Israel Matzav

OMG: Livni refers to Hamas tunnels (until Thursday) as 'problem that has not yet taken place'

You can't make this stuff up. Justice Minister and perpetual peace processor Tzipi Livni is wondering why the IDF would destroy Hamas' tunnel network when it hasn't been used yet!

Let's go to the videotape.



Aaron Lerner comments:

This recording helps to provide a very important understanding as to how the very top of Israel's leadership analyzes situations and makes policy decisions.

Here is the guiding principle: "there is a difference between a problem that still hasn't taken place..."

To be clear: The decision makers in the Government of Israel can know that the enemy has developed a strategic capability (and in the case of the tunnels there can even be past experience in the use of tunnels against Israel), but the Government of Israel is only compelled to act against this strategic capability when the enemy uses it in a high profile operation.

At the time of this writing (Sunday morning) the IDF just discovered a major tunnel reaching inside Israel to Kibbutz Netiv Haasarah. If Hamas had accepted the ceasefire last week, that tunnel and the many others now being discovered would still be intact - waiting for use at a time that most serves the program of the enemy.

This revelation by Minister Livni should serve as a warning regarding the policy making process inside Israel.

It appears to be an approach that enables policymakers to make decisions that can ignore all the facts, all the dangers, all the threats - as long as they have not yet actually take place.

Oslo, retreat from the Gaza Strip and Philadelphi Corridor, "quiet for quiet", as well as the many initiatives to trade the Golan for a piece of paper that only failed because of an uncooperative Assad, are all illustrations of how policymakers had reasonably accurate technical information about security ramifications but chose to downgrade or ignore the information since the technically possible scenarios had yet to play out.

As has been often said: our enemies tend to save us from our incompetence.

We have learned nothing since our failure to heed warnings of the Yom Kippur war's appreach.

And by the way, Gilad Shalit was kidnapped by Hamas using a tunnel. 

Livni is a moron. And unfortunately, it seems that most of the 'security cabinet' thinks like her.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Gaza, Gilad Shalit, Hamas, IDF, Operation Protective Edge, terror tunnels, Tzipi Livni

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:53 PM