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For more blog posts on the Israeli government’s indifference to Sderot’s children, click here.
Analysis: ‘Waiting for Babies to Die is No Strategy’, by Amir Mizroch (Jerusalem Post)
“Although it can never hurt to fortify classrooms and to create readily accessible bomb shelters, the real solution to the problems of rocket attacks on Sderot and the western Negev… must be a ‘war to the end’ on the terror leadership and infrastructure of the Gaza Strip. “
Excerpts;
Speaking… on Monday, hours after the rockets struck, former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit said that if, as he feared, the government was essentially adopting a strategy of “waiting for babies to die” before sending IDF divisions into the Gaza Strip, it would show that “Israeli deterrence is in its dregs.”
Shavit headed the Mossad external spy service from 1989 to 1996. He is now chairman of the International Institute of Counter Terrorism at IDC Herzliya.
“Our strategy should be one of offense, not defense,” Shavit elaborated. “We should be pro-active, and not react. There is no need to send three battalions into the Gaza Strip. There are varied means to achieve a pro-active strategy, as we have done in the past. And when we did take a pro-active approach, largely through targeted assassinations, Hamas called for a period of calm [tahadiya]. We have in the past employed tactics of a low intensity attack strategy, and it has worked. And when we were hitting their political leadership, military leadership, and weapons experts, Hamas looked for a cease-fire.
“The answer is not to send in divisions and occupy Gaza again, but to attack the terror leaders and the infrastructure in a smart, sustained manner. We need to change the equation from one of ‘they fire at us and we respond,’ to ‘we attack them and they go into defensive mode,'” Shavit urged.
Critics of this approach argue that since the IDF pulled out of the Gaza Strip two years ago, gathering the type and quality of intelligence needed for a low intensity, strategic strike campaign has become more complicated.
But Shavit said Israel doesn’t need “territorial contiguity” in the Gaza Strip to have intelligence assets there. He used as an example the botched terrorist attempt to shoot down an Arkia civilian aircraft with shoulder-launched missiles in Mombasa in 2002. “We don’t have territorial contiguity from Israel to East Africa, but we managed to solve that case,” he said, without elaborating.
It would be easier to obtain quality, actionable intelligence if Israel did have a presence in the Strip, Shavit acknowledged, but it is not absolutely necessary to get the job done.
The feeling in the defense establishment is that it would not be wise to be dragged into a major offensive inside the Gaza Strip while the situation along the Hizbullah-Syria front, a potentially much bigger conflagration, remains fraught. Hamas is, after all, controlled from “media liaison offices” in Damascus, and could be aiming to bog the IDF down in a lengthy fight in Gaza under orders from Israel’s enemies in Syria. The IDF wants to avoid fighting simultaneously on two fronts if possible.
But Shavit, who was also a Southern Command officer, rejected this thinking.
“This is a defeatist approach,” he insisted. “We live here. We are a sovereign state. There cannot be a situation in which Kassams fall on Jewish communities and we don’t attack those responsible because of other potential threats. Our deterrence is not served by this approach. Are we going to sit and wait until a rocket falls on a building housing babies and they are killed, and only then respond? What sort of thinking is that?”
As the Sderot Parents Association said Monday, it may have been a mistake to send children to schools in Sderot thinking they would be safe. All of the government and army’s statements to the contrary, many of the classrooms are unfortified, and even if they were, the 15 to 20 seconds needed to run to such protection, should the children be outdoors, is not always going to be sufficient.
Although it can never hurt to fortify classrooms and to create readily accessible bomb shelters, the real solution to the problems of rocket attacks on Sderot and the western Negev, according to Shavit, must be a “war to the end” on the terror leadership and infrastructure of the Gaza Strip.