Back to basics: Israeli commanders joined the action in Gaza
Thursday, March 6, 2008 Free Headline Alerts
TEL AVIV — In a major lesson from its failed war in 2006, the Israeli military kept its commanders in the field during the battle with the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip in early March.
Military sources said senior commanders were with their troops during the armored and infantry assault on Hamas weapons facilities and combatants in early March. The sources said the attendance of the commanders marked a lesson from the Hizbullah war in 2006, when brigade and divisional commanders remained in Israel while their units fought in Lebanon.
"The presence of the commanders contributed to the high morale among the troops, even during difficult fighting," a senior officer said.
[On Thursday, the Israeli military reported the death of a soldier and the injury of another three when their jeep blew up along the Israeli border with the southern Gaza Strip. The military said the jeep was destroyed by a landmine near the Kissufim border crossing. The Iranian-sponsored Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.]
The two-day operation in the northern Gaza Strip was conducted by the Givati Brigade and the Barak Armored Brigade. Givati commander Col. Ilan Malka was with his troops throughout the fighting in the Jabalya refugee camp as well as neighboring Gaza City.
During the Lebanon war, brigade and divisional commanders watched the battles against Hizbullah from headquarters in northern Israel. The officers remained behind to demonstrate the military's new command, control, communications, computers and intelligence, or C4I, network, designed to enhance situational awareness and fuse air and ground assets.
Instead, the sources said, the C4I system often failed to provide key data on Hizbullah's whereabouts. Unmanned aerial vehicles, which provided much of the reconnaissance to headquarters, encountered heavy morning fog in Lebanon that prevented commanders from seeing their own or enemy combatants.
In a debriefing on March 4, company and battalion commanders assessed what was regarded as the incomplete operation against Hamas. Military sources said Hamas, with two brigades in the area of operations, was heavily-armed and well-equipped but did not fight in an organized manner.
"They fought more like a militia rather than an organized force," the source said. "I think they are probably disappointed with their performance."