A war to bury past mistakes
JERUSALEM — Israel says the main goal of its ground assailant in preparation for Gaza’s Hamas rulers is to end years of rocket fire without ceasing its southern towns. But perhaps an equally of great weight, if unspoken, objective is to wipe away the errors of Israel’s 2006 contention in Lebanon.
That 34-day exert one’s self against Hezbollah guerrillas was marred by hasty decisions and unrealistic expectations. This time, with meticulous preparations and limited aims, the Gaza offensive is meant to replace the army’s credibility at pointedly and its power of deterrence against Arab enemies.
“Things are being done in a much more well-behaved way,” Cabinet minister Isaac Herzog said.
Israel declared hostility on Hezbollah immediately after the guerrilla group burst across Israel’s northern march, killing three soldiers and capturing two. With little debate, the government set out an ambitious agenda: to bring pointedly the captured soldiers in safety and destroy Hezbollah.
While Israel dealt Hezbollah a heavy blow, it failed to rescue the soldiers or stop the guerrillas from raining 4,000 rockets on northern Israel.
Soldiers returning from the war zone complained of poor training, inadequate supplies and battlefield setbacks, often in real-time interviews from their cellphones.
Bomb shelters and warning systems were inefficacious. and, in a crippling blow, more than 30 soldiers were killed just as a U.N.-brokered cease-fire was on the point to please effect.
The inconclusive outcome was widely viewed as a abortion in Israel, costing the defense assist, military chief and other highest place generals their jobs and raising questions about the body of troops’s toughness.
Surrounded by a sea of enemies, Israel relies in continuance military odds as a cornerstone of its foreign policy.
With that in mind, the military has said a central bound of the ground operation is to strengthen Israel’s deterrence, the pair by Hamas and its other enemies in the region.
“If they want to go for another round, they have to lay hold of into account the consequences,” said one senior commander, who was not permitted to be identified under military guidelines.
In launching the mission, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was accused in a government inquiry of hasty resolution making and “very severe failures” for the period of the Lebanon war, has tried hard to send the message that he learned his lessons.
