by Yonah Jeremy Bob
Behind the Scenes: The most in-depth story of how close Israel came to crippling Hezbollah after Oct. 7.
 |
On October 7, 2023, when IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi went to IDF military headquarters from his house, it was not a foregone conclusion that his destination should be Tel Aviv.
Rather, Halevi had a strong inclination also to travel straight to the Gaza border to personally manage the fight against Hamas’s invasion up close.
After all, Halevi spent his career in the special forces in hairy and complex combat situations, let tough fights, specifically in Gaza during the 2008-9 invasion, and always preferred being close to the action to feel the pulse of his troops and of the enemy.
And yet from 7:00 a.m. on October 7, only minutes after the invasion had started, he had a double worry and suspicion that possibly both Hamas and Hezbollah were or would attack nearly at the same time or were coordinating to bring the IDF’s attention to the South in order to hit it with the more dangerous blow from the North.
To manage such a potential two-front battle, and especially keep his eye on the enemy from the North, he needed to do this from the “Pit” at Tel Aviv military headquarters with all of the unique breath of multifront information he could have there at his fingertips.
This was Halevi’s state of mind regarding Hezbollah, not just from the first days but also from the first minutes of the war. This concern of facing a multifront war only grew when Hezbollah started firing mortars into Israel on October 8, 2023.
When Halevi presented his candidacy for IDF chief to Benny Gantz in 2022, he had submitted a document detailing the severity of the multifront threat, such that at least he was more mentally ready for such a threat.
IDF intelligence, not the Mossad or the Shin Bet, was the first to bring information about a potential Hezbollah invasion, such that an IDF preemptive major strike to set them off would have needed to occur immediately.
Then, IDF intelligence chief Aharon Haliv provided Halevi with an update regarding the threat information.
Halevi then started to bring this information to the attention of the political echelon, including Gallant and Netanyahu.
The IDF chief started holding consultations at a frenetic pace with IDF Northern Command Chief Uri Gordon, Air Force Chief Tomer Bar, a variety of IDF intelligence officials, and IDF Southern Command Chief Yaron Finkleman.
As the hours of consultation drew on, he was convinced that this was the right move.
At some point, Halevi sent IDF intelligence officials to discuss the issue with Gallant and understood that the defense minister also supported the attack.
Getting the surprise on Hezbollah before it could initiate a major second front against Israel was a dramatic opportunity, and Halevi wanted to think dynamically about it.
Halevi understood that even as the majority of the defense establishment was in favor of the major strike on Hezbollah, IDF Analysis Intelligence Chief Amit Saar was opposed and supported Saar’s right to express this both within the military and to security cabinet members.
He told various people that this was too good an opportunity to miss.
He told others that if there are two enemies, you go after the stronger one first to avoid them taking you by surprise.
Concerns whether Netanyahu would support attack
Halevi was concerned about whether Netanyahu would support the attack. He sent IDF Operation Command Chief Oded Basiuk and Strategy Command Chief Eliezer Toledano to meet with and to try to convince Netanyahu’s right-hand, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer.
Speaking directly to Netanyahu in a small closed meeting, Halevi worked himself at convincing the prime minister. He understood all along that US opposition could be a problem.
Until the cabinet meeting, he did not know what Netanyahu would decide, though he thought possibly that the prime minister was dropping subtle signs that he would oppose the attack.
In any case, then defense minister Yoav Gallant, Halevi, and the majority of the high command recommended attacking at 3:00 a.m. on October 11.
Halevi even ordered Bar to send the air force into the sky so that they would be ready to attack within minutes.
Halevi was not the only one trying to guess what Netanyahu thought.
At points in the day, Gallant tried but was not able to get through to Netanyahu.
Eventually, Gallant physically marched from his office on the 14th floor of the Defense Ministry in IDF’s headquarters across the campus to the prime minister’s offices in the military headquarters.
Gallant still could not get in to see Netanyahu but was able to meet with Dermer,
He made it clear to Dermer that he had to inform Netanyahu that a major attack on Hezbollah had to go forward right now and could no longer be delayed.
Gallant wanted to tell Netanyahu that a decision not to act until now had meant merely kicking the can down the road, and not going forward right away could mean losing the option for an extended period.
Instead of bringing Gallant to Netanyahu, Dermer called the American National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan instead.
Some considered the very act of calling Sullivan at this juncture as an error in and of itself because there was no way that the US would endorse a preemptive strike.
