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Few fighting forces in the world have a better reputation than the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), but the IDF performance in the current war in Lebanon has raised questions, even among many Israelis, about the IDF’s operational planning and strategy in the war against Hizbullah. In fact, the decision on August 8, as this issue was being prepared for press, by Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz to name his Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, as his “special representative” or “delegate” to the Northern Command fighting the war. The IDF insisted that this did not mean that Kaplinsky would supersede Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, Officer Commanding, Northern Command, the senior military figure in charge of the Lebanese operations on the ground. Adam reportedly feels he is a scapegoat, and a debate over command decisions is likely now that the war has wound down. As this issue went to press, Chief of Staff Halutz was himself under fire for selling stocks on the day the war began, a case of insider trading that could lead to his resignation. An earlier Estimate suggested that the Lebanese Republic might be one item of “collateral damage” from this war. Now one wonders if the IDF itself might be another.
Although the IDF insisted the move at Northern Command was not a reflection on Adam, naming Kaplinsky (Profile, Page Nine) — the senior active-duty infantry commander, since Halutz is from the Air Force — can’t be seen as much else.
There are other issues involving the IDF’s role in Lebanon, many of them stemming from criticism not of the IDF but of the political leadership: the fact that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spent much of his military service as a journalist and editor of the Army magazine, and that Defense Minister Amir Peretz was involved in materiel supply and only reached the rank of captain, has led to criticism of the two critical national leaders as lacking in combat experience.
There are some questions, however, about whether the IDF itself has the proper sorts of combat experience for this sort of war. The withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 was in part a response to the continuing bleeding of Israeli troops occupying the southern Lebanese “Security Zone.” This Dossier examines the IDF’s apparent performance so far.
Any analysis of the war in Lebanon, written just after the ceasefire, should begin with the acknowledgment that, as in any combat situation, the “fog of war” makes assessment difficult. While foreign journalists are operating close to the border on the Israeli side, most of those on the Lebanese side are no further south than Tyre, and the exact toll taken against Hizbullah forces by Israel’s attacks is unclear. The decisionmaking process, and the plans, of the defense establishment are of course classified, and despite multiple leaks to the press, it is certainly possible that there were detailed operational plans that were in place before the ceasefire.
Given media preoccupation with images, much of the international attention during the war itself was focused on civilian casualties (such as the Qana bombing) and the destruction of Lebanese infrastructure. In any war against a popular-based insurgency based among a civilian population, especially a war which initially relied heavily on air power, significant civilian casualties are a tragic reality of the type of warfare. But the story that has received less attention outside the region is the performance of the Israel Defense Forces.
After four weeks of fighting, during which the IDF was repeatedly said to “need two more weeks,” questions are naturally beginning to emerge as to whether the IDF ever had a clear plan in Lebanon, other than generally to move into the area south of the Litani River and eliminate Hizbullah. The fact that Israel did not even call up reserves when the war broke out, and then met with some sharp and unexpected checks in combat, suggests an ad hoc approach to the war, one based on reaction rather than planning.
It is clear that the IDF was surprised by the strength of Hizbullah’s resistance, by the effective use of anti-tank weapons (both missiles and mines) and, of course, by the persistence of the rocket barrage against northern Israel. That Hizbullah is well-armed and well-trained is not in itself new, but it appears to be using rather effective tactics as well: in some cases classic guerrilla tactics (by blending among the population and thus provoking periodic outrage about civilian casualties), but also has used more conventional methods as well, fighting in company-sized formations in the fight for Bint Jbeil, for example.
Officially, the IDF and the government consistently said that they were accomplishing their objectives, that Hizbullah was paying a heavy price, and that they were satisfied with the campaign. But the announcement (noted above in the introduction) that Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz had named his Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, as his “personal representative” at Northern Command, thus seemingly suggesting a lack of confidence in the Northern Commander, Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, suggests that there is indeed debate even within the senior command of the IDF about how to proceed.
Ironically, Adam, the Officer Commanding Northern Command and the man in charge of the ground operations in Lebanon (but also, in a new approach for Israel, coordinating air and naval operations as well), is the son of Yekutiel “Kuti” Adam, who as a Major General was killed at Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon in 1982, the highest ranking Israeli general to die in combat. (The elder Adam died as he was preparing to take up the post of Head of Mossad, and had served as Deputy Chief of Staff.) The younger Adam represented the first IDF general to reach the General Staff who was also a son of a member of the General Staff. (In a sense, this is a reminder of the relatively short history of the IDF, and of the fact that many of Israel’s current generation of leaders are themselves children of prominent figures of the founding generation, as is the case with both Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, both children of early members of the right-wing Herut movement.)
