The one thing Israel could do to avoid another Gaza war
For the first time, an official Israeli report links the suffering in the Gaza Strip caused by the blockade and the firing of rockets into Israel.
The report by State Comptroller Joseph Shapira on Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip has not yet been published, but the initial draft, received by some 40 top defense and political figures, has already stirred up a storm. Reactions by associates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who pounced on the report and on the comptroller with sharp and irrelevant comments, only reinforced the troubling feelings about the summer 2014 military campaign, which the Israeli public never perceived as a great military success to begin with. Now comes the draft report, which lambasts the political and military echelons for alleged negligence and infuriating irresponsibility.
In a May 9 Al-Monitor article, Ben Caspit described the “war of generals” expected to erupt after the release of the final report. The most significant point in the comptroller’s report is his assessment that putting aside the flawed conduct of the operation and attendant decision-making, the war in Gaza could have been avoided. If the Israeli political echelon had not been shackled by outdated conceptions and basic lack of understanding regarding the significance of the Gaza blockade and its inherent dangers, many lives would have probably been spared. Senior Israeli officials who received the draft — which they described as more severe than the findings of the Winograd Commission that investigated the shortcomings of Israel’s 2006 Lebanon War — said that one of the report’s chapters deals with what Israel could have done to avert the clash.
