Captives Of
A Concept
The Sharon Plan
Mark Silverberg
Governments and armies must forever be
concerned to avoid the element of surprise, yet history is full of their
failures to do so. If the victims survive, the lessons they learn may prevent a
recurrence, but the lessons are often misunderstood, misapplied, or simply
irrelevant. In a chilling premonition of what was to come, Ambassador Richard
Parker wrote just days before the 9/11 tragedies:
We must never become victims of our own myths and see our
opponents through a distorting, ethnocentric lens. We would do better...if we
educated our policymakers and military leaders more thoroughly to be wary of
simple answers and to be more alert to the diverse character of the world’s
peoples and the...complexities of their problems.1
Ambassador Parker’s caution was clear – if
nations become victims of their own myths (and act upon those myths – or fail to
act because of them), they expose their people to mortal danger. That is,
governments must see their enemies as they are, not as they wish them to be.
A paradigm is a set of beliefs, perceptions
or a framework within which facts are considered (or not considered) and upon
which assessments are based. The ruling paradigm propels everything from
developing needs assessments, to how to position armies for battle, to decisions
on whether to create an integrated intelligence infrastructure to deal with
perceived threats. If the security paradigm is wrong, if its assumptions are
incorrect or redundant, so then are the assessments, the rules, the regulations
and the procedures that are based upon it.
In the medieval period, the ruling paradigm
held that the world was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth. Any
evidence to the contrary was deemed heretical – facts be damned, and those who
argued the point through mathematical and scientific logic were excommunicated
(if they were lucky) or burned at the stake (if they were not).
Furthermore, because mental disorders were
not fully understood, people were burned at the stake as witches based upon the
ruling paradigm that they must have been possessed by the devil and fire was the
only way to exorcise the evil.
To the Islamic fundamentalist, the ruling
paradigm provides that there is only one true religion (Islam) and only one true
interpretation of the will of Allah as set down in the Qur`an (theirs). All
others are heresy and, more often than not, punishable by death.
In the case of 9/11, the ruling paradigm
provided that the hijacking and intentional crashing of commercial passenger
aircraft into buildings was highly improbable despite intelligence warnings
suggesting otherwise. Besides (so the paradigm went), the oceans that
historically separated America from its enemies and its “technological edge”
have always (and would continue to) keep America safe – or so it thought.
Consequently, intelligence information pouring into America (especially from
Israeli and German sources) in the years, months, weeks and even days prior the
disasters were recorded, noted and filed, but given little or no priority until
virtually the last moment. Terrorist watch lists were neither shared nor
integrated. A culture of secrecy prevailed within the intelligence community. In
several cases, FBI field agents who presented documented concerns about
suspected terrorists (in Minneapolis and Phoenix in particular) were ignored
and, some were even reprimanded for wasting time and pursuing false leads. Even
the laws governing the exchange of criminal and intelligence information between
the FBI and the CIA inhibited the ability of the American security and
intelligence community to conduct proper threat assessments.
Prior to the tragedies of 9/11, the
American security and intelligence communities had become captives of a concept.
It was much more than a mistake. It was a fundamentally flawed security paradigm
that prevented them from making proper risk assessments of the danger that
threatened (and continues to threaten) America. And because the risk was low on
the priority list, it was not significant enough to expend the necessary human
and financial capital to deal with it.
The 20th century is replete with such
errors including the failure of Stalin to anticipate Operation Barbarossa
(the Nazi invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941) because, as he stated, he had
“shaken hands with the man” (despite 84 warnings of a pending invasion from his
generals in the field); the failure of American intelligence to anticipate the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 (despite a wealth of
information suggesting that such an attack was imminent)2;
the exceptionally high murder rate of Dutch Jewry during the Holocaust (102,000
of 140,000 Dutch Jews perished) due to the inability of Dutch Jewish leadership
to recognize the true threat posed by Nazi Germany3;
the Israeli failure to recognize the imminence of war until the morning of
October 6, 1973; the American “blind spot” (when it came to understanding the
concept of “martyrdom” in Arab Muslim culture) that showed itself on October 23,
1983 when a truck laden with the equivalent of more than 12,000 pounds of TNT
crashed into the Marine headquarters building at Beirut International Airport,
killing 241 US military personnel (despite prior suicide bombings on its Beirut
Embassy and numerous warnings that another major suicide attack was being
planned against American targets)4; the
almost universal misreading by international intelligence agencies of Saddam
Hussein’s true and stated intentions and actions toward Kuwait in 1990; and, as
noted, the intelligence failures and irresponsibility bordering on negligence
leading up to the tragedies of September 11, 2001.