Udi Adam had been, reportedly for the first time in an Israeli operation, coordinating air and naval operations as well as ground force operations; this sort of interservice coordination has not generally been characteristic of past Israeli wars, when such coordination was carried out at the Chief of Staff’s level rather than at the regional command (which, in this war, was in Safed in Galilee). (It is not really “interservice” since the IDF is a unified force, but the Air and Navy have usually run their own show.)
The appointment of Kaplinsky suggests either a lack of confidence in Adam’s conduct of the war or some sort of problem in communication between Adam and the General Staff at headquarters. Despite the innovation of Adam having responsibility that includes air and navy forces, it is presumably the ground operations which are in question, since Kaplinsky is the senior infantry officer in current service (Halutz is from the Air Force), and is a former commander of the Golani Brigade, the elite mechanized infantry force that saw one of its companies battered in the battle of Bint Jbeil.
The dispatch of Kaplinsky to the north as Halutz’ personal representative is being explained as a technical or administrative move but will certainly be seen, within the IDF and within Israel generally, as a sign of faltering confidence in Adam.
The situation is unlikely to be fully understood until after the war, when recriminations about internal disputes usually emerge. But it is a clear sign that the IDF itself was not entirely satisfied with the course of the battle. Adam reportedly believes he has been made a scapegoat, and leaked reports suggested that he would wait until after the war to make his case. The war has now wound down, and if the truce holds, a debate is likely to erupt soon.
Adding to this is the revelation by Ma’ariv at presstime that at noon on the day of the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers, Chief of Staff Halutz sold off an investment portfolio, suggesting that he was seeking to benefit from insider knowledge that war was imminent. Should those charges be sustained, the IDF could face a serious scandal.
The IDF has one of the best reputations of any professional army in the world. Its performance against Hizbullah, however, was anything but spectacular, and it is hardly surprising that (given the overall performance of Arab regular armies in past conflicts with Israel) Hizbullah is being hailed as a winner in the Arab world. That, certainly, was not Israel’s intention. Hizbullah has, certainly, seen its military capabilities degraded, fired off much of its missile arsenal, and (assuming the Lebanese Army does deploy and the UN force works) pushed away from the border. But it has also likely gained new recruits from the hammered Shi‘ite towns of southern Lebanon and from Beirut’s southern Suburb.
It is not news that massive bombing of insurgents based among a civilian population often wins new recruits to the insurgency: not news, but sometimes military powers seem to forget it. The temptation to draw comparisons between Israel’s campaign in Lebanon and the US efforts against Iraqi insurgents in the Sunni triangle is inevitable, though there are major differences in the situations (the Iraqi insurgents do not have Zilzal missiles).
Not 1967 Any More
Clearly, the IDF initially went into action expecting a much easier campaign than the one it encountered. While it is a cliché that war plans never survive contact with the enemy, it is not even clear what kind of planning went into this operation. One of Napoleon’s oft-quoted maxims is “On s’engage, et puis en voit,” or roughly, “you engage, and then see what happens,” but Napoleon at least planned his battles ahead of time. In its initial reactions to the Hizbullah kidnappings, Israel relied heavily upon air power, artillery fire and limited, special-operations-sized border incursions. It may be that Halutz’ background as an Air Force commander led him into the temptation to rely exclusively on air power; in the first days of the war, Israeli reserve call-ups were extremely limited. Only when it became clear that the war was doing nothing to abate the rocket barrages were larger infantry and armor formations called into service.
The Battle of Bint Jbeil — calling it a “battle” seems appropriate, though on a small scale — seems to have had a profound impact on the Army’s thinking. The loss of eight Israeli soldiers from a company of the Golani Brigade in a single small action was a shock: the Golani is the elite of the infantry, “Brigade Number One,” with a long history of victories since the 1948 war. In effect, it seems to have walked into a Hizbullah ambush. The situation was compounded by Israeli announcements that Bint Jbeil had been captured, only to report heavy fighting there in subsequent days, and eventually to pull the troops back.
Throughout the campaign, Israeli troops complained of stubborn resistance, of meeting entrenched Hizbullah positions in bunkers, and of the unexpected number and effectiveness of Hizbullah’s anti-tank weapons, both mines and missiles. (The Sagger used against Merkava tanks may take on the cachet that the Stinger took on against Soviet helicopters in Afghanistan, in the world of asymmetric warfare.) Hizbullah also fought as a disciplined force, not as a loose guerrilla force.
