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IDF Gen. Gershon Hacohen: Prepare for an Enemy Who Will Come by Surprise

(Tablet) Armin Rosen - In 2000, when Maj.-Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen was head of the IDF general staff's training and doctrine division, he was asked to produce a paper about how Israel could defend itself without control of the Jordan Valley, which was to be ceded to a future Palestinian state under proposed peace plans. "My paper was very short," he recalled. "It is like asking an F-15 pilot to just rise up without an engine. No way." Hacohen, now 69, claimed to me that he was the only active-duty general to accurately warn about the likely security consequences of the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, an operation he was then put in charge of. In a war game in April 2005, four months before the withdrawal, the IDF general staff simulated a scenario in which terrorists in Gaza launched rockets at Ashdod, Sderot, and Ashkelon. Hacohen said in the midst of the exercise that "we don't have a full way to retaliate because we will not be allowed to cross the border every week, we will not be allowed to launch artillery at a refugee camp of 50,000 residents, we will kill uninvolved people...therefore tell [Prime Minister Ariel Sharon] what will happen will be a disaster, and we will not have a good way for retaliation." He said Gen. Rafael Eitan would "emphasize that the enemy is coming by surprise: Everything could happen at the very definite wrong moment, unexpectedly. The basic principle of defense is that you are not dependent in the field upon an alert. It is a part of the military profession as commander to keep the ritual of readiness."
2024-02-29 00:00:00
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