These intelligence failures were similar in
one major respect. Where the facts conflicted with the accepted security
paradigm (or what historians refer to as the “concept”), the threat was either
minimized or dismissed and the nation was left exposed to catastrophe.
The Sharon “Concept”
It is arguable that Prime Minister Sharon
is operating on the basis of his own “concept” of Palestinian reality – that he
will make Israel safer by requiring Israel to disengage itself from all contact
with the Palestinians; that he can win the hearts and minds of the Palestinians
and support Mahmoud Abbas’ stature among his own people by “jump-starting” the
Roadmap to Peace; by releasing hundreds of unrepentant terrorists from prison;
by handing over West Bank towns to Palestinian security control, by evacuating
Gaza, by dismantling the military infrastructures in Gaza and the northern West
Bank, by supporting the incorporation of terrorists into the new Palestinian
Security Services, and by allowing the infusion of millions of dollars in
foreign aid into the Palestinian civil and economic infrastructure despite the
fact that the last time the world showered the Palestinian Authority with
billions of dollars what ensued was not peace and prosperity, but a bloody
conflict, a 150,000-man corrupt bureaucracy, and a 50,000-strong army that
refuses to stop the terror and dismantle its 12 secret services.
If these actions are the product of Prime
Minister Sharon’s security paradigm, there is a very distinct possibility that
the paradigm is fundamentally flawed, if only because the facts on the ground
suggest a far different, more deadly threat.
Considering...all the agreements made and
broken by the Palestinian leadership since the Oslo Accords; the peace
initiatives and ceasefires derailed by Palestinian terrorism for the past
four-and-a-half
years; withdrawing from Gaza unilaterally while receiving nothing of substance
in return from the Palestinians; recent intelligence reports stating that
Palestinian terrorist organizations are planting explosives throughout Gaza in
preparation for renewed hostilities; that Abu Mazen has secretly applied to more
than 20 world governments with urgent requests for large quantities of heavy
weapons (in contravention of every international accord the Palestinians have
ever signed with Israel and every pledge Abbas has made to the Bush
administration and other world leaders)5;
that Abbas has lifted the suspension order of March 3 on the execution of
several condemned Palestinians, half of whom were sentenced to death for
“collaborating” with Israel; repeated warnings by military intelligence that
Hamas is continuing to smuggle weapons (rockets, mortar shells, and Kassam
rockets) through the tunnel-ridden Philadelphi Corridor that connects Gaza with
Egypt. (This is especially disconcerting since Israeli intelligence believes
Egyptian President Mubarak is quietly helping Hamas and Palestinian Islamic
Jihad to spread their influence in the area.) The secret plans (revealed by
Israeli intelligence) of Hamas and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to relocate the
entire Damascus terrorist infrastructure from Syria to the Gaza Strip and from
there to the West Bank in the event of a civil war in Lebanon; the release of
hundreds of Palestinian terrorists (despite the experience of the May 1985
“Jibril deal” prisoner release where 114 of 238 released back into the West Bank
and Gaza resumed their terrorist activities),6
that suicide bombers are continuing to try (and, on February 25, 2005 succeeded)
to penetrate Israeli security even as the ceasefire continues; Mahmoud Abbas’
declared intention to incorporate known terrorists into his new Palestinian
Security Force (despite evidence suggesting that Hamas continues to seek
political cover for its military movements and remains committed to the
destruction of Israel either by the ballot or by the bullet); Israel’s concession to stop pursuing Palestinian
terrorists and further allowing them to carry weapons in the face of the Roadmap
to Peace (which calls for terrorists to be disarmed);
Abbas’ declared
insistence on demanding a “right of return” of Palestinians to Israel proper;
his unwillingness to dismantle the Palestinian terror infrastructure, choosing
instead “an accommodation” with the terrorists; the control exercised by
Hizbullah operatives over Palestinian terror cells and Hizbullah’s stated
intention to torpedo the ceasefire at a time and place of its choosing; the
decisive victory of Hamas over the Palestinian Authority in January’s Gaza
municipal elections (despite Abbas’ support for the Sharon Plan, and Sharon’s
support for Abbas); the “culture of death” that continues to permeate all
aspects of Palestinian society (2/3 of Palestinians still see terror as an
effective weapon); that dozens of Palestinians accused of collaborating with
Israel have been and continue to be summarily executed by militants; the
continuing Palestinian belief that the Gaza withdrawal represents an Israeli
“retreat” in the face of violence – suggesting to the terrorists that violence,
as a tactical weapon, pays;* and the speeches (given in Arabic) by Palestinian
leaders to the effect that Gaza is but the first stage in the phased elimination
of “the Zionist enemy”...all show reason for concern.
