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)

General Mattis: a Warrior Diplomat/ By Gal Perl Finkel

Mattis can restrain the president-elect and prevent him from dismantling the American system in the name of anti-establishment

Two weeks ago President-elect Donald Trump chose USMC General (ret.) James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis as his secretary of defense. Unlike Israel the United States has a tradition of appointing a civilian as secretary of defense, to ensure civilian oversight of the military. If Mattis is approved by the Senate he will be the first general to hold the position since George Marshall in the ‘50s.

The desire to appoint a civilian stems from the fact that the main role of the secretary of defense isn’t to command troops in the field – the Unified Combatant Command as well as the national security adviser and the president are responsible for that. The primary function of the secretary of defense is to shape the military strategy and the defense force buildup of the United States. Therefore his business is the civil context of the military, including the size of the military budget, and the interface with the defense industries and the House of Representatives.

These are issues that the American public must engage with, and not the military and its senior commanders.

When a person has served as a soldier for over 30 years, we can assume that, as the saying goes, he will sit where he stands. His mindset, the focus of his work and his expertise will be on military action. In Israel, for example, some of the former senior military officers who served as defense minister wrongly thought the defense minister was a representative of the military in the government and not the government supervisor of the military. Nevertheless, the appointment of General Mattis is extraordinary.

In the book The March Up (Bantam, 2003) written by Francis “Bing” West and Maj. Gen. (ret.) Ray Smith, USMC, they describe the famed 1st Marine Division’s march on Baghdad.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom they acquired an SUV and joined the unit that was spearheading the assault. They described the division commander, Gen. James Mattis, as a “Marine’s Marine,” and wrote that “Mattis’s life, not merely his career, had centered on command in the field. He had a remarkable record of infantry leadership: a rifle platoon; a rifle company; an infantry battalion like Conlin’s; an infantry regiment; and a Navy-Marine Task Force” (page 18). In 2001, as the commander of that task force, “Mattis had taken a reinforced battalion 800 kilometers from ships in the Indian Ocean to a dirt airstrip in Afghanistan – no small feat” (page 78).

Despite the fact that the authors served in Vietnam as Marine infantry officers and were experienced in all aspects of combat “from the ground up,” they were impressed by Mattis, who commanded his division in a swift and aggressive manner that reminded many of the way general Patton led his troops in WWII (Marines will probably prefer to compare him to USMC Gen. “Chesty” Puller).

Mattis’s 1st Marine Division had feinted and slashed through six Iraqi divisions and, ignoring orders to slow down, had seized the eastern half of Baghdad weeks ahead of schedule.

MATTIS LED Marines into combat against a changing enemy, from insurgents to regular army formations in the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq, and was awarded a bronze star for valor. Though Mattis appears to be what is known in the IDF as a plain, outspoken “Golanchick” (member of the Golani Brigade), he is actually an avid student of warfare who understands geopolitical strategy as well as the new trends in the battlefield. As the commander of US Central Command he was also an important diplomatic representative of the US administration in the Middle East.

He opposed the nuclear agreement with Iran, which he saw as a major threat to regional stability, and criticized the Israeli settlement enterprise as an obstacle to peace.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, USMC Gen. Joseph Dunford, as well as USMC Gen. John F. Kelly, selected by President-elect Trump for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security, served under Mattis during the campaign in Iraq. West and Smith wrote that Dunford “was the commander most apt to pick up on Mattis’s invitation to offer alternatives to the division’s planned scheme of maneuver. His regiment, with more than a thousand vehicles and six thousand men, had been the division’s Main Effort since crossing the Euphrates” (page 135). That campaign, as well as the fighting in Fallujah, formed a close comradeship between the three officers. As such Mattis will probably refrain from becoming Dunford’s boot-camp drill instructor and work closely with him.

As someone who understands the limits of power, the importance of the US’s relationships with its allies, the need for proper planning and preparations and the importance of a responsible and restrained strategy, both domestically and internationally, Mattis can restrain the president-elect and prevent him from dismantling the American system in the name of anti-establishment. Mattis very well may be the responsible adult in the room.

Before embarking for the campaign in Iraq Mattis posted a letter to 1st Marine Division which ends with the phrase: “Demonstrate to the world there is ‘No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy’ than a US Marine.” As a senior member of President-elect Trump’s cabinet, Mattis will probably try to implement exactly that policy.

The author is the coordinator of the Military & Strategic Affairs program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).

(The article was published in "The Jerusalem Post", December 12, 2016)

The warrior ethos is alive and well\ by Gal Perl Finkel

An outsider observing the Israel Defense Forces' fighting during Operation Protective Edge will notice right away that brigade, battalion and company commanders make up a large proportion of the wounded and casualties. The Golani Brigade alone has lost a deputy battalion commander, and among its wounded are three platoon commanders and a brigade commander. Three officers are now vying to succeed the fallen commander. This is true not only in the regular army, but also – maybe even more so in light of their stronger connection to civilian life – among the reservists.

Even those who oppose the scope of the operation cannot ignore the obvious "IDF spirit" of it. This is the spirit that leads the IDF in its best moments. The battles of the 1948 War of Independence established the norm of "Corporals, retreat – the commanders will cover you!" During reprisal operations carried out by the paratroopers in the 1950s, the officers' command "Follow me!" became the guide for IDF fighters and commanders. For the first time, general ideas like professionalism, personal example, confronting obstacles, and the rule that "We don't go back until we get it done" became iron-clad rules of thumb.

During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, too, when reservists in the Paratroopers Brigade left for the Suez Canal Operation in APCs jam-packed with fighters – many more than orders allowed – this spirit prevailed and the army, bruised and battered from battles to stop the enemy's progress, sailed across the canal, and didn't stop until it won a military victory. This spirit of volunteerism has also typified other operations, like Entebbe and Protective Wall.

Over the years, more than one commentator has claimed that today's young people are not what they used to be, and that technological developments on the battlefield have turned commanders into people who sit in front of screens, running things from afar, attacking the enemy via remote control. An examination of the IDF's fighting in Gaza shows that this is entirely untrue. The war is being managed from close up, among houses and tunnel shafts and against a determined enemy who – unlike in previous operations – is not immediately retreating. IDF commanders are leading their people on the front line, because to in order to lead soldiers, to accurately and independently assess the situation, and to complete the mission, they have to be in front, where the war is taking place. This means that a brigade commander isn't the last of his force to go in, but that a commander's place is with his forces.

The IDF's warrior ethos, as an article by General (res.) Giora Rom put it, is a behavioral code comprising courage, selflessness, loyalty to society and to comrades, coolness under pressure, integrity, and willingness to accept any hardship. The group of Israelis who operate under this code isn't large. In every society, be it American, Swiss, or Chinese, the first men in – the fighters willing to take on any burden – have always been the minority. But from the moment you serve in the IDF, you're in it for life. Even if you have finished your service, every loss will hit close to home. You may not know the fallen personally, but you may have been in officers' training with his cousin, or served with his older brother. Not a very large group, not glamorous, always on the same hilltops – but fewer people each time.

Alongside the criticism from various officials about the "tunnel failure," the "failure" in the lack of armored equipment for the soldiers, and more, those who are doing the job – those who are still loyal to the warrior ethos – should be valued. Because we have someone to depend on.

Gal Perl Finkel is a eserve soldier in the Paratroopers Brigade and a research assistant at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies and operates the blog "Al Hakevenet" (In the Crosshairs).

(The article was published in "israelhayom", July 31, 2014)