Analysis / Typical Israeli chaos
By Amos Harel Haaretz 23 January 2006
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/673462.html

A series of state comptroller's reports on the disengagement, which will be
published over the next two months, are likely to reveal what many people
already suspect: that the plan's implementation - with the exception of the
evacuation itself, which was characterized by exceptionally good cooperation
between the army and the police - involved typical Israeli chaos, including
bureaucratic screw-ups, power struggles and lack of coordination between
different government agencies. And the price of these failures is being paid
by the evacuated settlers and the residents of communities near Gaza.

Yesterday's report, the first in the series, was particularly worrying
because it relates to protecting human life. That the price of these
failures has not yet been paid in blood is mainly thanks to the inaccuracy
of the Palestinians' rockets.

The failure to fortify Negev towns has been widely reported in the media;
the Defense Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces always responded by
blaming the Finance Ministry for failing to provide the needed funds. But
the comptroller's report reveals that the treasury was not solely to blame:
The Defense Ministry failed to involve treasury officials in the planning
process, then failed to present the plan to the treasury in a timely
fashion, and finally transferred too little money to the Home Front Command
too belatedly.

The IDF also shares the blame: It promised Negev towns full protection, like
that given towns on the northern border, but the Home Front Command
ultimately approved a plan costing half as much, which will not protect
residents against direct hits on their homes, but only against shock and
shrapnel. The command then failed to inform senior officials of this change.

But the defense establishment was not solely at fault either: Eleven months
passed between the cabinet's approval of the disengagement and its receipt
of the fortification plan, and even then, the ministers made no decisions.
Only in July, a month before the disengagement, did a ministerial committee
approve the necessary funding - yet that took only a single meeting. As a
result, when the IDF left Gaza in September, nearby communities were still
not fortified.

But perhaps the comptroller's most interesting revelation relates to a June
2004 meeting between Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and senior IDF officers.
Mofaz warned the officers against either "actions or words that might create
the feeling that the security situation will worsen following the
disengagement." When the defense minister tells his generals that working
too vigorously to fortify Negev communities will weaken public support for
disengagement, one can confidently predict that the officers will not hasten
to send in the bulldozers.

Unfortunately, this system appears to pay - because despite the
comptroller's timely report, the current government's failures in
implementing the disengagement seem unlikely to be high on the public's
agenda in the upcoming elections.