Lack of Intelligence Enables First Armored Terror Attack on Regular Army

DEBKAfile - Lack of Intelligence Enables First Armored Terror Attack on Regular Army: "Israel’s policy-makers and therefore its war planners have never charted a clear policy for dealing with the Palestinian fundamentalist Hamas. Furthermore, the government through second and third-hand intermediaries – Egypt, Qatar, European - is talking to Hamas. Then, too, parts of the government led by defense minister Ehud Barak and chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi, are resistant to any effective military action against the Palestinian terrorists in Gaza. Israel’s war planners are therefore left high and dry without a clear strategy for coping with Hamas and its offensives.

Months of marking time in this way have had a dampening effect on the armed forces and its morale; field intelligence cannot tell on which targets to focus and gather data, while the field officers are at sea about their missions.

The unrealistic assumption that intelligence is omnipotent lost credence two years ago in the 2006 war against Hizballah in Lebanon. It became clear then that for good intelligence to work, it needs direction from the policy-makers and high command pointing to the desired strategic targets. Lacking such direction, intelligence gatherers have no clear objectives.

To take a concrete example, if prime minister Ehud Olmert were to issue a national directive for all intelligence and security branches to concentrate their efforts on locating the place where Hamas is holding their hostage, Gilead Shalit, this information would become available. But this directive has never been issued.

This widening gap, which separates the government and the military high command from the Southern Command and field units, is exploited by Hamas to hatch its war plans in total hush. The fact is that the Palestinian terrorists managed to get away with planting two explosive jeeps and armored personnel carries on the Israel side of the border Saturday, without incurring the correct IDF retaliation of hitting the bases where the lethal vehicles were rigged."