The Sharp Strategic U-Turn in Our Consciousness

by Kobi Eliraz, former advisor on settlement affairs to four Defense Ministers, translated by Hillel Fendel.

Israel's current war, not only in Gaza, is not the result of a particular or individual failure. It was not just an isolated military mistake that brought about Oct. 7th, nor a temporary or even long-term intelligence failure.

It was rather brought upon us by a failed understanding – the notorious "misconception" that everyone talks about – that became entrenched in the popular thinking of many in power, and not in power, in the State of Israel. It was the dangerous illusion that concessions, appeasement, and restraint would bring about quiet and stability.

This terrible failure that brought us to where we are does not belong to just one particular government, or to one Chief of Staff or another. It is a very deeply ensconced misunderstanding of Middle East reality that developed over the course of decades of naively mistaken policy.

It was manifest in a long series of false slogans that were disseminated and became principles of our public policy. For instance:

·         "The new Middle East" popularized by Shimon Peres [and echoed, in the context of an anticipated peace deal with Saudi Arabia, by Prime Minister Netanyahu in the United Nations just two weeks (!) before Oct. 7^th]

·         "Peace is made with enemies" – forgetting that this does not include enemies who will use the "peace" to find new ways to destroy you; and

·         "There is no military solution" – leading to a situation in which the enemy continually fortifies himself, in the knowledge that our response will be limited.

Instead of reading the reality as it truly is, we became addicted to the illusion that concessions will lead to calm. At the same time, the enemy took advantage of our weakness to build himself up with a powerful military apparatus and prepare for his next offensive.

Between the Oslo Accords of 1993-95 and the Disengagement/expulsion of 2005, Israel repeatedly retreated, while the terrorists kept on growing stronger. The thought that our withdrawals would decrease Palestinian violence was proven to be downright wrong: Our departure from Gush Katif and Gaza did not turn it into the "Singapore of the Middle East," but rather into the capital of international terrorism.

Every round of fighting in Gaza over the past three decades ended with an "arrangement" – but not with a decisive defeat of Hamas. This in itself strengthened Hamas, giving it not only confidence, but also the ability to rearm, regroup, and rebuild. Our restraint in the face of Hamas rockets, tunnel-building, and terrorist attacks sent Hamas a clear message: "Israel will not fight you forcefully and you have little to lose by continuing to attack us."

This ongoing mistake of believing that we can simply "manage" the dispute instead of "winning" it has nothing to do with the lack of intelligence at any given time. It does, however, explain why whatever intelligence was received was woefully misinterpreted.

When commissions of inquiry are ultimately established to investigate what happened on and before Oct. 7^th, they must not be allowed to suffice with attempts to figure out who is most to blame for the military and intelligence blunders. The critical question that must be answered is rather: How did Israel allow this situation to develop in the first place?

The officers who went to sleep early Simchat Torah morning in the belief that the signs of an imminent attack were not substantial made a local mistake. Those who waved off the warnings of the female lookout soldiers made a worse mistake. They must all pay for them. But most culpable of all are those who led the State of Israel into deceptive "peace" agreements and who tried to sell the public false dreams of "peace for land" and insisted that there "is no military solution." These include many in academia, the media, the security establishment, and in the broad public. They helped form a reality in which Israel was perceived as weak – which invited our enemies to act against us in every way they could.

The current war must lead not only to a change in our military, but to a change in how we think. We can no longer strategize in terms of how to manage the conflict, but rather how to win and end it; no more ceasefire, but only total destruction of the enemy's military capabilities; no more unilateral concessions, but only steps that strengthen our grasp on the Land and our deterrence capabilities.

For Israel to return to strategic security, there must be a total change in our thinking, and on the ground. We must not return to the same cycle of weakness, false illusions, and baseless hopes. The time has come, once and for all, to stop hoping that everything will work out on its own – and to start shaping it the way we want with force, strength, and strategic clarity.

The Mistakes of Oct. 7th Go Back Not Five Years, but 32

by Din Milo, former Political Advisor and current Strategic and Economic advisor, translated by Hillel Fendel.

No one disputes that the governments of Israel over the years could have done things differently to prevent the events that led up to Oct. 7^th. What people do dispute is how and what exactly the governments should have done differently.

