What Israel does next — in conversation with Dennis Ross
EI’s Angus Reilly talks to Dennis Ross, former Middle East Envoy for the Clinton administration and Special Assistant to President Obama, about Hamas’ attack on Israel, the impact on the politics of the region, and Israel’s response. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
AR: Israel and Hamas have fought numerous times in recent decades, with major outbreaks of violence in 2014 and 2021. Why is this time so different?
DR: Well, firstly, the nature of Hamas’ attack is so fundamentally different. Israel has never suffered these kinds of losses within the State of Israel since its original War of Independence in 1948. Every war that was fought with conventional armies never looked anything like this. Nothing like this has ever happened in Israel before.
It is a colossal surprise from two standpoints. Israel was caught completely unaware, notwithstanding a remarkable security and intelligence establishment. In addition, it’s clear that there was a very slow military response. You’re dealing with something that is not only unprecedented, but also is going to affect the basic sense of security in the country.
Israel is not going to take a conventional approach to responding to Hamas. This crossed all lines, and one can expect that the Israeli reaction is going to cross lines as well.
So you believe that not only was there an intelligence failure in terms of prediction, but also a military failure in terms of the slowness of the response?
Yes, I think at a certain level, it’s hard to imagine how this many communities in the south of Israel could be affected. In some cases, you had small Israeli units able to get down there immediately, but they were overwhelmed because the numbers they were facing were vastly greater than those that were being immediately shuttled in. There was obviously confusion about what was happening. There was some disruption of the Israeli command control structure; at least one base, again with minimal personnel, was quickly overwhelmed. This helps to explain why we didn’t see any use of Israeli air power, or even the use of attack helicopter gunships.
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Πηγή: engelsbergideas.com
