The General Staff: Management and Decision Making | by Gal Perl Finkel

At the outset of World War II, "the results of the German General Staff’s thinking and decision making on the battlefield outdid those of its French counterpart" (p. 11). This is what Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi wrote in the preface to a new book about the IDF General Staff by Brig. Gen. (ret.) Dr. Meir Finkel. Kochavi here underscores the importance of the General Staff and its ability to influence a campaign, in the present and in the future.

• originally published in "Strategic Assessment"
• Volume 24, No. 2, April 2021

At the outset of World War II, "the results of the German General Staff’s thinking and decision making on the battlefield outdid those of its French counterpart" (p. 11). This is what Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi wrote in the preface to a new book, "The Israeli General Staff" ( Modan, Maarachot Publishing, 2020), about the IDF General Staff by Brig. Gen. (ret.) Dr. Meir Finkel. Kochavi here underscores the importance of the General Staff and its ability to influence a campaign, in the present and in the future. Thus, he continued, "The General Staff must be a body that specializes in management and decision making for the immediate, short, medium, and long term, and especially in time of war, which is its greatest test. It requires training, knowledge, skill, teamwork and a critical attitude, and curiosity and creativity" (p. 11).

In this book, the author, formerly commander of an armored brigade and head of the Dado Center for Interdisciplinary Military Studies, continues his previous book, The Chief of Staff, and the effort to analyze thoroughly and fundamentally the roles and challenges of the General Staff, which is the IDF’s strategic command that includes headquarters, military districts, and other functions, and to try to explain how it learns, plans, and functions.

The book includes four chapters of test cases. Each chapter concludes with a summary and the author’s recommendations, which are intended to help the IDF General Staff avoid the difficulties and errors presented in the chapter. In the fifth chapter the author presents his main insights and his recommendations for improving the work of the General Staff.

Methodology

The book presents a comparative analysis of the General Staff’s performance with regard to four roles and challenges: the planning processes in the General Staff, including multi-year planning for force buildup, operational planning for wartime, and planning during wartime; various learning processes of the General Staff, including lessons learned from war, learning from foreign armies, and processes of change; patterns of organizing in the face of evolving challenges, including the establishment of new staff bodies and the direct management of the General Staff; and chiefs of staff coping with a General Staff that opposed the outlook and changes they sought to implement, and with differences of approach within the General Staff.

Although the study is not a historical documentary, it was based on material from the IDF’s History Department and on biographies, media publications, and interviews the author conducted with senior officers who served in the General Staff over the years. Although each period was marked by different challenges and contexts, there are similar characteristics that can instruct about the recurring challenges, responsibilities, and roles of the General Staff. At the same time, and as the author insisted, it is difficult to examine the periods comparatively, since each period entails its particular challenges and strategic context.

The book’s analysis is detailed and systematic and offers enlightening insights. For example, in the chapter describing operational planning (planning for war), which is the principal process that the General Staff executes in the field of force, the author outlines the main characteristics of the General Staff planning process, including the nature of the plan and its basic assumptions, the need for modular and flexible planning, and the creation of coordination and synchronization between the General Staff, the command, and the operational branch (p. 97). Despite this, the author notes the analysis of former chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot:

An operational plan is designed to enable development of the required knowledge, to form the basis for a common language and the "compass" for force buildup…The nature of operational plans change when moving from plan to command in light of context. Therefore, the Chief of Staff emphasized that the plan is a means. The planning process, force buildup of the operational capabilities, and the readiness of the forces—those are the important things. (p. 103)

Indeed, throughout the chapter the emphasis is on the need for mental flexibility, planning, force buildup, and formulated responses that can be adapted to a changing reality.

A particularly fascinating chapter describes how the General Staff learns during combat, including through friction with the enemy (pp. 219-234). An example is the learning process that the General Staff conducted through the Central Command in the first year of the second intifada. The General Staff was faced with the dilemma of whether to continue defensive preparations or to transition to an offensive that included large-scale infiltration of forces into the heart of the refugee camps—a move that entailed possible achievements in the form of harming senior members of terrorist organizations and the destruction of weapons and ammunition, as well as considerable risk, since it included fighting in urban areas and in the heart of a civilian population.

