Galia Golan Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Page 5 of 6
Before we talk about the U.S. I want to ask you about the way Israel responded in the Lebanon war, and escalated. Two issues come up. The first is the notion that the military was unprepared because it had been spending too much time with the occupation, and a new generation of Israeli soldiers were unprepared for [war]. The second is that [in] the leadership of Israel, coalitions formed [in such a way] that there is a lack of insight, a lack of skill in leading the country in making decisions about war and peace that Israel has never experienced before. Could you address those two points?
You're referring to having a defense minister, Amir Peretz, who's not qualified to be a defense minister?
Well, yes, and who, building a new Labour Party based on issues of social welfare and social justice, is suddenly made defense minister. When I was in Israel before the war he was defending an increase in the defense budget even at the price of cutting social welfare budgets.
There are a couple of issues here. Very specifically, Amir Peretz was a supporter of Peace Now, and he's an old friend. We had very high hopes, very high hopes when he took office, including when he took office as Defense Minister. [However], there was the fear that it was a trap, that it was a position in which he would fail, and that was one of the reasons that he was placed there. Of course, that's been the result. We've been very much disappointed. But I don't know that we could blame everything on him or on this " inexperience."
It may have been a factor that we had both an inexperienced prime minister, who would never have been prime minister, it was a sheer fluke that he was number two. He had been very low -- he'd barely got into the Knesset on the Likud elections a number of years ago. A very skilled politician, but certainly inexperienced when we talk about being prime minister. But we've had poor prime ministers before; we could put that aside, I think. There are those who say that the quick reaction and over-reaction was a result of their inexperience, and possibly they're trying to prove that they could handle it and that "we're just as good as the generals and just as good as ex-generals." I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced about that.
In other words, what they're arguing?
Yes, that argument that the reason for the escalation was the inexperience and the need to prove that they could handle this kind of situation. I'm not convinced that's what happened.
I think the military had much more influence here. My own theory, if you could call it that, is that we forget, and unfortunately we forgot throughout the whole war and to this day, that it all started in Gaza with a Hamas attack across the border and the capture of the soldier, Gilad Shalit, who's still in captivity. About two weeks later comes what was viewed by Israel, and certainly by the army, as a second kidnapping, where Hizbollah crossed the border and in this case, kidnapped two soldiers and killed a few others. I think the army responded, "How dare they? How can they do this again?" And they closed it ...
So, it's one adversary.
Exactly. And they closed it in terms of our deterrence. "If they can keep doing this, we've got to teach them a lesson, we've got to show that they can't keep doing this." I think that's what happened, and I think the military were particularly strong in this, and the inexperience of the government led to this. The reason I say that is that we have to bear in mind that this kind of attack by Hizbollah had occurred before a number of times. They had crossed the border, in some cases succeeded in kidnapping soldiers, in other cases didn't succeed, and we never responded with escalation. And this is under Sharon.
One of the reasons was that it was a known fact that if we did respond and turned to war, not only do you have the danger of war with Syria but you're going to the have civilian population under fire, because we knew that they had rockets, they had the Katyushas and so forth. No government before apparently was willing to do that, since it wasn't an existential threat, just to open fire on the northern border and to come over and to kidnap some soldiers. It's not pleasant, certainly not for those living on the northern border, but it's not an existential threat. But this government responded as it did. It may be because of inexperience. I suspect it's very much the pressure of the military, and here I do think that the chief of staff played a role. I think the chief of staff more than anybody else is culpable here.
Was the army, was the grunt soldier, leadership at the lower levels, ill prepared and ill equipped to engaged in the war that was being asked of them?
Well, there are two things here. One of the things that I said at the very outset is this is a guerilla war and you're not going to win, and that's something the army should've known from the beginning.
And the air force?
The whole idea is, we're going to do this first just by the air force so we don't have any losses, but it's an American tactic and it's never worked. Certainly, you didn't have to be a Soviet specialist to know this. You'd think that they'd realize that [with] 3000 guerilla fighters, you can't win this war. No matter how prepared we'd been, this was a different kind of war and we weren't going to win it. There's no winning it. You could push them back, you could weaken them, take out some of their launchers, but this is not serious, they'd re-arm, and so forth.
The other thing is yes, it is true that training had been foregone because the army was busy with the Intifada, and when you're busy with an Intifada the kind of warfare is entirely different. You bring a tank into these narrow streets of Navlos and the Palestinians have basically light weapons and you crush a house. It's a whole different ball game.
It's a policing operation.
It's basically policing. It's a little bit more but it's a very different kind of thing. Your opponent has nothing, basically-- it has light weapons, virtually. They certainly didn't have anti-tank missiles, they didn't have rockets of any serious kind. And so it is true that there was a lack of training, and it was known, it was a calculated risk. So, that probably had an effect.
I think one of the lessons of this "defeat" was that a guerilla war is something that Israel doesn't know how to fight, which is very dangerous. The Syrians, for example, are using this. I don't think that they're planning a guerilla war facing the Golan, it's a different terrain, it wouldn't work, but they're using that. It's sort of a demagogic type of thing to use amongst the Palestinians, as well: "Oh, you see Israel can't fight this kind of war." But that's just one of the negative outcomes of the war.
Next page: U.S. - Israel Relations
© Copyright 2006, Regents of the University of California