The Land of the Cedars

In the coming months a number of unprecedented changes are about to take place in the high command posts of Israel's defence and security branches. Reports of these impending changes have usually related to each one individually without evaluating their accumulative effect. The fact that within a few months the IDF's chief of general staff, the commander of Israel's navy and the heads of the intelligence branches will all be pensioned off is definitely cause for concern.

Jane's Defence Weekly's correspondent Yaakov Katz examined this unique situation in a special analysis he compiled recently. Quoting an anonymous senior IDF source Katz said the negative effect of so many personnel changes could have been avoided if their end of tenure dates had been more staggered. Just the same there is a positive side to the reshuffling process that comes in the wake of command post changes. Retiring the top brass tends to infuse new ideas and fresh thinking especially in agencies like the Mossad whose director Meir Dagan has just completed eight years service. .

In addition to Dagan the IDF chief of general staff Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, Vice-Admiral Marom, the director of Military Intelligence Major General Amos Yadlin and the head of the General Security Services (also referred to as the Shin Bet), Yuval Diskin will be concluding their respective tenures..

All will leave with well earned recommendations and will have no difficulty in finding gainful employment. I'll hazard a guess and say that some of them will spend their declining years writing their memoirs.

Despite the infamous Goldstone Committee Report Gabi Ashkenazi will leave his post with many achievements to his credit. In fact an added feather in his cap is the strong relationship he forged with the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen. Some military observers claim that his relationship with Minister of Defence Barak could have been better. However, the decision not to extend Ashenazi's tenure was mainly a principle consideration. In the past only one chief of general staff served more than the mandatory four year tenure.

The intelligence branches don't always see eye to eye. This is not peculiar to Israel. Some of the differences of opinion have been attributed to professional rivalry especially at the top echelon of some of the branches. A case in point is the difference of opinion between the Mossad and MI (the military intelligence branch). Mossad director Meir Dagan opposes promoting peace talks with Syria whereas the director of military intelligence Amos Yadlin, who is also the government's intelligence advisor, has publicly supported the concept of opening the Syrian track, mainly for the purpose of weakening the Damascus – Teheran axis.

The IDF team, headed by Major-General (res.) Giora Eiland that investigated the boarding of the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, published its report recently. For some reason official investigations, boards of inquiry, special committees and other probing bodies are expected to deliver clear conclusions and sever a few heads. Well the Eiland Report didn't single out even a "sentry on guard at the gate" for censure. "The Sentry Syndrome", now a firmly established Hebrew colloquialism was coined after the ignominious "Night of the hang gliders." Following an attack on an IDF camp in Upper Galilee carried out in November 1987 by Ahmed Jibril's (PFLP-GC), an IDF board of inquiry blamed the sentry on duty at the time of the attack. He was charged and sentenced to six months in prison. Only following public pressure did Chief of Staff Dan Shomron decide to take further proceedings and transfer the brigade operations officer from his position. Hence the phrase "The sentry syndrome" (Tismonet HaShin-Gimel), meaning that a system is trying to shake off responsibility for a failure by putting all the blame on the lowest possible rank.

In the case of the Eiland Committee its mandate didn't include conclusions involving personnel it was entrusted with the task of examining the overall functioning of the units involved in the operation

It did however point to mishaps in the various intelligence channels involved in planning and executing the raid, and a failure to integrate Navy intelligence information, research, and other intelligence sources.

Eiland said he found no evidence of negligence in the planning and implementation of the operation.

He also made it clear that there was a difference between “operational failures

” and “operational mistakes” and that he had only found mistakes, not failures.

“There were mistakes, also at the high command level, but happily, they were not the result of negligence,” Eiland said.
Amos Harel, military correspondent and defence analyst for Haaretz commented on the report as follows "Eiland's decision not to make recommendations about individuals may be right. Does every probe have to end with rolling heads? In any case, the head of the navy, Maj. Gen. Eliezer Marom, is ending his term soon. An impressive career should not be stained by a single incident."

Heads will be rolling in Lebanon soon. These are troubled times in the Land of the Cedars. The Alfa espionage scandal continues to shock the country.

The Lebanese government plans to file an official complaint against Israel with the United Nations Security Council over the extensive spy ring it claims to have uncovered in the last year.

Lebanon began a wave of arrests in April 2009 as part of an investigation in which dozens of people have been arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel. A retired brigadier general of the General Security Directorate was among the detainees. More than twenty people have been formally charged.

The Lebanese complaint to the United Nation's Security Council will centre on Israel's alleged covert ties in the country's state-owned mobile telecom company Alfa.

Some of the people accused are said to have planted monitoring devices allowing Israeli tracking stations to tap directly into the Alfa network, one of the two major cell phone companies operating in Lebanon,

Yet despite all efforts by the Lebanese security services to dismantle the Israeli spy networks the uncovering of additional networks indicates that what has been discovered so far could be no more than the tip of the iceberg.

Reports of the espionage network in the Israeli news media have based their comments on Lebanese and Arab sources.

Lebanese commentators claim that the uncovering of the espionage network is one of Israel's worst ever intelligence setbacks.

So far no Israeli politician or spokesperson has bothered to confirm or deny the allegations.

My personal unqualified opinion, based on a few newspaper articles and an unreliable gut-feeling, is that the Lebanese have good cause to be angry.

None of the suspects have been tried but the political leadership has already sealed their fate.

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah has called for the death sentence for the alleged spies and , praised President Michel Sleiman who expressed readiness to sign any death sentence verdict. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt also jumped on the bandwagon. So it’s reasonable to expect that a few heads will roll (necks will be stretched or whatever).

The Financial Times had a look at another cause for anxiety in Lebanon.

In an article dealing with the Rafik al-Hariri Tribunal findings the author forecasted a bleak outcome. “Lebanon Closer to Crisis Over Tribunal” declared the paper, “Lebanon is braced for another political crisis as the Special Tribunal for Lebanon appears to be heading towards indicting Hezbollah.
The alleged involvement of undisciplined Hezbollah members in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's assassination is a perilous outcome for the country: the movement is now part of the coalition government led by Saad Hariri, the prime minister and son of the dead leader," the newspaper said.

"The tribunal apparently reached a conclusion that is the worse-case scenario, so at a minimum this is likely to cause a major government crisis," says Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut. "The government would be cooperating with an institution which others (Hezbollah) say is an Israeli agency."

The Financial Times quoted analysts as saying that Hezbollah, whose military organization is more powerful than the Lebanese army, will not hand over any suspects. Nor will the government be in a position to arrest anyone.

Many Arab affaires commentators in Israel devoted particular attention to the as yet unpublished findings of the Rafik al-Hariri Tribunal . I’ve singled one comment that appeared in Haaretz. “The findings of the international tribunal's prosecutor could mark the end of the coalition between Premier Saad Hariri and Hezbollah and would make it difficult for the Shiite party to maintain its close alliance with Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement.”

Haaretz believes the tribunal findings which would reportedly be released in September are liable to threaten Lebanon with a grave political crisis.

"But these are not Hezbollah’s only troubles. Recently, there has been increasing internal Lebanese criticism of the Shiite organization's growing influence in the country and its military activities south of the Litani River, which not only violate U.N. Resolution 1701 but also threaten to embroil Lebanon in another war with Israel."

Some analysts argue that even in the worst case scenario materialises and Hezbollah is directly implicated in the Hariri assassination its coalition partners, Saad Hariri among them will prefer to forgo the due process of law, possibly defer it indefinitely.

The Land of the Cedars is truly troubled.

Have a good weekend.

Beni 29^th of July, 2010.