The author quotes Maj. Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, then-head of the Planning Directorate:

Those who led to the approval of the operations were the commanders of the infantry brigades. At that time, the IDF was blessed with four of the best brigade commanders it has ever had: Aviv Kochavi from the Paratroopers, Chico Tamir from Golani, Imad Fares from Givati, ​​and Yair Golan from Nahal. The commanders, and especially Aviv and Chico, persuaded the commander of the Central Command, Itzik Eitan, and the chief of staff to approve the operations. The operational achievements of these raids were partial, but the fact that the operations were carried out with a minimum of casualties—among both the soldiers and the civilian population—gave the assurance that it would be possible, when necessary, to enter and take over West Bank cities. One or two months later, the time for this did come [as part of Operation Defensive Shield]. (p. 228)

Although this is a fascinating example, it might have been better to include in the book another test case that has not yet been thoroughly investigated, and to examine the learning process conducted by the General Staff and the Southern Command in 2006-2008. The commander of the Gaza Division at the time, Brig. Gen. (ret.) Moshe "Chico" Tamir, a veteran of the Golani Brigade, initiated “constant friction” with the enemy through raids carried out by infantry and armored battalions, as well as elite units (interview with M. Tamir, March 22, 2020). These raids were necessary, according to then-Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, due to the need to "handle terrorist activity on the other side of the fence," including frequent firing of Qassams on the city of Sderot and other localities. "We did not have an ‘Iron Dome,’ we did not have a good answer, and we had to take action against this thing, in order to restore security" (interview with G. Ashkenazi, February 21, 2021).

According to Tamir, these operations were preceded by "very orderly and very didactic preparation," which built confidence in the ability of the forces to perform among the senior command levels that were required to approve them (interview with M. Tamir, March 22, 2020), among them Southern Command General Yoav Gallant, a veteran of Shayetet 13 (Lamm, 2008) and Chief of Staff Ashkenazi, who acknowledged their contribution since his days as a company commander in Golani “to the capabilities and self-confidence of the commanders” and their influence on the enemy (interview with G. Ashkenazi, February 21, 2021). Battalion commanders, including Yaron Finkelman from the Paratroopers (Harel, 2020) and David Zini from the Golani Brigade, then led raids across the fence in the Gaza Strip and struck terrorists in their territory (Pollak, 2015). These operations enabled the command, and through it to the General Staff, to accumulate knowledge, analyze Hamas’s strengths and weaknesses, and prepare accordingly for Operation Cast Lead.

Although the author notes in the book that the Southern Command and its then-commander Gallant carried "a great deal of weight in determining how the ground forces operate during the operation" (p. 273), he refrains from describing it in detail, as well as the process that preceded it—from the division to the command and to the General Staff. The successful result of the operation, Tamir stated, was "due to the combination of ground forces with air forces." They identified targets, he said, maneuvered with confidence, and hit enemy operatives (interview with M. Tamir, March 22, 2020).

Insights

The central and first component of the General Staff’s uniqueness, Finkel states, "is the strategic level that it oversees. Focusing on this level means a constant and systematic need for an up-to-date interpretation of reality, finding appropriate methodologies for developing a response to the new challenges, and establishing command and method mechanisms for IDF coordination and synchronization" (p. 461).

Moreover, the fact that the General Staff interfaces with the political echelon requires it to adopt its language as well as the language of the military—and the world and considerations of the political echelon are different from those of the military. "Building and maintaining a common language with the political echelon, especially if it changes, is a task that requires a variety of methods, such as discussions, visits, joint war simulations, and more" (p. 462).

