This is what I was talking about last week, when I said that the IDF is preparing itself for the next war, while Syria, Hizbullah, and Hamas are all preparing for the last one.
“The IDF is preparing itself for an all-out war, and this is a major change in the military’s working premise following the Second Lebanon War,” said Major-General (res) Eyal Ben-Reuven, who served as the Northern Command chief’s deputy during the war.
“By preparing for an all-out war, we can also deal with Palestinian terror, and not the other way round, as it was believed so far,” Ben-Reuven said at an Institute for National Security Studies conference covering the different aspects of war.
When conflict breaks out with Syria, he said, Israel will face a challenge, because the Syrians “will be willing to take military and civilian hits but will strive to harm the Israeli home front in order to gain future achievements in a political process and to further split Israeli society.
“Therefore, the IDF’s mission will be very focused and will have to be quick, in order to neutralize as quickly as possible the strategic areas threatening Israel’s soft underbelly, thus preventing Syria reaching its coveted goals.”
Ben-Reuven explained that in order to carry out such missions successfully, an extensive ground operation will be needed, and for this purpose the IDF is currently renewing its maneuvering abilities, including training and perfecting technology.
It sounds to me like the IDF command has taken the lessons of Lebanon and applied them to a regional scenario, not that it is focusing only on army vs. army, as was brought up last week. Of course they’re not going to detail exactly what they’ve been doing, but this is one of the world’s most adaptive armies. The Winograd Commission examined what went wrong, and is making recommendations to change what went wrong.
The war was a harsh slap on the face and proved that we were wrong in 2000, when our readiness and military power was aimed at Palestinian terror, and now we realize that we should be preparing for something completely different.”
Ben-Reuven, who was recently in charge of training senior military commanders, pointed out that the army must change its view on this matter.
“Someone who was a good regimental commander will not necessarily be a good divisional commander. It doesn’t work that way on the modern battlefield. One must undergo the appropriate training in order to understand their job well,” he said.
This doesn’t sound like the kind of army that has failed to learn from Hizbullah tactics. It sounds like the kind of army that has learned from its mistakes. Do you really think soldiers are going to take over homes in areas cleared of terrorists and make them command centers, only to be attacked by anti-tank weapons and RPGs? That’s what happened in Lebanon, and the IDF lost a lot of men that way. But if even an utter nonmilitary type like me can figure out that those tactics need to change, why would my readers think that the IDF has not learned from its mistakes? When I read this article, I don’t see “IDF prepares for large conventional war.” I see “IDF prepares to stop tactics that hurt it last year.” One of the biggest complaints last year was that the IDF relied too much on its air force and bombing tactics, while the ground forces were sitting ducks for Hizbullah shoot-and-run tactics. You can’t shoot if you’re running away from overwhelming force. And I’m guessing that flamethrowers are going to become standard equipment again. They worked on the Japanese in caves in WWII. They’ll work just as well on the caves and underground attack centers that Hizbullah’s been digging. Again, nonmilitary type here, and I figured out a counter-tactic. What makes you think the men and women whose careers are studying and refining military tactics haven’t figured this out as well?
I think the critics are not taking into account the big picture. This is why I read all the English-language Israeli papers as well as dozens of different news sources from all around the world. Well, and then there’s my glass-half-full philosophy. I won’t be buying into the doomsayers POV anytime soon.
One big problem that remains, however, is that Israel’s civilians are still vulnerable to a large-scale missile attack. That is what I think is referred to above as “Israel’s soft underbelly.” Yeah, well, Damascus has one, too. It’s just that Israel is more reluctant to kill civilians than any of her enemies, in spite of what the world would have you believe.
