No Mission Is Impossible

by Michael Bar-Zohar

  Cast Lead—the fighters at the gates of Gaza.

  (Neil Cohen, IDF Spokesman)

  “The entry into Gaza was relatively quick,” said a senior officer after the battle. “We felt that Hamas was in shock, which in turn significantly undermined the resistance they had prepared. The houses were packed very close together, with a portion of them booby-trapped. There were also motorcycles at the ready for abductions. Almost every other hour, there was an attempt by a male or female suicide bomber to run at us and detonate an explosive belt. In the booby-trapped houses, we found shafts leading to tunnels designated for kidnapping soldiers.”

  On January 6, the Palestinians claimed that an IDF mortar had killed thirty people sheltered at the al-Fahoura school, a facility run by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. The shell had targeted the school yard, where a rocket had been launched at Israel; in response, the IDF had fired three mortars. Two hit the school yard, killing two of the terrorists in action, while the third errantly struck the neighboring school, thirty yards away. But an investigation by Canada’s Globe and Mail revealed that, contrary to Palestinian reports, not thirty people but just three had been killed by shrapnel, when they had gone outside the building.

  Hamas’s ability to resist the IDF operation was weaker than the Israelis had anticipated. The Palestinians intensified the rocket fire into Israeli territory; over the course of Cast Lead, 730 rockets were launched into Israel, among them long-range Grad weapons that reached Ashdod, Ashkelon, Yavne and Be’er Sheva.

  Hamas systematically fired from houses of civilians, whose lives it did not hesitate to put at risk. An IDF officer found a document that contained Hamas’s battle plan, including the deployment of terror teams next to a mosque, the placement of large improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in a heavily populated area and even the booby-trapping of schools and the zoo. Yuval Diskin, then the head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, told journalists, “A considerable portion of the activists are hiding in hospitals, some at Shifa, some in maternity hospitals. A few are going around in doctors’ and nurses’ uniforms.” The Shifa hospital director categorically denied his statements.

  One incident seared into the public consciousness was the death of three daughters of Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian doctor who had for years worked in hospitals in Israel. Two IDF tank shells had struck his home in Jabalia, killing the three girls and injuring another. At the moment of the attack, Dr. Abuelaish was speaking with TV Channel 10 reporter Shlomi Eldar. Crying out hysterically, he pleaded with the journalist, a friend, to ask the IDF to stop shooting at his home. The IDF subsequently claimed that it had targeted the home because of shooting originating from there.

  After twenty-two days of fighting, Prime Minister Olmert stopped the operation, rejecting the third stage proposed by General Galant—to cut off the Gaza Strip from Sinai. Olmert declared a unilateral ceasefire: “Hamas’s military capabilities and control infrastructure have been hit hard. The present campaign has once again proven Israel’s strength and deterrence capability.”

  On the Israeli side, thirteen had been killed, among them ten soldiers. According to IDF estimates, 1,166 Palestinians were killed, 709 of them members of Hamas. The Palestinians counted 1,417 dead. Four thousand homes were entirely destroyed, along with 48 public and government buildings.

  Operation Cast Lead produced severe damage to Israel’s international image. On September 15, 2009, Richard Goldstone, a South African former judge appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, submitted a scathing report to the UN portraying Israel as having committed war crimes and “crimes against humanity.”

  In April 2011, however, Goldstone made his mea culpa in a Washington Post article, admitting that his report hadn’t been accurate and contained unjust accusations againt Israel. “If I had known then what I know now,” he wrote, “the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”

  YOAV GALANT, HEAD OF ISRAEL’S SOUTHERN COMMAND

  “We embarked on the operation in order to hit Hamas and create deterrence, and to force it to halt its missile fire for an extended period. No less important, in my eyes, was the need to sear into its consciousness that it would pay a heavy price for targeting Israel’s citizens and sovereignty. Hamas was surprised by the timing of the action, the force of the attack and the wide-scale entry of ground forces into its territory, as well as by the timing of the withdrawal and the speed with which it was carried out.

  “This was the first time that the IDF struck at Hamas so comprehensively. The attack was carried out in a focused, continuous, intensive way, with thousands of bombs dropped on hundreds of targets, among them command posts, weapons caches, tunnels, bunkers and government offices. The ground maneuvers were performed by strengthened battalion forces, and at any given moment, there were seven thousand fighters within the Strip. The IDF achieved tight coordination between our intelligence and air, sea and land forces.

