Hacohen criticizes Israel’s war strategy and arms smuggling from Gaza – Israel News
Major General (Res.) and strategic studies scholar Gershon Hacohen claimed on Tuesday that “we are looking at the war wrongly” regarding Rafah and previous incidents of Israeli army casualties in the city.
The Second Intifada was characterized by increasing attempts by Palestinian terrorist organizations to attack Israeli army armored vehicles in order to cause casualties among our forces. They were inspired by similar activities by Hezbollah against the Israeli army in Lebanon, using either explosives or grenades. Most of the ammunition was smuggled into the Gaza Strip through tunnels dug under the Philadelphia route, passing through the city of Rafah.
One of the unfortunate incidents of the past occurred on May 12, 2004 in the Philadelphia Route area, when terrorists managed to fire anti-tank guns from the roof of a building and blow up an armored vehicle belonging to the Israeli Defense Forces. The missile penetrated the vehicle and ignited the explosives it was carrying. All five crew members of the armored vehicle were killed.
The event was remembered not only for the number of casualties, but also because hundreds of soldiers from the Class Commanders training course rushed to the scene to search the ground for the remains of the fallen soldiers and bury them. The images of the soldiers searching in the sand with their hands on all fours were shocking. During the rescue operation, two other soldiers who were securing the area were killed.
This week we were informed of two disasters with numerous casualties involving IDF forces in Rafah.
The first event was the explosion of a Namer armored vehicle, killing eight soldiers. The second event, also in Rafah, was the explosion of a booby-trapped building, which fell on Israeli soldiers and killed five of them.
War costs and strategy
Major General (Res.) Gershon Hacohen – who in his last position served as Commander of the General Staff Corps and is a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and a member of the “Securityist” movement – spoke to Maariv on Tuesday to discuss why some argue that something in the city is the cause of such incidents recurring.
Hacohen said he was not impressed by terms such as “catastrophes.” He said: “This is war, and in war there is a price to pay. We see war wrongly. If you want to understand why we are seen as a spider’s web in the eyes of Hezbollah and why we criticize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for rearming, you know that this is exactly what it is about. The people of Israel are not prepared to pay the price of war.”
“Those who do not pay a price do not have sovereignty. Part of the ability of a sovereign is to stand before their people.” He stressed: “I am not trivializing human life” and clarified: “We are paying less than in other wars. The Americans lost 4,000 soldiers in 2005.”
Hacohen tried to draw attention to the connection with Egypt, especially with regard to the smuggling of weapons to Gaza. He says: “If they had listened to Yigal Allon and opposed the peace agreement and the evacuation of the settlements, there would not have been such intensive smuggling of weapons from the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula to Gaza.”
“We have returned everything to Egypt, down to the last meter. Since the withdrawal (from the Gaza Strip), Hamas has been receiving massive amounts of ammunition. It is like destroying a leaky water system; you have to turn off the main valve!” Hacohen stressed.
“This step should have been taken in the first days of the war,” he said. “We have to stop all these smuggling operations. The Egyptians were not exactly on our side. Will we be able to hold the area? Definitely not, according to President Biden’s demands, because he wants us to withdraw to the last meter, back to the border settlements.”
Hacohen then noted that “in 1945 Germany turned into something different and entered into a process of reconstruction because they managed to destroy the police and the cities there. To this day there is a British and American military presence on German soil.”
Major General (Res.) Hacohen concluded his argument by saying: “We must look at the situation and understand that the pain of war is terrible. Of course, we prefer that everything be investigated later. But nothing can be done; war has a high cost. It is easy to say that the Israeli forces should move north, but that will also incur costs and someone will start complaining – there is nothing you can do.”
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