The former commanders, addressing a U.S.-Israel missile defense
conference on Oct. 22 in Jerusalem, said Israeli military options were more
limited than ever. They cited the 34-day war with Hizbullah in mid-2006 in
which Israel was widely condemned by the West for its air strikes on
suspected Hizbullah strongholds, most of them located around Beirut and
villages in southern Lebanon.
"As a democracy and Western-oriented country, we have no option of
launching harsh strikes on the enemy in which civilians are harmed," [Ret.]
Maj. Gen. Herzle Bodinger, a former air force commander, said. "The
Hizbullah lesson that it projected to all Arab countries is that Israel has
a problem with rockets and missiles."
Israel has never formally ruled out a preemptive strike. But a Defense
Ministry official acknowledged that an Israeli preemptive strike was
virtually unthinkable without approval from the United States, which
provides more than $2.4 billion in annual military aid to the Jewish state.
"The Israeli strategic decisions over the last 20 years show the
increasing dominance of the United States," the official said. "Even our
strategic programs are decided by Washington."
Speakers at the missile defense conference envisioned a shield able to
counter any Arab or Iranian conventional or nonconventional missile strikes
on the Jewish state. They said an effective missile defense system would
also allow the Israel Air Force to concentrate on targeting enemy strategic
facilities rather than short-range missile or rocket launchers.
"It could be that if we can't intercept enemy missiles, then the Israel
Air Force will spend time looking and destroying enemy launchers rather than
focusing on destroying enemy strategic facilities," Bodinger, now a senior
defense executive, said. "In the last war [with Hizbullah], there was a
total failure [to destroy Hizbullah rockets]."
Still, the shelving of Israel's preemptive strike option raised concern
among missile defense proponents. They said the new policy could eliminate
the Israeli option of destroying missile and rockets in their boost-phase of
launch.
James Roche, a former U.S. Air Force secretary and senior executive at
Northrop Grumman, said Israel as well as the United States must deem BPI a
major missile defense option. Roche, who in 1986 authored a missile defense
study with the late Israeli defense analyst Zeev Schiff, said BPI could
deter Iran.
"You ought to think about where you destroy the missile," Roche said. "I
believe that if hostilities are imminent and missiles are erected, then
attack them. Why wait until it's [enemy missile] over our territory."
Several of the speakers supported the procurement or development of a
laser-based missile defense system. They cited the Mobile Tactical
High-Energy Laser, or M-THEL, a joint Israel-U.S. program suspended in 2005.
M-THEL, based on the earlier THEL, or Nautilus program, was said to have
destroyed all 46 rockets, missiles, artillery shells and mortars fired in
tests at White Sands, New Mexico in the late 1990s.
"Since the [Lebanon] war last summer, there has been a fundamental
change in our attitude toward missile defense," said Avi Schnurr, a former
THEL official and now executive director of the Israel Missile Defense
Association. "Comprehensive missile defense means also active defense."
Schnurr cited four elements of what he termed an effective policy toward
missile defense. He listed clear goals, understanding the missile threat,
available responses, and the application of option-based scenarios.
"If the threat is moving toward cruise missiles, then we have to take
that into account," Schnurr said. "Missile defense must also be a factor in
urban planning."
But several former Israeli defense officials stressed that the missile
defense shield developed by Israel relied heavily on U.S. funding. They
cited the cancellation of M-THEL by the U.S. Army, which led to the Israeli
decision to shelve the program a year later.
"The Americans said they were stopping Nautilus," Amos Yaron, a former
Defense Ministry director-general, recalled. "We said we would continue and
did
so for another year. Then came the big budget cuts and we had to drop the
project for other priorities."