  “Two weeks after the start of the operation, I recommended to the chief of staff that we carry out the third stage of the original plan: to cut the Gaza Strip off from Sinai by encircling and occupying Rafiah. This process would have brought about a disruption of the pipeline used for weapons smuggling, suicide bombers and more. But the plan wasn’t authorized because it might have led to great losses.”

  Four years later . . .

  PILLAR OF DEFENSE, 2012

  The electronic signal flashed across the navigation system of the drone, which, according to the London Sunday Times, was circling above the mosques and refugee camps of Gaza. The drone dived toward Gaza City center. Its cameras scanned the streets, focusing on a silver Kia carrying a tracking device, which crossed an intersection and turned into Omar Mukhtar Street.

  The passenger of the Kia was Ahmed Jabari, Hamas’s chief of staff. He had become the commander of Hamas’s military wing in 2003, after his predecessor, Mohammed Deif, was severely wounded during an Israeli Air Force attack. Jabari, a member of a Hebron-based clan, had been imprisoned in Israel for thirteen years because of terrorist activities. When he was freed, in 1995, he became a key Hamas figure, managing overseas relations, fund-raising and the planning of terror attacks. As Hamas’s military chief of staff, he oversaw weapons production, the use of mortars and rockets, the smuggling of arms, and other military and intelligence activity. Jabari had directed dozens of terror operations against Israeli citizens, as well as the firing of Qassam rockets into Israeli territory; he was responsible for the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit and had signed the agreement for his return.

  To the IDF, Jabari, fifty-two, was mortal. He knew it and took meticulous security precautions. Foreign sources claim that he told no one where he spent his nights or which vehicles he would use; he occasionally even disguised himself by wearing women’s clothes. In the past twenty-four hours, he had been closely watched with the help of Shabak agents; their reports revealed that Jabari had spent the night in a certain house in Gaza, parking his vehicle outside. Lurking in the skies above was a surveillance aircraft belonging to the air force’s Squadron 100. And so, on November 14, at 3:45 in the afternoon, a Shabak operations director in Tel Aviv received a fateful telephone call from Gaza: within three minutes, one of the several cars serving Jabari would depart from a certain address in Gaza. The Shabak agent added that he would provide an additional warning thirty seconds later.

  Without wasting a moment, the operative in Tel Aviv informed the head of the Shabak, Yoram Cohen, who in his turn called the IDF chief of staff, Benny Gantz, and Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. When confirmation arrived thirty seconds later from al-Mukhtar Street, Amikam Norkin, head of Air Force Operations, was sitting, ready and waiting, in the command room at military headquarters in Tel Aviv. The air force drone was approaching Jabari’s car. At 3:55, Norkin gave the order: “Go!”

  The drone’s systems zeroed in on the silver Kia. An electronic signal activated the drone’s firing system. Two missiles detached from the fuselage, plu
nging toward the car. An enormous explosion echoed along the two-way street, and the car was obliterated in a cloud of fire. When the smoke dissipated, passersby pulled the corpses of Ahmed Jabari and another passenger, Raed al-Atar, a commander of Hamas’s southern division. Thousands of Gaza residents streamed to the site, sounding calls for revenge.

  That was how, at 4:00 P.M. on November 14, 2012, Operation Pillar of Defense began. The final unraveling at the Gaza border had begun a week earlier, when a few border skirmishes culminated with a massive barrage of rockets and mortars unleashed by Hamas, its rockets hitting Israeli communities near Gaza, as well as the larger cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod. Israel could no longer tolerate such assaults, which had increased in frequency during the previous months. Hamas had willingly violated the terms of the cease-fire with Israel, reached after Cast Lead. Once again, the IDF had to deal a stunning blow to Hamas, to restore deterrence and quiet.

  Pillar of Defense—back to Gaza.