Israeli intelligence and security chiefs
(together with their military commanders and operatives in the field) have
warned the Prime Minister that Gaza and the West Bank will explode in violence
after the Israeli withdrawal and that Israeli cities will come under withering
fire from Islamic terrorists who are regrouping and rearming in the south and
the east. They suspect that if Mahmoud Abbas attempts to eradicate the
Palestinian terror network, he will likely be assassinated, and Israel will be
confronted with an even more deadly Islamic enemy – rearmed and rejuvenated by
hundreds of formerly imprisoned terrorists.
Despite this advice and the facts on the
ground, Prime Minister Sharon has made it clear that he will countenance no
dissent to his “concept”. He has sacked both his IDF Chief of Staff, Moshe
Ya`alon and his Shin Bet Security Services Director, Avi Dichter. Dichter had
warned that releasing hundreds of seasoned Palestinian terrorists into the
general Palestinian population would be a major tactical error of monumental
proportions, and Ya`alon warned that a withdrawal from Gaza without Israel or
the Palestinian Authority first destroying the terrorist infrastructure will sow
the seeds of a second Lebanon, and encourage even more deadly attacks after the
terrorists have rearmed and reorganized.
In addition, informed security officials
are urging the Sharon government to suspend its interchanges with the
Palestinian Authority, halt the removal of roadblocks and the hand over of West
Bank towns to Palestinian security control, revert to targeted assassinations
and take military action to prevent the delivery of illicit military hardware
into dangerous terrorist hands.
If Ya`alon and Dichter are correct, it
would not be the first time that an Israeli government has dismissed danger
signals and underestimated the mindset of an enemy based on a flawed security
“concept”. In 1973, Israel knew that it would eventually come into conflict with
Egypt and Syria, yet despite all the evidence on the ground in early October of
that year, Israeli military intelligence steadfastly refused to believe that
that day had actually come. According to a report published in Yediot
Aharonot, over 1,500 warnings of the military buildup reached Israeli
intelligence before October 1973. The progressive steps of preparation for war,
the early warning indicators and strategic warnings were thoroughly reported,
but not acted upon. That is because prior to the Yom Kippur War, Israeli
military intelligence operated on the false concept that the Arabs would never
start a war they knew they could not win. Stubborn adherence to this concept
assumed that Egypt would not go to war against Israel until it was able to
destroy Israel’s major military airfields in order to paralyze her air force and
Syria would not launch a major offensive against Israel except simultaneously
with Egypt.
While Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, Chief
of Staff David Elazar and Mossad Chief Zvi Zamir were completely convinced that
war was imminent and advised Prime Minister Golda Meir accordingly, Military
Intelligence Chief Eli Zeira, relying upon his own “concept” of Arab intentions,
disagreed. Zeira refused to acknowledge the implication from “the facts on the
ground” that indicated war was imminent. Even when Sadat brought crossing
equipment and tanks close to the Suez Canal, Zeira and his staff still believed
Sadat was bluffing – that it was all part of Egyptian military exercises. As
late as October 3rd, Zeira continued to insist that war was unlikely. Officers
in the field who sent in reports of enemy buildups along the Suez Canal and the
Golan Heights in the weeks and days prior to the commencement of hostilities
were either rebuked or ignored.7 Only
too late did Zeira realize that he had made a terrible misjudgment. The surprise
attacks across the Suez Canal and in the Golan Heights by Egyptian and Syrian
forces in the early morning hours of October 6, 1973 almost led to the
destruction of Israel. The cemeteries of Israel are filled with rows upon rows
of soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice for this false “conception”.
And the 1993 Oslo Accords were no different
in that respect. The Accords were based upon Prime Minister Rabin’s “concept” of
Palestinian intentions. The assumptions were that the PLO was not hostile and
could be a potential peace partner; that Israel could preserve security without
the use of deterrent force; that Israel could end terror by “removing its root
causes”; and that the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel could be
solved through full and honest negotiation.
Based upon this “concept”, Rabin was
convinced that the true existential threat to Israel emanated not from the
Palestinians, but from Iraq (under Saddam Hussein) and the ayatollahs in Iran.
Rabin’s “concept” told him that Arafat was desirous of making peace with Israel
under the right circumstances. “The Palestinians are not our enemies,” he
repeatedly told his Cabinet. But Rabin grossly misjudged Palestinian intentions.