The author made a good selection of test cases that describe the roles and challenges before the General Staff, noting that he was required to balance a range of tensions—chiefly the desire for maximum relevance versus the desire to produce cohesion between ranks and synchronization of efforts. For example, he notes the decision of Chief of Staff Dan Halutz during the Second Lebanon War to change the operational plan several times so as not to carry out an unsuitable plan. On the other hand, there is the attitude expressed by US General George Patton, considered one of the best generals in history, that "a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week" (Hanson, 1999).

An additional tension is force buildup, as it is necessary to both preserve and improve the military’s competence for the challenges of the present on the one hand, and to implement modern means and try to shape the army for the challenges of the next decade on the other. An example, Finkel notes, can be seen in the short story "Superiority" by Arthur C. Clarke, in which "an attempt to develop advanced capability led to a temporary decline in effectiveness in comparison with the possibility of improving the old means, and to a defeat at the hands of an enemy that rapidly mass-produced less advanced capabilities" (p. 463).

The author points out that a decrease in the effectiveness of the IDF response could be catastrophic if war breaks out in the midst of updating the response. This applies to operational outlooks and operational plans that have not yet been implemented, and to weapons and advanced technological systems as well. Therefore, he writes, force buildup must be "based on flexibility, especially organizational-technological flexibility that includes components of balance, redundancy, versatility and the ability to change" (p. 464).

In the field of operational planning and in view of the fact that strategic context is changing rapidly, the author recommends the formulation of modular plans. Thus, in a limited campaign, Operation Cast Lead, for example, a plan that was originally intended to defeat the enemy fully can be only partially realized, while maintaining its relevance.

Missing from the Book

While an important and enlightening study, the book lacks up-to-date reference to the work of the General Staff vis-à-vis the political echelon, not only in the first three decades after the establishment of the state but in recent years, given Israel’s new threats and current challenges.

In the last two years, for example, much evidence has been published about the dialogue between the General Staff, headed by Chief of Staff Eisenkot, and the political echelon before Operation Northern Shield, until late in 2018, at Eisenkot’s initiative and with the approval of the political echelon, the IDF took surprise action and destroyed the Hezbollah tunnels on the Lebanese border (Farhi, 2020).

There is also a lack of reference in the book to the career path of the members of the General Staff and to the question of whether they were trained as necessary to act not only as commanders at the tactical level but also as commanders at the strategic level. In the IDF, most of the position holders (beginning at the rank of colonel) acquire the knowledge for their positions by on the job training, and the experience gained has enormous weight. Officers such as former Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yair Golan, who commanded a Paratroopers company and battalion in combat in Lebanon, and later a brigade and division, but also served in training positions and as head of the Operations section in the Operations Directorate; or Southern Command General Eliezer Toledano, who as an officer in the Paratroopers fought in the second intifada, commanded the elite Maglan unit in the 2006 war and raids in Gaza initiated by Brig. Gen. Tamir, and served as the Prime Minister’s military secretary (and therefore a member of the General Staff)—these officers did indeed go through a complete and varied service track, during which they gained experience both at the tactical and strategic levels. When the IDF designates commanders as having the potential for senior command, it is fitting that this approach constitute a guide for planning their career path.

Conclusion

Meir Finkel’s fascinating and comprehensive book is an important addition to an understanding of the role of the General Staff and its leader, its discourse with the political echelon, its responsibilities, the challenges it faces, processes, and role that have a tremendous impact on the entire country.

If in his previous book the author focused on the Chief of Staff, he has now made an in-depth analysis of the General Staff, which supports the Chief of Staff, learns, plans, and operates—in routine and in wartime—and of all of its various wings (planning, operational intelligence, logistics, and of course military districts).

In conclusion, it is worth recalling a statement by Gabi Ashkenazi while serving as deputy Chief of Staff, whereby the Chief of Staff is required to remember "the importance of the combatant echelon. They not only pay for our mistakes, they also correct them. Therefore, even today with all the budgetary difficulties, the lesson I’ve learned is—strengthen the combatant echelon!" (Channel 1, 2008). 