  (Gil Nehushtan, Yedioth Ahronoth Archive)

  Jabari’s assassination would be the crushing blow that would launch the operation, which had been decided upon just the day before by the Israeli cabinet—the inner circle of political leaders, headed by Netanyahu. Among them were Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Minister of Homefront Defense Avi Dichter. The decision had been obscured by a smokescreen of conciliatory declarations about Gaza by the prime minister and the defense minister during a visit to Israel’s northern border. This deception was perhaps the reason that Jabari, typically so fastidious about his own security, felt such inexplicable confidence that day—a mistake that would cost him his life.

  The task was assigned almost entirely to the air force. Israel had learned the lessons of Cast Lead, which had set off a surge of criticism around the world because of harm caused to Palestinian civilians. This time, Israel envisioned a surgical operation that would hit terrorists and their installations but would, as much as possible, spare the lives of civilians. Minutes after Jabari’s assassination, the first wave of air force planes pounced on Gaza, attacking Hamas training camps in the north, as well as storage facilities and launch sites that housed long-range Fajar 5 missiles, which could travel seventy-five kilometers and hit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. This was an impressive military and intelligence accomplishment, drastically diminishing Hamas’s ability to fire into major population centers and wiping out years of intense, secretive efforts by the organization to smuggle and produce missiles. By the end of the first day, Hamas’s long-range strategic capabilities had been almost entirely eliminated. But, after recovering from the initial shock, Hamas responded forcefully, firing more than sixty rockets at Israel’s southern towns. In response, Israel immediately activated Iron Dome, its new missile-interception system, bringing down twenty-four rockets.

  By evening, it had become clear to Israel’s civilian population that the operation wasn’t a one-off strike, but that it might last for several days. On the campaign’s second day, Hamas and Islamic Jihad renewed the shooting toward towns near Gaza, with missiles also fired at several Negev towns and, for the first time, Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. In Tel-Aviv, the sound of real sirens was heard for the first time since the first Gulf War, in 1991. But the hardest, most painful strike was on Kiryat Malachi.

  At 9:52 A.M., a Grad missile hit a residential building, killing three people and wounding six, among them two children. “At the time of the siren,” a neighbor said, “we went to the stairwell. After a few minutes, we heard a huge explosion in the building—we heard screams from the top floor and then saw our neighbor coming down with two wounded girls. . . . The neighbor who was killed had been standing on his balcony and had been trying to photograph the barrage of missiles. He took a direct hit.”

  Only a handful of the hundreds of missiles launched at Israel would hit their targets, but they caused heavy damage and trauma. Yet the Israeli public responded stoically, without panic, supporting the operation without regard to political outlook or social views.

  By November 15, the air force had blown up 450 targets, among them seventy subterranean rocket-launch sites. But in the same period, more than three hundred rockets and mortars were fired at Israel. The leaders of Hamas, Egypt and Turkey boiled and raged against Israel, but the enlightened world took its side. Leaders of the European Union and others expressed unequivocal support for Israel’s right to defend itself; the most effusive of all came from the president of the United States, Barack Obama, who took Israel’s side while denouncing the terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Under Obama’s heavy pressure, President Morsi of Egypt changed course, ending his attacks on Israel and beginning feverish work to reach a cease-fire. But in the interim, the fighting continued. Day after day, air force planes and naval ships pounded Hamas nerve centers in Gaza, and day after day, Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired hundreds of rockets on Israel’s towns.

  Yet, the IDF had imposed strict limitations on its response. “Each day, I needed to struggle with dilemmas that arose during the operation,” said General Tal Russo, commander of the Southern District. “For example: we received intelligence that a certain Hamas commander was in his home, and we had to decide whether we would hit him there. I decided not to attack, so as not to hit people who weren’t involved. The IDF’s sensitivity and caution about not hurting such people saved the lives of many Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders.”

  Egypt’s Prime minister, Hisham Kandil, arrived in the Strip, and Israel ceased fire during his visit. Upon his departure, terrorists shot two rockets at Tel Aviv and one at Jerusalem, with all three intercepted or falling in open territory. The Israeli air force attacked smuggling tunnels and government buildings, television stations and bridges, the Islamic Bank and pipelines funneling gas and oil to the Strip. IAF aircraft hit the office of Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh. Haniyeh was not in his office, of course; he was hiding underground with his colleagues, while their people were paying with their lives the bloody cost of Israel’s incursion.