Dermer and Sullivan had an initial talk, leading Biden and Netanyahu to go on a direct line. When Netanyahu tried to press Biden to support a major Israeli strike on Hezbollah, Biden pushed back full throttle, “Do not do this. You know me, we have known each other for a long time. This is a mistake. Do not go down this road."
Netanyahu responded, “I hear you. You’ve been very clear. But I also want to be clear that we’re going to make our own decision, and while this conversation will inform it, it will not decide it,” according to Bob Woodward in War.
Later, Gallant was finally able to speak to Netanyahu himself.
The defense minister tried to press the prime minister into a major strategic attack that he did not want to undertake, or alternatively, put the prime minister on the spot and on the record as not being willing (or being afraid) to take military action was the worst possible kind of meeting that Netanyahu could conceive of.
Gallant recalled to Netanyahu the point made by Halevi about taking down the stronger enemy before the weaker one. He added his own arguments: that a pre-emptive attack would be the best way to get ready for the inevitable Hezbollah rocket attacks against Israel’s home front and that once Hezbollah did launch such an attack, it would dwarf the power that Hamas could bring to bear after October 7, if only because Hamas’s rocket and missile arsenal was a fraction the size of Hezbollah’s.
“Listen, it's complicated,” Netanyahu said. “What will the Americans say?”
Gallant felt that all that mattered was the view of the State of Israel.
Netanyahu objected again, saying: “We also need a national unity government immediately, and we cannot carry out consultations for that at the same time that we would be initiating a massive conflict with Hezbollah.”
Gallant was fine with forming a national unity government as long as it did not hold up the attack and believed plans could go forward on all fronts at the same time.
When the security cabinet later met with Gantz and Eisenkot, while Netanyahu talked about a tough response, he wove into his comments phrases about the need to weigh the views of the US and of Gantz.
In turn, Gantz, supported by Eisenkot, didn’t conceal his opposition to a major strike on Hezbollah at this stage. For him, the risks of a larger Hezbollah war outweighed the benefits of a preemptive move, even one that would eliminate the possibility of an ongoing, grueling, and costly confrontation on the northern front.
Netanyahu said they should consult with the Americans further. Gallant opposed this, believing the US would veto it.
Netanyahu ignored Gallant and ordered Dermer to call Sullivan a second time. The prime minister paused the cabinet meeting and said they would reconvene a few hours later after the second Dermer-Sullivan call.
Dermer and Sullivan spoke in the mid-afternoon, with Dermer telling Sullivan, according to War, “the direction of the debate is shifting in the direction of a preemptive strike.”
Sullivan responded by warning that an attack on Hezbollah would lead to a massive regional war. “What you are thinking about doing is dangerous. It’s irrational…do not go ahead with it.”
Sullivan also later dictated a message to a Dermer aide: “Jake to Ron: Your information is false. You’re making decisions in the fog of war. Slow down.”
Informing the White House
Next, Sullivan set up what some top Israeli defense officials saw as a kind of strategic ambush. He looped in virtually the entire White House. Biden’s top intelligence, military, and national-security advisers—including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, CIA Director William Burns, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs CQ Brown all got on the line with Sullivan, the Post understands.
US intelligence, they said, contradicted any prediction of further escalation or invasion by Hezbollah, including that they might be using paragliders to invade, and did not justify any major Israeli strategic escalation against the group. CENTCOM Chief General Eric Kurilla told US envoy Brett McGurk, “Hey, my J-2 says there are no paragliders…There is no sign of this. It’s a phantom.”
After the call, Gallant, Halevi, and Dermer met.
Gallant again tried to convince Dermer that a surprise attack would be the best possible scenario since Hezbollah’s attack capabilities would be weakened.
But when Netanyahu joined their meeting, he said, without equivocation, “I am opposed. We would face massive destruction on the home front. You see all of these buildings in Tel Aviv. They will all be destroyed. Hezbollah just has too many rockets. Also, we need the full backing of the Americans for invading Gaza.
“The blow to the Israeli home front will be so horrible that it will cause a deep demoralization,” Netanyahu concluded.
Left with this standoff, Gallant departed, hoping to overcome Netanyahu’s opposition later.
At a later point in the day, when he tried to call Netanyahu again, the prime minister’s National Security Council Chief, Tzahi Hanegbi, refused to put him through. Why?
Gallant then sent his own chief of staff, Shachar Katz, to the prime minister’s office, but Hanegbi wouldn’t let him in.
