Tag Archives: Gen. Benni Gantz

Jul 21 2014

Israel plans to take over Gaza, good for them!


Five IDF task forces begin driving into Gaza City. Israel draws up over-plan for control of the Gaza Strip

Re-post from DEBKAfile Exclusive Report July 21, 2014, 10:09 AM (IDT)

The IDF’s Shejaiya operation in the Gaza Strip continues apace, carried forward by five task forces now heading for the center of Gaza City amid casualties on both sides. Sunday, July 20, Israel’s crack Golani Brigades lost 18 fighters, without slowing down, compared with 170 Palestinian fatalities.

debkafile’s military sources report that each task force, the size of half a division, is an integrated amalgam of air, armored, artillery and engineering forces, capable of operating almost autonomously in field combat. The buildup of the last 24 hours has expanded Israel’s fighting strength in the Gaza Strip to a total of 75,000 men, the largest ever fielded in this territory. Because of its scale, Israeli leaders are referring to Defensive Edge as a war rather than an operation.

The battle for Shejaiya waged Sunday burst into public prominence because of the heavy losses suffered by the Golani Brigades, but it is not the largest engagement underway at present. The other ongoing IDF battles, their progress, the units involved and their locations, are kept secret. We can only point to their general locations as being around Beit Hanoun in the north; Zeitun, south of Gaza City and the Shati refugee camp to the north.

More arenas are scheduled to be added to the list of battle zones Monday.

Rather than causing despondency, the high IDF casualty toll Sunday – the highest in a single engagement since the 2006 Lebanon War – has invigorated the fighting forces in the field, making them more determined than ever to get the better of Hamas with all possible speed.

Whereas their orders on Sunday were to advance warily and slowly, meanwhile testing the strength of Hamas resistance and observing their tactics, the tempo went into high gear at dawn Monday, when the troops were told to speed their advance from the outer fringes of Gaza City into its center.

Their performance in Shejaiya and other engagements Sunday deeply impressed Israel’s war leaders and made them confident enough to step up the rate of advance.

This upbeat mood was evident in the comments made Sunday night by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and, from the field, by Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz. While condoling deeply with the bereaved families of the 18 soldiers who died in combat, they were full of praise for the troops’ performance “in defense of our home” which outdid all expectations.

The following decisions were reached in consequence:

1. Gen. Gantz would stay in the field and lead the forces from there, rather than from staff headquarters in Tel Aviv.

2. The prime minister and defense minister would manage the war, without constant recourse to security cabinet sessions to obtain its approval of every stage of the plan of operation, the final goal of which debkafile has learned, is Israel’s military takeover of the Gaza Strip.

3. As the military operation unfolded, the three war leaders were convinced more than ever that demolishing Hamas’ terror tunnel complex was not optional, any more than wiping out the rocket menace hanging latterly over five million Israelis and, for nearly a decade over the million people living directly in the shadow of the Gaza border. Publicity guidelines were to be built around this conclusion.
International statesmen are flitting busily around regional capitals, including Jerusalem, in search of an opening to broker a ceasefire in Gaza hostilities. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been holding meetings and US Secretary John Kerry will try and reach the Middle East in the coming days, according to a White House directive – unless he again cancels at the last minute.

According to debkafile’s sources, the requisite political and military conditions for a ceasefire are not yet in place because of a number of circumstances, not least of which is Hamas’ refusal to contemplate a halt.

Israel, for its part, is fighting for the first time in its history with solid Arab backing from the Egyptian-Saudi-United Arab Emirates bloc. So determined are its members to obliterate the Muslim Brotherhood that they have virtually blacklisted Qatar for supporting the Brothers and for patronizing the Palestinian Hamas, regarded as the MB’s paramilitary arm.
This rift has put a spoke in the diplomatic effort to set in motion effective mediation for a Gaza ceasefire predicated on co-opting Qatar.

A bid to make Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas the bridge between the Egyptian-Saudi-UAE grouping and Qatar has likewise foundered. And there isn’t much Secretary Kerry can do if and when he comes over to try his hand.

US President Barack Obama’s suggestion, when he called Netanyahu Sunday, to build a new Gaza ceasefire around the 2012 formula concocted by the US, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey – and accepted by Israel and Hamas – for ending Operation Pillar of Defense, shows him to be cut off from the fundamentally altered diplomatic and military realities of the current Gaza conflict.