(Please refer to the original publication for the End Notes)

The people and the U.S. are with the Golan | by Gal Perl Finkel

U.S recognition in the Golan Heights as "part of the State of Israel" is an important political achievement for Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu, but it is not certain that the way it was done will not escalate a reality that until now has been tacitly agreed upon

Recently, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Nasrallah delivered a speech in which he responded to US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

"The only option for the Syrians to return the Golan Heights, and the Lebanese to return the Shebaa Farms and Ghajar, and the only option for the Palestinians to accept their legitimate rights is resistance, resistance and resistance," Nasrallah said.

Beyond the border, in Syria and Lebanon, it is hard to believe that there will be tolerance for international recognition of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the Six-Day War (and managed to keep in its hands in 1973 and thereafter) as an Israeli sovereign territory. This could constitute a precedent for the possibility that additional areas will be recognized as such. Given that Hezbollah and other Shiite militias have established an operational infrastructure on the Syrian side of the border, as the IDF revealed last month (in a cognitive operation), Nasrallah’s declaration is a clear threat.

Last month, leaders of the Blue and White Party visited the northern part of Israel. Even though the four, Benny Gantz, Moshe Ya’alon, Gabi Ashkenazi and Yair Lapid were mainly focused in trying to recruit votes and supporters, its likely that the north is connected mainly to their experiences from the military service. The former chiefs of staff fought for many years across the border, some against the Syrians, all of them in Lebanon, in the raids of the Paratroopers (Ya’alon and Gantz) and Golani (Ashkenazi) brigades, and operations. Even Lapid, who was a military correspondent in Bamahane, spent (though not as a fighter) a considerable amount of time in his service in the outposts in Lebanon.

During the tour in the North, the four referred to threats by Hezbollah and Syria. In his press conference, Gantz stressed that there is an "Iranian front that sits on the border of the State of Israel, and we will know how to deal with any threat in any arena, as much as necessary." Lapid, for his part, pledged on behalf of the four, "We will never return the Golan Heights."

The person who took care of Lapid’s commitment was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in the past was among those who negotiated with the Syrians, in which he was asked to give up control of the Golan Heights. During Netanyahu’s visit to Washington last week, President Trump signed a presidential proclamation recognizing the Golan Heights as part of the State of Israel. For Netanyahu, too, the North is connected to his personal military service as a soldier and commander in the Sayeret Matkal IDF elite unit.

IN HIS book Autobiography, Maj.-Gen. (Ret.) Giora Eiland referred to the negotiations that Prime Minister Ehud Barak held in 1999 with then-Syrian president Hafez al-Assad and argued that Israel should not agree to a peace arrangement with Syria in which it relinquishes its control over the Golan Heights. Eiland, who like Gantz, Ya’alon and Ashkenazi, participated in raids in Lebanon (in one of them, as a paratrooper battalion commander, he took with him a stubborn platoon leader named Ofer Shelah, now number eight in Blue and White’s list), admitted that he had formulated his insights after his retirement. He noted that he had hoped that the negotiations between Israel and Syria would not grow into a peace agreement in which Israel would relinquish the territory.

In his view, Prime Minister Barak relied on wrong assumptions. First, if the Syrian army moved forces to the Golan Heights, Israel would know about this in real time, which is not necessarily true. Second, it is not at all certain that Israel would understand and correctly interpret the movement of Syrian forces aimed toward war (in 1973, for example, Israel did not understand this). Third, because of the time required for such a decision, the Syrians would be the first to arrive to the battlefield and gain the upper hand.

Another assumption is that an international monitoring mechanism that would enforce the agreement might indeed monitor tanks and cannons, but it would be less effective in detecting sophisticated surface-to-surface missiles with long range and accuracy, and anti-tank missiles, which are relatively easy to conceal but whose impact on the battle is significant.

It is hard to counter Eiland’s arguments – and since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria that undermined the stability of Bashar Assad’s regime, it became clear that other troubling scenarios might also materialize. Iran was allowed to establish military infrastructures in Syria and to act against Israel, which for its part is conducting a long and largely secret campaign to prevent it. As part of that campaign, according to foreign publications, the IAF recently attacked Iranian weapons depots near Aleppo.

