, “would realize in practice the ethos of responsibility. And a military is an organization that, without an ethos, has nothing.” Many senior personnel in the military and in the reserves would probably sign on to that.
The present chief of staff is a tragic figure, to a large degree. Halevi is an outstanding officer, honest and moral, on whose watch a horrific national catastrophe occurred for which he is to blame to a great extent. He took impressive command of the military’s recovery after the blunder, prevented a comprehensive systematic collapse in the General Staff and quickly got back on track to lead the ground maneuver in Gaza. At present, too, he has an important place in shaping policy ahead of a possible flareup in the north. But him remaining in his post over time without signaling an early date of termination for his tour of duty is tainting the atmosphere in the military and exposing him and the military as a whole to crass political attacks from outside.
It’s true that there’s a risk that Halevi’s resignation (and even more so, that of Bar of the Shin Bet) will allow Netanyahu to influence the appointment of their successors and shape the security hierarchy. But even so, without an extensive change of command at the top in the near future, the public’s confidence in the military will continue to wither, and with it the confidence of the combat troops and their commanders in their superiors.
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