As in most of our other national disputes, this one is chiefly waged between the right- and left-wing camps. Most of the latter feels that the government did not take Hamas seriously enough over the years. They say that the governments led by Netanyahu, and primarily Netanyahu himself [who has served as Prime Minister for 18 years, beginning in 1996], armed and supported Hamas for years, while at the same time overlooking and sidelining the Palestinian Authority.

On the other hand, many on the right-wing side of the aisle look at Netanyahu's governments' military campaigns against Hamas, of which there were many, and say that they simply were not strong enough. None of the rounds of fighting – Operation Protective Edge, Operation Days of Penitence, Operation Summer Rains, etc. – produced a sound defeat of Hamas; they rather enabled the terrorists to regroup, rearm, and resume their attacks months or short years afterwards. They also maintain that Oct. 7^th was a direct outgrowth of Ariel Sharon's 2005 Disengagement plan – Israel's unilateral pullout from Gaza, including the dismantling of 22 Jewish communities and the "relocation" of their nearly 10,000 Jewish residents. They see the freeing of over 1,000 Palestinian terrorists, including Yichye Sinwar and other budding Hamas leaders, in exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011 as having contributed as well.

To resolve this dispute, we must understand why our governments refrained from acting against Hamas as they should have. The reason is simple: the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995. These agreements stipulated that Israel would withdraw its forces from most of Gaza and Jericho, and would later further withdraw from many areas in Judea and Samaria.

The Oslo agreements led to a number of things, among them:

1.      When Israel pulled back its forces from Gaza in 1994, it left the Jewish residents there without proper protection, and the security forces without sufficient intelligence. It enabled the enemy to establish terrorist infrastructures and strengthen itself militarily, which led over the next few years to increased terrorism and the murder of many Israelis.

2.     The creation of the Palestinian Authority granted the terrorists the international legitimacy it had long sought. The PA police forces received professional training by American experts, as well as massive funding and weapons from around the world. Oslo paved the way for the establishment of an Arab state in the heart of our homeland.

In 2001, when Ariel Sharon took over as Prime Minister, he faced a major crossroads: Should he order the IDF to reoccupy the terror nests that had sprouted in Gaza over the preceding years? Or should he rather order the evacuation of the Jews living there, and thus finalize Israel's detachment from Gaza? He took with him to the grave his true considerations in choosing the latter. However, inter alia, it can be assumed that he concluded that it was not really possible to abolish the Oslo Accords and return to Gaza – because it would have involved too many IDF casualties, and also because the Western world would never have let such a decision pass without emplacing painful sanctions upon Israel that could have dealt us a death blow.

We thus see that without Oslo, the Disengagement would likely not have happened. The Oslo Accords of the early 90's led to Israel's total withdrawal from Gaza and Gush Katif in 2005.

As is now well-known, soon afterwards, Hamas easily took over the entire Gaza Strip, including by throwing some of its Fatah opponents from roofs. Still, as a nation we did not actively recognize the danger that Hamas represented.

When Gilad Shalit was taken captive by Hamas, masses of Israelis took to the streets – but what did they demand? Not that we return to Gaza, and not even an Israeli military operation to free him. Rather, they demanded that Israel come to an "agreement" with Hamas regarding the release of imprisoned terrorists in exchange for Shalit's freedom. As is well-known, the public pressure succeeded, and Shalit came home - as did 1,0270 terrorists, several of whom went on to murder a dozen Israelis, and one of whom went on to mastermind the Oct. 7^th massacre.

In the years since then, despite many battles, Israel never won a single resounding victory over Hamas – because we never really considered executing the one thing that would do the trick: a total take-over of Gaza. Only after Oct. 7^th has the Israeli public begun reconsidering this.

The only thing we can hope for now, after having allowed the Simchat Torah massacre to happen, is to do everything to make sure that it does not recur. To this end, we must investigate in depth the operational and political failures that enabled the travesty. The main lesson that must be learned is therefore this: "Yes, peace is made with enemies – but only with those enemies who want to make peace."

The Oslo catastrophe happened because we tried to negotiate peace with an enemy who didn't want peace, and this simply enabled him to fortify himself in our own backyard.

In conclusion, I believe that in order to make sure that the Oslo travesty does not repeat itself, we should stop talking so much about specific personages, whether they be politicians, top IDF officers, or anyone else of authority. We should instead be concentrating on the terrible policies that led us to where we are today – namely, the Oslo Accords and its ramifications in the form of Oct. 7^th and more. The current leaders of our country dare not make the same mistakes as their predecessors.