  A fifth Iron Dome battery was placed in Tel Aviv and, within an hour, shot down a missile. The emir of Qatar, Turkey’s prime minister, and senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials rushed to Cairo for discussions with Egypt about restoring the calm. Secretly, Israel sent over the head of the Mossad, Tamir Pardo.

  Nevertheless, Gaza continued shooting. November 20, perhaps the worst day of fighting, saw heavy salvos of rockets fired from the Strip. Despite Iron Dome’s successes, rockets and mortars struck a house in Be’er Sheva and killed three soldiers at the Eshkol area. In Rishon Lezion, a rocket destroyed the top three floors of a residential building but only slightly injured three people.

  The following morning, after intensive mediation by Egypt, a ceasefire was reached, with the Palestinians pledging to halt all hostile activities and Israel ending its air force attacks.

  In total, the Palestinians suffered 120 deaths, most of them armed fighters. Roughly 1,500 rockets had been fired at Israel, with 413 intercepted by Iron Dome.

  Operation Pillar of Defense was over, but without a decisive result. Israel had landed a tough blow to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, destroying rockets and launchers and eliminating senior Hamas officials, chief among them the leader of its military wing. But Hamas and Islamic Jihad hadn’t been broken and had continued firing barrages of rockets until the cease-fire. In several southern Israeli cities, spontaneous demonstrations demanded that the government continue the operation. The protesters and their supporters insisted that the cease-fire would be fragile and temporary, and that it wouldn’t be long before Israel was forced to open a more extensive campaign against the Gaza terrorists.

  The protesters were right. Barely twenty months later, Israel was on the warpath again.

  Protective Edge, 2014

  The police officer who received the call during the night of June 12, 2014, dismissed it as a prank. Only later, when a worried father called, it was established that three teenagers, Eyal Yifrach (nineteen), Gilad Shaar (six
teen) and Naftali Frenkel (sixteen), students in yeshivas in the Etzion Bloc of settlements, had disappeared while trying to hitchhike home. One of them had used his cell phone but his call had been interrupted. Soon the police found a burned-out car by the Dura Arab village, west of Hebron. It was clear that the boys had been abducted and the kidnapping car had been set on fire, while the terrorists and their captives had moved to another vehicle.

  An unprecedented search was launched throughout the West Bank. Soon, reliable field agents reported that the boys had been abducted by Hamas terrorists; the IDF started arresting notorious Hamas militants throughout the West Bank. Thousands of Israeli soldiers were dispatched to towns, villages, fields, orchards and other areas where the captives might have been hidden or buried.

  The entire nation followed with bated breath the search for the missing. The IDF mission was named Shuvu Achim—“Come back, brothers.” The three distraught mothers pleaded on radio and TV with the kidnappers to release their sons. They even traveled to a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, a notorious anti-Israeli body, whose members listened in frosty silence to the mothers’ passionate pleas. The nerve-wracking search continued for eighteen days. IDF intelligence experts discovered the identities of the kidnappers, two Hamas militants. Caves were penetrated, wells and septic tanks drained, houses inspected, hundreds of Hamas militants arrested and interrogated.

  The boys were finally found in a shallow grave in a rocky, sun-parched field just north of Hebron. Israel was devastated by the cruel, senseless murder of the three innocent boys. Three Israeli right-wingers, motivated by insane lust for revenge, kidnapped and savagely murdered a sixteen-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammed Abu Khdeir. Even though the police found out and arrested the murderers, the rage in the Palestinian community was immense. Many Palestinians had danced in the streets when they had learned that three Israeli boys had been assassinated, but now they sought revenge for the death of one of their own. The worst—and most unexpected—reaction came from the Gaza Strip. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad started shelling the civilian Israeli settlements and towns with scores of deadly rockets. Prime Minister Netanyahu didn’t want to confront Hamas again in a new round of senseless fighting. He publicly declared that “quiet will be answered by quiet.” But the nice words didn’t work. The attacks from the Gaza Strip only increased. The IDF first reacted by precise bombings of strategic targets in Gaza, while repeating its calls for a cease-fire. But Hamas would not stop. Israel, left with no choice, concentrated large masses of soldiers and armor by the border. Yet the army didn’t cross the border fence into Gaza. Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yaalon and Chief of Staff Gantz willingly accepted a cease-fire proposed by Egypt, but Hamas rejected it outright.