WHY DO we need all this noise now? The Golan has been under Israeli control for more than 50 years and no state entity can take control of it without Israeli consent. Moreover, Trump’s statement, which appears to be a finger in the eye of the international community, has only motivated Western Europe, Russia, the Arab countries, Iran and Syria to act against it. The Syrians and their allies from Iran may also decide to "use terror and guerrilla attacks" from the Syrian side of the border, just as Nasrallah declared in his speech.

In the eyes of Israeli prime ministers, only one member of the international community is a heavyweight – the United States. This perception has not changed, and with good reason. American backing, even now, is a powerful credit. In an article on the subject in Israel Hayom, Maj.-Gen. (Ret.) Israel Ziv, who like Eiland served as a paratrooper officer and as the head of the Agaf HaMivtza’im (Operations Directorate), wrote that "Israel will be required to conduct an uncompromising legitimization battle, while increasing efforts to prevent Iranian entrenchment on the other side of the border. The American declaration on the Golan Heights will no doubt help these efforts."

Recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan is important, but the way it was done – not through the UN Security Council and without the broad consensus of the international community – is damaging. It is not certain that the tacit agreement to Israeli control over the Golan Heights, which was the American policy until now, would not have been more effective at this time.

(The article was published in "The Jerusalem Post", April 7, 2019)

 

Changing the rules in the Gaza Strip comes with a cost | by Gal Perl Finkel

When it comes to the use of force in the Gaza Strip there are no good alternatives. Almost all of them range from bad to worse

In light of the difficulties in reaching an agreement and a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, Hamas – which is in dire straits as Gaza approaches the status of humanitarian disaster – is signaling that it intends to reheat the sector in order to remind everyone that in the absence of a solution, the only option is war. Hamas chooses the place and the time it operates and escalates. The IDF’s Gaza Division is now required to deal with the continuing use of incendiary balloons from the Gaza Strip into Israel, and with the fact that the Friday demonstrations have moved mainly to the evening and night hours.

Hamas identified the IDF’s relative weakness in using effective means to disperse demonstrations during these hours, including the use of precision fire and snipers at night. At the same time, the terrorist organization operates raiding units that harass IDF soldiers securing the fence, by attempting to infiltrate into Israel, throwing explosive devices, shooting and sabotaging the fence itself. That leads to an increase in the number of casualties on the Palestinian side and to a feeling that the escalation is near.

Last Friday on KAN 11 TV, commentator Amir Bar-Shalom reported that the IDF is considering a limited and minor ground operation in the Gaza Strip in order to signal to Hamas that Israel is ready for a confrontation. The task, if decided, will naturally be imposed on the Gaza Division led by Brig.-Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, a paratrooper who did most of his service in the Nahal Brigade.

This is not a new idea. The IDF carried out dozens of limited ground operations over the years on all the fronts on which he operated. This method of raids was also practiced in the period before and after the disengagement. The commanders of the Gaza Division, Aviv Kochavi, followed by Moshe "Chico" Tamir, led a series of raids and operations against Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip.

In January 2005, Kochavi, who acquired considerable experience when he led the 35th Paratroopers Brigade during the Second Intifada, commanded the "Oriental Step" operation, which was carried out by the Shimshon Battalion in response to the attack at the Karni Terminal. The force penetrated the heart of the Zeitun neighborhood, about which battalion commander Udi Ben Moha said, "It was a terrible blow to the terrorist organizations." During the operation, the battalion killed about 20 terrorists and destroyed weapons and infrastructure used by them.

Brig.-Gen. Moshe Tamir, who replaced the stars in August 2006, went even further, tasked some of those raids to reserve forces. In a way that is happening less and less often today. The raids of that time had clear operational logic. "Our activity prevents the terrorists from dealing with terror attacks on the other side of the fence and they are forced to concentrate on defense," said Tamir, who was an expert on such operations in his service in the Golani infantry brigade and in Lebanon.