He declines to recognize the emergence of a powerful new Arab bloc. It will be necessary to twist the arms of each of its members, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE, to gain their consent for a bid to cut the Israeli offensive short to rescue Hamas from defeat. And even then, they will stall.
And although anti-Israel demonstrations are being staged in some parts of the world, the most violent in Paris, hardly any world governments have openly condemned the Israeli operation – as yet.

Jul 19 2014

Isreal IDF now in Gaza!


Israel launched its Gaza ground operation cautiously in the South. Hamas runs to shelter in crowded towns

Re-Post from DEBKAfile Special Report July 18, 2014, 3:07 PM (IDT)

The first hours of Israel’s Operation Defensive Edge ground phase against Hamas were marked by heavy artillery and air pounding to soften up the terrain as the ground forces went in Thursday night, July 17. The troops advanced in two heads – one north to Jebalya and Beit Lahiya and the other south, where it went into action initially against Khan Younes and Rafah. The IDF took its first casualty before dawn Friday: Sgt. Eytan Barak, 20, from Herzliya, who served in the Nahal Division
In its current phase, the IDF ground operation is focusing on southern Gaza, with the potential for expanding into further areas, as and when the government decides, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz told the special cabinet session Friday.

The densely populated Gaza City has not been broached as yet.

debkafile’s military experts maintain that the first 48 hours of a war are often critical for determining its outcome. If a tactical gain is not achieved early on and a psychological blow not inflicted on the enemy, the operation tends to start losing traction by the third and fourth days.
That is why it is so important to hit the teeming Gaza City without delay, because Hamas has buried its core infrastructure under the crowded town center: Housed in a fortified bunker complex are its command and control, its communications systems and its longest-range weapons, which are held ready to strike after an Israeli invasion.
Bringing a small special operations force close enough to the Hamas stronghold would be useful for making the enemy feel threatened. But most importantly, it could gather the kind of intelligence which spy satellites and the air force were unable to reach. A small ground force trained in surveillance could pull this data from a point 200-300 meters away from target.

So the IDF has not yet applied the full weight of its might against Hamas. The troop movements in the early hours of the ground operation appeared designed more as a signal to Hamas that the incursion would stop right there, if it accepted a ceasefire on Egyptian and Israeli terms.

This sort of tactic, which was evidently dictated by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, has never worked with Hamas. It has been useful to Israel diplomatically for heading off international and domestic critics, who routinely accuse Israel of the reckless use of its military might.

But for a military offensive, this careful pace will cost the IDF the gains for shortening the war and allow the initiative to slip into the hands of Hamas, which has displayed surprising capabilities.
Both of its commando operations by sea and tunnel went awry. Israel soldiers were waiting and cut them down. The drones they sent were downed by the Israeli Air Force. The hundreds of rockets they fired, as far east as the Jordan Valley and north up Haifa and Nahariya, missed inflicting on Israel major damage or fatalities.

At the same time, the IDF in the first 10 days of Operation Defensive Edge, cannot be said to have pulled off any significant feats or snatched the initiative by means of its air strikes.

Hamas leaders, whom Israel expected to be deterred from continuing their offensive by the sight of the colossal damage caused to the towns of Gaza, misread them. Hamas couldn’t care less about damage to buildings. A check of $25 m from Iran or Qatar would be enough to restore all those buildings in less than a year.

For the Islamists, devastation, fatalities and the ruined lives of so many Palestinians are a cheap price to pay for the satisfaction of showing they can stand up to Israel’s armed forces, day after day, like the Lebanese Hizballah in the second Lebanon War of 2006.

The same misreading applies to Israeli tacticians’ hopes that a slow-moving military campaign will give Hamas time to come to its senses and grasp that its aggression has achieved no more than to bring the IDF down on its head on its own soil, and that intransigence will bring full Israeli might into the heart of Gaza City.

Hamas also misread Israel, when it calculated that the IDF would never send troops into the Gaza Strip. Now, too, the leaders of this radical Palestinian group are counting on Israeli forces not venturing into the densely-populated urban center of Gaza City to beard them in their bunkers and destroy their military machine. If they have got it right, they will have won.