Barak Ravid has an informative piece in Haaretz today, underlining the chaos in Israel’s top strategic decisionmaking circles over the flotilla raid.
It seems like the same old story– from Defense Minister Ariel Sharon dragging PM Begin into the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, through the Olmert/Peretz team’s mega-lethal clownishness in the 2006 assault against Lebanon, to the Olmert/Barak/Livni team’s still-chaotic leadership “performance” during the late-2008 assault against Gaza… through… through… and right through to today.
Ravid:
- Senior ministers have noted that … the inner cabinet did not discuss issues related to the flotilla, receive operational briefings or approve the operation. The forum of seven, which did consider and approve the plan, … held just two meetings on the flotilla, the latest on Wednesday. They approved the operation and the continuation of the Israeli policy of barring ships from docking in Gaza.
Much of the session was devoted not to the military operation but rather to media and public relations issues surrounding the issue. “The ministers who attended the meeting didn’t get the impression from the defense establishment that a violent confrontation of this scope was likely,” one senior Jerusalem official said. “The sense during the discussion was that the navy would come and the organizers would take fright, do an about-face and flee,” he said.
No wonder PM Netanyahu had to nix his planned victory lap in the Oval Office and rush back to try to “take charge” at home.
According to Ravid,
- One of the most vocal participants in Wednesday’s session was Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser. He was against the raid and said the ships should be allowed to dock in Gaza in order to avoid a diplomatic and public relations crisis as well as the embarrassment to Israel that a violent confrontation with demonstrators on the ships could cause. After senior defense officials expressed their opposition to Hauser’s views, his position was rejected.
Maybe Hauser was the source for Ravid’s story? Anyway, it looks as though there’s some high-level butt-covering and finger-pointing going on in Israel today. Good.
By the way, the “forum of seven” includes the following: Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Intelligence and Atomic Affairs Minister Dan Meridor, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Interior Minister Eli Yishai and Minster without Portfolio Benny Begin.
“Intelligence and Atomic Affairs Minister”, huh?
This does remind me that, as we know, Israel has an extremely potent and lethal nuclear arsenal. Do we have any reason to think that it will be any more “responsible” in its stewardship of that fatal capability than it has been in its use of conventional military power?