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Commission: Israeli elites believed nation had moved beyond war

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Wednesday, May 2, 2007

JERUSALEM — For years, Israel's military leadership dismissed the need to prepare for conventional war, a government commission said.

A report by the commission led by retired judge Eliyahu Winograd asserted that the Israel Defense Forces neglected training, procurement and preparations for a conventional war. The panel said a succession of commanders and political leaders were convinced that Israel's adversaries were unable to wage a conventional conflict.

"Some of the political and military elites in Israel have reached the conclusion that Israel is beyond the era of wars," the report said. "It had enough military might and superiority to deter others from declaring war against her."

As a result, the commission said, the Israeli military was unprepared for the Hizbullah war in mid-2006.

Hizbullah fired 4,500 rockets into Israel in July and August 2006, Middle East Newsline reported. In addition, 158 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed in the war.

The report said that for years the military trained for a low-intensity conflict as it pursued a policy of restraint in wake of the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. The policy enabled Hizbullah to engage in its buildup along the Israeli-Lebanese border.

"The shortcomings in the preparedness and the training of the army, its operational doctrine, and various flaws in its organizational culture and structure, were all the responsibility of the military commanders and political leaders in charge years before the current prime minister, defense minister and chief of staff took office," the report said.

The report said Israeli leaders failed to update strategy and security doctrine. As a result, the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as well as the military brass were at a loss to respond effectively to the Hizbullah abduction in July 2006.

"Given these assumptions, the IDF did not need to be prepared for 'real' war," the report said. "There was also no urgent need to update in a systematic and sophisticated way Israel's overall security strategy and to consider how to mobilize and combine all its resources and sources of strength -- political, economic, social, military, spiritual. cultural and scientific - to address the totality of the challenges it faces."

The General Staff was aware of the serious deficiencies in military preparedness and training. But the report said the generals, including Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, did not inform the government.

"Members of the IDF's General Staff who were familiar with the assessments and intelligence concerning the Lebanon front, and the serious deficiencies in preparedness and training, did not insist that these should be considered within the army, and did not alert the political leaders concerning the flaws in the decisions and the way they were made," the report said.


Copyright © 2007 East West Services, Inc.

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