He did not view the Palestinians as an
existential threat as much as a “tactical problem” that could be resolved
between “friends”, provided that Israel was prepared to make “significant
territorial concessions” – the same territorial concessions that Prime Minister
Sharon is now considering as he prepares to “jump start” the Roadmap to Peace
before the Palestinian Authority has destroyed the Gaza and West Bank terrorist
infrastructure. So Rabin bankrolled the Palestinian Authority, trained and armed
the Palestinian police, rehabilitated his enemy from his Tunisian exile, and
believed that he had laid the foundations for a lasting peace with his mortal
foe. His “concept” of Palestinian motives would lead to disaster. Even as Arafat
returned triumphantly to Ramallah, he had already made his preparations for
carrying on the terror war. Despite repeated warnings from Israeli Military
Intelligence officials that a “Lebanon-like situation” was developing in the
territories, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres replied to them – “You are destroying
my peace.”8 In the end, more Israelis
lost their lives in Palestinian terrorist attacks in the first three years
following the Oslo Accords than in the previous decade.
As early as September 8, 1993, five days
before signing the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles (DOP), Arafat
told an Israeli journalist who came to interview him in his Tunis headquarters:
“In the future, Israel and Palestine will be one united state in which Israelis
and Palestinians will live together” – that is, Israel would no longer exist.
Even as he shook Yitzhak Rabin’s hand on the White House lawn under President
Clinton’s outstretched hands, Arafat was assuring the Palestinians in a
pre-recorded Arabic-language message broadcast by Jordanian TV that the DOP was
merely an implementation of the PLO’s June 1974 “Strategy of Phases” (an
approach supported to this day by his successor). The “Strategy” stipulated that
the Palestinians should seize “whatever territory Israel was prepared or
compelled to cede and use it as a springboard for further territorial gains
until achieving the complete liberation of Palestine.”9
As the former Chief Justice of the Israeli
Supreme Court (Moshe Landau) commented in 2000:
I believe that we face adversaries who are
much cleverer than we, adversaries who know that they have to proceed in stages.
As far as they are concerned, things are entirely clear – they don’t want us
here, but in the meantime, they are prepared to make do with whatever they can
get at each stage that moves them closer to their ultimate objective.10
But the strongest indication that Sharon
has fallen captive to a false security concept comes from the Palestinians
themselves. In the wake of the Knesset approval of the Sharon Plan, Nabil
Sha`ath (Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister) expressed his ultimate hope:
“May this be only one step in the liberation of all of Palestine”, and Ahmed al-Bahar,
a top Hamas leader in Gaza left no doubt that the Israeli withdrawal represented
a major and strategic victory for the Palestinians: “The painful and qualitative
blows which the Palestinian resistance dealt to the Jews and their soldiers over
the past four-and-a-half years led to the decision to withdraw from the Gaza
Strip,” he said. “The withdrawal marks the end of the Zionist dream and is a
sign of the moral and psychological decline of the Jewish state.”
Having witnessed the death and destruction
wrought by a society that continues to extol the “martyrdom” of its own
children, that continues to hang posters of “martyred heroes” in its restaurants
and marketplaces, and that continues to preach hatred of the “Zionist enemy” in
its schools, from its pulpits, through its media and throughout its culture, it
is difficult to believe that the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the northern
West Bank (under current geo-political circumstances) will bring forth anything
but further tragedy to the Israeli people.
* Prior to the announcement of the disengagement plan, 75% of the
Palestinian public believed that the intifada had failed, but a few months after
the planned withdrawal was announced, 74% agreed that the plan is “a victory for
the armed struggle”. The initial poll results appeared in October 2003 in the
official PA daily al-Hayat al-Jadida, while the more recent poll was
conducted in September 2004 by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey
Research directed by Khalil Shikaki.
Endnotes
1. |
Ambassador Richard Parker, “Prisoners of a Concept”, Air
University (ATC), September 6, 2001. |
2. |
Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision,
Stanford, CA: Press, 1962. |
3. |
Joel Fishman, “Failure of Perception and Self-Deception”,
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, March 15, 2001. |
4. |
Erik J. Dahl, “Smarter Intelligence”, The Boston Globe,
November 23, 2004. |
5. |
DEBKAfile, “Terrorists
Shatter Phony Calm in Tel Aviv, Shop for Heavy Weapons”, February 26,
2005. |
6. |
Margot Dudkevitch, “Freed Prisoner Killed on Terror
Mission”,
Jerusalem Post Online, February 21, 2005. |
7. |
Major Rodney C. Richardson, “Yom Kippur War: Grand
Deception or Intelligence Blunder”,
www.GlobalSecurity.org, 1991; see also Ambassador Richard B. Parker,
op. cit. and his earlier article in the Air University Review,
January-February, 1981. |
8. |
Joel Fishman, op.cit. |
9. |
Efraim Karsh, “Arafat Lives”, Commentary, January
2005. |
10. |
Justice Moshe Landau,
Ha’aretz Magazine (English Edition), October 6, 2000. |