At a later war cabinet meeting, including all of the key players: Gallant, Gantz, Eisenkot, Netanyahu, Dermer, and Hanegbi, the defense minister and Halevi presented their arguments for an attack right away, including getting a head-start strike on Hezbollah in which its central assets would be eliminated.
Many in the cabinet were still in shock and found it hard to envision Israel going back on the offensive so soon and were in a passive, fearful, and defensive posture.
Some arguments that Gallant and Halevi made in favor included grabbing the element of surprise, temporary and unusual legitimacy globally, and having Iron Dome batteries and troops in position and on the northern border.
Furthermore, the close border villages were already evacuated, so arguably, Israel could handle more attacks from Hezbollah without facing civilian casualties in those villages. Domestic Israeli support was strong.
One participant described the final cabinet meeting as having extreme tension in the room and high political drama beyond just the awesome military issues at stake.
Part of the extra drama came from the sudden entrance into the decision-making of new war cabinet members and former IDF chiefs Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot.
In the future, Gantz and Eisenkot would overwhelmingly support Halevi, Gallant, and the IDF high command on key Gaza war and hostage deal decisions. Still, at that moment, Gantz and Eisenkot threw down a hard veto on attacking Hezbollah.
This caught Halevi and Gallant by surprise, who had no idea that they would even be joining the meeting. Officially, they had not even joined the government yet, and most of Israel did not realize how close the two were to joining Netanyahu’s wartime government.
Their opposition proved decisive as they were given a different kind of credibility to balance out the IDF high command and Gallant, which Netanyahu and other cabinet members might not have had without them.
There were also points where Eisenkot was more against other military actions than Gantz. Halevi noted with some satisfaction how surprised Eisenkot was later by the extent of IDF's success in Lebanon and with some other war operations.
Netanyahu eventually told the meeting that he had spoken to Biden and “that a [wrong] decision) to significantly escalate the conflict with Hezbollah with a preemptive strike could radically alter Israeli-US relations.”
Until that point, support for the attack on Hezbollah included Gallant himself, Halevi, Barnea of the Mossad, Ronen Bar, Chief of the Shin Bet, IDF Military Intelligence Chief Aharon Haliva, and IDF Northern Command Chief Uri Gordon, among others, were all in favor.
There is a debate about whether Barnea was in favor all along or wavered along the way, but at the critical moment, he also favored a strike.
Despite the weight of the current defense establishment’s views, those with voting rights inside the cabinet, except for Gallant himself--Netanyahu, Gantz, Eisenkot, and Dermer-- decided unanimously against attacking.
Later, Dermer would tell Sullivan, according to Bob Woodward’s book, War, “Well, the prime minister and I were never supportive of this. The military was driving it, and you know, so this is a good outcome basically.”
As the Biden team would tell it, they helped save Israel from a catastrophic regional war based on poor Israeli radar detection, jumping at thinking birds were Hezbollah attack drones and being too jittery in general to prove how tough they were after the October 7 failure.
Also, the Biden team would say that Israelis often tossed out partial intelligence findings alleging major strategic conclusions, but when the intelligence was examined, it was often thin air.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the Israelis are “30 minutes from launching a preemptive, or preventative in their minds, attack based on totally erroneous information.”
There was certainly some truth to these allegations of Israeli leaders and the intelligence establishment.
But those truths were and are only half of the picture.
The other half of the picture, according to many Israeli officials, is that US officials, even if they “got it” about Israel being threatened, did not really fully get how seriously Israel was threatened.
Hamas’ October 7 attack, Hezbollah’s October 8 attack, and Iran and the Yemen Houthis’ multiple attacks on Israel later made that clear.
When the Israeli defense establishment said this was an opportunity to fix security failures dating back to the 2006 Second Lebanon War, they did not view this as just posturing and trying to restore confidence after the October 7 failure - it was a serious and very real sizing up of the immense work Israel had in front of it to restore deterrence to enemies on seven fronts.
And Israelis sometimes jump too easily at partial intelligence, but only because not so infrequently perfect intelligence has arrived too late, and many Israelis have then died.
As successful as the IDF’s bludgeoning of Hezbollah in September-November 2024 was, Gallant, Halevi, and many others have said that 60,000 northern residents evacuees might not have had to leave their homes for 15 months and even Hamas might have cut a deal much sooner if they saw Israel bring Hezbollah to its knees in the first week of the war.
Yonah Jeremy Bob
Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-840874
No comments:
Post a Comment