Bargain basement
By Amir Oren Haaretz 19 March 2009
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072468.html

Israel established the Palestinian Authority for a dual purpose: to put an
end to Palestinian violence against the Jewish state - indeed, that was
Yasser Arafat's explicit commitment, without which Yitzhak Rabin would not
have signed the Oslo Accords - and to create a central, responsible body
that it could turn to. Neither goal was achieved. The Palestinians received
territories and rocket-launching bases, an opportunity to arm themselves
and, in effect, authorization from Israel to persist in their war against
it, along with Israeli acceptance of the laxness of the administration in
Ramallah and Gaza in disciplining the perpetrators of terror attacks.

The "Ehud Olmert line" drawn near the border of the Gaza Strip, following
the evacuation of settlers and army from the Strip in the summer of 2005,
was ineffective in carrying out its declared task of defending civilians.
First, because the government barred the Israel Defense Forces Southern
Command from penetrating the stretch of land next to the border; and second,
because the IDF and the Defense Ministry were disdainful of the need to
acquire systems to locate tunnels (and intercept rockets), in the event of
an emergency. The forces deployed along the Olmert line had to defend
against attempts to kill or abduct them. The tank crew to which Gilad Shalit
belonged was only theoretically qualified for this.

According to officers who fought in Lebanon and Gaza, there was a
professional flaw in the armored forces' operations. The mechanisms that are
supposed to protect a crew if its tank is set ablaze by a projectile work
properly - but they also pollute the interior of the tank with gases and
smoke. The crew's lives are thus endangered whether they stay inside or they
escape, possibly into the arms of the enemy.

Another, more basic reason for this situation is the priority the IDF
accords to fighters in the different ground-forces units, without striking
the correct qualitative balance. There are too many special forces and
reconnaissance battalions - which, if combined, would create three
additional brigades - and there are also paratroopers and conscript infantry
in other brigades. All of these come at the expense of dispersing the
"quality" elsewhere: in the armored, engineering and artillery corps (the
latter of which, after the Yom Kippur War, was fortunate enough to be
assigned personnel who didn't complete pilots' courses, who were often of a
higher caliber than the infantry), and so on.

The result? The ostensibly elite units are reserved for Israeli-initiated
offensive missions, whereas when it comes to defense, the forces deployed
are less qualified to defend themselves than the elite units. From the
outset, the chances Gilad Shalit and his comrades-in-arms had of surviving -
while not being part of an armored force, and with only personal arms in the
face of an enemy squad that attacked their tank - were less than that of
fighters from the Shaldag, Magellan or Egoz elite units, none of which were
stationed at Kerem Shalom.

Hamas, Hezbollah and smaller organizations specialize in sabotage and firing
rockets - the sort of work done in the IDF by non-prestigious engineering
and anti-aircraft units, which an 18-year-old with dreams of being a brigade
commander or chief of staff will not join. The fanatic Islamic organizations
channel their best creative efforts into what are the most neglected sectors
in the IDF, relatively speaking; hence, the breaches in defense.

Elite combat troops in the intelligence, air, sea and land branches, who
participate in special operations deep across the lines, know what they are
up against, the chances of their being encircled by the enemy, and which
units will be prepared to rescue them, albeit with no guarantee of success.
They understand that in addition to death and injury, they also risk
abduction. Most of these troops undergo a course that helps prepares them
for these eventualities. But not soldiers in other units; for them,
captivity is a shock for which they are utterly unprepared.

Results vs. process

If Gilad Shalit were held in a regular prison, under conditions of
transparency, with visits and indirect contact with his family, the
bargaining would not take place in such an impassioned media and public
atmosphere. This, of course, is exactly the reason that he is hidden and one
touch of a button away from injury. One of Israel's basic failures lies in
its willingness to enter into negotiations without demanding that Shalit be
transferred to regular prisoner conditions.

Israel, as a Western society, wants results; for the Palestinians, the
process itself is almost equally important. Israel sees a deal as the
meeting, not necessarily in the middle, between the bargaining positions of
two sides. It desires a tolerable arrangement, even if less successful than
its opening offer. For the Palestinians, one of the goals might also be to
torture Israel by dragging out the talks and taking a tough stance. Israel's
humiliation, in light of proof that the Palestinian side refused to back
down, is no less important than the number of prisoners that will be freed:
The essence lies in the principle of release, not in some arbitrary number.

Hence, the ratio of people freed on both sides in the deal with Ahmed
Jibril's terror organization has no real significance. Eight IDF soldiers in
an observation post in Hamadun, Lebanon, in September 1982, were divided
between two Palestinian organizations. Fourteen months later, Fatah freed
six in return for about 100 terrorists imprisoned in Israel, and another
4,500 detainees in the Ansar prison camp, which Israel maintained in Lebanon
itself. A year and a half later, Israel received from Jibril the two
remaining prisoners from Hamadun plus Hezi Shai, who was captured in the
battle of Sultan Yaqub, in return for 1,150 terrorists who had been tried,
convicted and jailed in Israel.

In the case of Shalit, Israel's emphasis on 130 prisoners whom it refused to
release constitutes an empty and misleading boast, since Israel had already
given in by agreeing to free 320 of the 450 prisoners on the list.

After the policy failure and the political failure, the failure in
deployment around Gaza, the failure to prevent the abduction and the failure
to properly prepare the soldiers, two more gloomy failures stand out in the
first 1,000 days of the captivity of Gilad Shalit: the failure to create the
right conditions to rescue him and the failure to abduct Hamas leaders, who
could have served as bargaining chips in negotiations for Shalit. This too
is a major Hamas achievement.

The impression (accurate or not) among Israeli decision makers is that both
those alternatives, a rescue operation and the kidnapping of Hamas leaders,
were likely to do more harm than good. The frustration in the elite commando
units - such as Yamam of the Border Police, Shayetet 13 of the navy and
Sayeret Matkal, which were training for scenarios like this before Gilad
Shalit was born, and which surely awaited the information and authorization
allowing them to rescue the soldier - did not in itself justify an
unreasonable risk.

In the case of Entebbe, in 1976, commanding officer Dan Shomron went in with
personnel from the air force, Sayeret Matkal, the Paratroops and the Golani
infantry brigade, after the Rabin government had already yielded to the
hijackers' demands, but then backtracked and agreed to try a military
operation. There, the possibility was taken into account that dozens of
people, both rescuers and abductees, were liable to be killed. But even
according to that estimate, it was clear that nearly 200 civilians were to
be spared the threat of execution.

In the Shalit story, where getting close is far easier, but achieving a
surprise is far more difficult, the decision makers face a crueler
calculation. A lthough a certain proportion of casualties among the rescuing
force is palatable, this is true only if the object of the rescue operation
himself is not badly injured.

This was a transparent equation from the outset. So one suspects that Ehud
Olmert's no-deal speech was intended mainly to prepare an excuse for a
potential operational failure: We were apprehensive about an operation, we
preferred not to go that route, but we were pushed into it by the obstinacy
of Hamas.