I attended the conference yesterday and found it simply fascinating. Even though it overran it's scheduled time by almost an hour, I felt that it was over too soon.
Thank you so much to Tal Inbar for posting the announcement here!
I had read Ben Itzchak's extensive and very informative document and found his analysis right on target, but I was particularly intrigued to hear what the former Ramatcal, Boogie had to say about why things went so badly.
Below are some of the things that I thought were most interesting
לדברי הרמטכ"ל לשעבר, צה"ל בשנת 2006 היה אמור להיות ערוך לתרחיש של עימות ברצועת עזה או בלבנון. "ב-12 ביולי המילואים היו צריכים להתגייס, החיילים הסדירים היו צריכים לעבור מיד במתקנים מתאימים בשטח מדמה", ציין. הוא סיפר כי בהיותו בוושינגטון, עם תחילת המלחמה הבין כי יש ניסיון ליצור מהלך אווירי שממנו יקצרו את הפירות תוך ימים ספורים עבור מהלך מדיני. "אני הזדעקתי שהבנתי מהאמריקאים בוושינגטון שישראל מבקשת עוד זמן ומצד שני אין החלטה לגייס מילואים. שם איבדתי קשר לוגי עם מה באמת רוצים לעשות".
Once he realized that the prepared plans for a war in Lebanon were not being carried out, he returned to Israel and attempted to advise Halutz, but to no avail.
לדבריו, לקראת סיום תפקידו, במחצית השניה של שנת 2005
(Boogie probably meant 2004 since Halutz replaced him in July 2005)
הנחה לערוך הערכת מצב מחודשת בעניין, זאת לאור יציאת הסורים מלבנון, ההסתבכות של ארצות הברית בעיראק וכן תוכנית ההתנתקות. "לי היה ברור שלאחר ההתנתקות אנו צפויים לפתיחת רעה גם מדרום וגם מצפון... המשמעות של ההתנתקות היא בלימת המצב האסטרטגי של המתקפה ועצירתה".
Boogie said that with the Gaza withdrawal being seen as a victory for terrorism, he was not surprised by an escalation soon breaking out with the Hezbollah and that he ordered the development of new plans and tactics to prepare the army for it. He said that since there are never enough resources to train the forces for all possible scenarios, you have to choose the most likely one to focus on.
After mostly subduing the Intifada (in the West Bank), in 2005 he thought that the most likely site of a future conflict would in the North with Lebanon (and not Syria). That's why in his last month in command he recommended that a new intelligence assessment be made of the threat from Lebanon.
He said that certain units began to be trained for fighting the Hezbollah already in 2005. and that that these tactics should have worked well had they been followed. He claims that he warned that forces should not use houses for cover (he even remind this to his nephew who fought and was later wounded in the war). Interestingly, he says that in his plans, tanks would not have been used at all.
He dismissed the criticism of a lack of tactical intelligence, equipment or training being the cause of the war's outcome and insisted that Israel's reserve forces always were and always will be "rusty" before a war. That's why he claims that he would have drafted reserves on July 12th to begin retraining, even if only a limited air campaign was planned.
His explanation for why the army performed so poorly in the war was one of leadership. The lack of appropriate orders from the top, caused everything else to break down.
In response to another speaker's, Ron Tira, statement that "in the last 15 years the army has lost some of the fire in it's eyes," Boogie remarked that the soldiers that he saw in both in Operation Chomat Magen and in Lebanon2, had no lack of fighting spirit.
פרופ' אפרים ענבר
Said that Israel had missed a golden opportunity to punish Syria for its support of Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist activities against Israel and at the same time greatly improve our level of deterrence. Instead of reassuring Syria that we would not attack them, he thinks that we should have threatened to attack Syrian targets (for example their SCUD arsenal) during the war and believes that the US had secretly expected us to do so.
He brought up the example of how Turkey had made a credible threat to Syria in 1998 about the latter's support of the PKK and this had caused even Hafez Assad to back down and kick out the Kurd organization and leader.
Finally, I was very impressed by the last speaker, Ron Tira, who unlike the others, I had never heard of before. Even though he had to cut short his lecture due to time running out, this guy was simply brilliant.
In response to Enbar's suggestion of expanding the war to Syria,, he stressed that war with Syria is on a completely different scale and a confrontation with it would be several times more costly then what we saw last summer. The Syrians have seriously expanded their AT infantry capabilities and we won't be seeing a massed armor force against us like in 1973
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09-05-2007, 15:34
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