It is probably worth noting that intelligence failures played a role: while the details are unclear, Israel clearly did not assess Hizbullah’s capabilities to be what they in fact encountered. Postwar debates may well center (as they did after the surprise of the 1973 war) on intelligence issues.
In recent decades, it needs to be remembered, the IDF has seen little combat, except in southern Lebanon during the occupation there, and in occupation duties during the two intifadas. The IDF may have expected Hizbullah to be a sort of Hamas with Katyushas instead of Qassams; it found instead a trained army. There has been much debate about reports that Iranian Revolutionary Guards were found among Hizbullah dead; whether true or not, it is certainly the case that the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has trained Hizbullah forces both in Iran and in Lebanon.
In fact, it has been a long time since Israel fought a trained Arab force. Israel’s military reputation stems, in large part, from its astonishing performance in the “Six Day War” of 1967, when, after eliminating virtually all Arab air power in the opening hours, Israel successively defeated Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian ground forces. But 1967 is a long time ago, and no one serving in the active duty IDF today fought in that war.
Already by the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the IDF’s performance, while still successful, was not what it had been in 1967. One reason was a better-prepared Arab opponent. Combining a SAM umbrella to contain Israeli air power with a surprise attack, the Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal not only took the IDF by surprise (or rather, nearly so, with only a few hours’ warning), but also shocked Israelis who had been told that the “Bar-Lev Line” of fortifications was impenetrable. Although less well-remembered outside Israel and Syria, the IDF faced extremely heavy fighting against Syrian armor in the Golan Heights as well. Though, in the end, the IDF turned the tide, the Arab goals in the war (bringing about Israeli withdrawals, particularly from the Canal) were to some extent accomplished. It was not the one-sided result of 1967.
Israel has not faced a broad Arab front since 1973, and the IDF’s performance has therefore not been tested in regular warfare. Its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 pushed the PLO out of southern Lebanon, but aside from aerial battles with the Syrian Air Force, regular Arab armies were not engaged. A force that has seen only limited action against guerrilla forces in the occupied territories was apparently caught off guard when forced to fight against a disciplined force.
Clearly, the IDF did recover its equilibrium after some initial setbacks. The appointment of Kaplinsky indicated a decision had been made to shift the approach (though it is not clear that Adam was responsible for such failures as the broader intelligence failure to assess Hizbullah’s real strength). The fact that, on the Friday before the ceasefire, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered the IDF to launch a major offensive may have been an attempt to achieve as much as possible in the last days of the campaign: there is an old Israeli tradition, going back to 1948, of rapid movement just before an anticipated ceasefire in order to leave oneself with more territory.
To some extent, the IDF may also have been painted into a corner by the rhetoric of the politicians. Initial declarations that the war would go on until the rocket threat was removed completely were probably doomed from the start, and indeed rockets were arriving in barrages right up to the ceasefire. Initial pledges to do whatever it takes to eliminate Hizbullah proved rather empty once Haifa — the country’s major seaport, center of energy distribution, and third largest population center — came under regular rocket fire. Having much of the northern quarter of the country in shelters for four weeks was a very different thing than having a few border kibbutzim and Qiryat Shimona under Katyusha fire occasionally. It soon became clear that the initial boasts of eliminating Hizbullah entirely were excessive, and that the costs to Israel of achieving such a goal were unacceptable politically. Therefore the goalposts moved: the government began speaking of a border security zone (but never fully occupied one), which would seem to have little effect on the rocket threat, other than moving the rockets a few kilometers to the north.
Some are charging that Prime Minister Olmert — who was an editor of the Army magazine during his IDF service — and Defense Minister Amir Peretz (who was a materiel officer and rose to the rank of captain) lack the military experience to command in wartime. Perhaps, but that is what the General Staff is for, and there are going to be many debates about the General Staff’s performance. Halutz’ actions, as well as his plans, will come under scrutiny, as will the Kaplinsky/Adam affair.
The aftermath (like the aftermath of the 1973 surprise) is already showing signs of provoking considerable questioning and analysis of the IDF’s performance. While some supporters of Israel abroad, and some Israelis at home, are complaining that Israel should not have accepted the ceasefire, the government seems to have found itself mired down in weeks of battle with no clear plan for ending it, other than a ceasefire; the IDF seems to have been unable to accomplish at least some of the tasks assigned it. That may or may not be fair, but perceptions often matter most, and clearly Hizbullah surprised the IDF with its resilience and toughness. |
