Hammer blows

[Englander]

By Akiva Eldar
Basing his strategy on two mistaken theories, outgoing defense minister Shaul Mofaz has left a trail of destruction for his successor, Amir Peretz

Given the actions of the outgoing defense minister, Lieutenant General (res.) Shaul Mofaz, citizen Amir Peretz is stepping into very small shoes. Mofaz sowed evil and is bequeathing ruins to the next government, and not only to the new defense minister. He is leaving behind him the serious damage caused by two mistaken strategic theories - theories that were wrong for Israel and for the entire Middle East. Both attributed to Arab leaders with very limited military strength the actual intention of destroying the State of Israel. Both were a product of the dogmatic views of Amos Gilad, head of the political-security division at the Defense Ministry. Mofaz, who lacks an independent political platform of his own, adopted Gilad's views uncritically.

The failure of the first theory was exposed, along with all its serious implications, by the Steinitz Committee. This theory was that Saddam Hussein would turn his weapons of mass destruction against Israel when he had "his back against the wall." Gilad and Mofaz assessed that the American invasion of Iraq would improve Israel's strategic situation - but instead it led to an increasingly close relationship between the Shi'ite regime in Iraq and its Iranian neighbor.

The second theory was that Yasser Arafat entered the Oslo process and began the intifada in order to bring about the establishment of "Greater Palestine," which would include Israel and Jordan. This conspiracy theory regarding the Palestinians led the security services to adopt a one-dimensional, shortsighted, aggressive approach.

In the intelligence community, a significant group that includes senior members of Military Intelligence (Amos Malka and Ephraim Lavie), the Shin Bet security services (Avi Dichter, Yuval Diskin and Mati Steinberg) and the Mossad (Yossi Ben-Ari) tore this concept to shreds. Some did so in real time, some belatedly. Mofaz and Gilad made sure that they were silenced. In this, there is no consolation for the tens of thousands of innocent victims of the military conflict, including the 1,200 Israeli dead. The children of the upcoming third intifada will not come into a better world.

Carl Maria von Clausewitz, one of the fathers of modern warfare, claimed that war is "nothing but the continuation of policy by other means." The success of a war is measured by the maneuverability that it grants the political echelon no less than by the degree of security it brings to its citizens. This maneuverability allows the military victory to be translated into a political arrangement. The chaos in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and the terror attacks in Iraq and Israel, prove that military superiority is neither a guarantee of political achievement nor a recipe for security. The unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the unilateral "convergence plan" in the West Bank, the separation fence, Hamas' victory and the ensuing severance of relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority - individually and cumulatively - are testimony to the fact that five and a half years of military conflict have reduced the political echelon's room for maneuver to a nadir not seen since the Yom Kippur War.

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