The chief of staff at the time, Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, who served in the same units and places as Tamir, thought in the same way. In the last article he wrote in 2007 in "Haaretz" just before he died, veteran military commentator Ze’ev Schiff wrote that in response to Palestinian terrorists firing Kassam rockets from the Strip into Israel, "Ashkenazi has instructed Southern Command to prepare to mount incursions all across the Strip. These are not aimed at laying ambushes, but constitute broader penetrations."  Although the forces who took part in these operations claimed that the level of soldiering demonstrated by Hamas operatives was higher than they expected, the risk was relatively low. Low but not nil. It is better to remember that such steps don’t come cheap. In one of these night raids in November 2007, during a skirmish with a Hamas squad that fired mortar shells at Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, a soldier in the reserve paratroopers battalion, Sgt. Ehud Efrati, was killed.

The force recovered, killing one of the terrorists and wounding the other, who escaped. "We left 41 people and returned 40," said an officer in Efrati’s company, and briefly described the entire cost.

But Hamas of that time, as Tamir described it in a lecture in 2011, was an "immature, unprepared, disorganized" enemy. Today Hamas is well-prepared in Gaza, and it is hard to believe that there is there is a sector, certainly in the built-up areas, in which a raiding force will not encounter heavy resistance from a fortified and entrenched enemy. The organization operates above and below ground, using tunnel warfare in large scales.

Moreover, in those years, Hamas did not have rockets with a broader range than the surrounding settlements. Already by the time of Operation "Protective Edge" in 2014, rockets were fired at Ben-Gurion Airport and at Tel Aviv. So the consequences of such overt incursions may be a major escalation of the situation, which will affect the entire country and require the use of significant force.

When it comes to the use of force in the Gaza Strip there are no good alternatives. Almost all of them range from bad to worse. The choice of the method of targeted killings, for example, allows the IDF to operate mainly from the air, from afar, without endangering its personnel, and the achievement of killing a high-level terrorist may be positive. However, over time, new leaders have emerged, and more often than not they are more sophisticated and determined than their predecessors, as Israel learned after IAF attack helicopters killed Hezbollah leader Abbas al-Musawi in 1992.

The use of standoff firepower, including deterrent fire by aircraft, snipers and artillery, or firing at buildings and launching rockets squads, has clear advantages and disadvantages. There is no risk to the IDF, but the enemy adapts, is less deterred, and there is a considerable risk of harming civilians. The use of standoff firepower, Tamir said at his lecture, is sometimes convenient for decision-makers because it allows the confrontation to remain "on a low flame."

But one has to know, he said, "when to change the rules of the game." On the other hand, there is a price to pay when one is changing the rules, and, above all, responsibility.

Anyone who thinks that an incursion into Gaza territory will deter Hamas and restrain it must take into account that though the IDF will harm many Hamas operatives and some civilians (since Hamas exploits the civilian population for its defense), a large number of casualties on the Palestinian side is a catalyst for continued escalation – not to mention the risk to Israeli soldiers during the fighting.

It is the responsibility of the government to ensure the security of its citizens who reside within the Gaza envelope. In view of the impasse that political negotiations have recently encountered – not because of Israel’s fault – it is good that there is real thinking about the use of force. At the IDF General Staff, where Maj.-Gen. Kochavi is today deputy to Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eizenkot (another ex-Golani Brigade officer, like Tamir and Ashkenazi), the implications of the use of force are clear, and therefore the recommendation to avoid them as long as possible.

It would be better for the government to understand the full implications of a decision on a limited and short-term ground raid, as well as other alternatives. There were already governments in Israel that approved an operation and found themselves at war. Such a raid, though it represents a resolute and determined policy, just as ministers Bennett and Liberman want to be seen, could lead to things which Israel has no interest in achieving, including another war in Gaza.

The writer is founder and operator of the blog "In the Crosshairs" on military, security, strategy vision and practice.

(The article was published in "The Jerusalem Post", October 13, 2018)