Too little too late

By Aaron Lerner, Jerusalem Post, 31.5.00

(May 31) - Last year a local weekly reported that a group of youngsters in the Sharon area like to drink on Friday nights and drive the wrong way on the old Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road. The kids saw nothing wrong with their fun since, after all, no one had gotten hurt.

So far.

Unfortunately, the attitude of these thrill-seekers is endemic to Israeli society. We ignore our mistakes until something happens and then appoint yet another commission of inquiry.

Ehud Barak's team is going full throttle with the "not one scratch" theme.

And the IDF certainly deserves credit for taking various measures both before and during the hasty retreat from Lebanon to minimize casualties. Unfortunately, the technical management of the actual retreat of its soldiers (equipment may be another story) from Lebanon may be the only thing Israel did not mismanage in the redeployment.

Had the retreat turned out differently, Israel's decision to transfer control of the Taibeh outpost to the SLA on May 14 would certainly be subject to the close scrutiny of a commission of inquiry today.

Taibeh fell a week later and the die was cast for the rapid collapse of the entire system.

The Taibeh episode resulted from a combination of an over-optimistic appraisal of the SLA's ability to hold the line and a complete failure to anticipate, monitor, or react to a brilliant Hizbullah ploy. Hizbullah took the area under the shield of a human wave of "returning villagers" that easily broke through roadblocks manned by UNIFIL.

While a retreat's success may be judged solely by the immediate lack of casualties, the ultimate test of a redeployment is the quality of the new position.

It is common knowledge that the new line has serious holes in it because Barak, ignoring the repeated pleas from Chief of General Staff Shaul Mofaz and others, declined for the bulk of his first year at the helm to start construction. Now we are dangerously exposed and the director-general of the Defense Ministry said on Sunday that, under the best of conditions, the "critical parts" of the security fence will be completed in two months, the outposts and fortification of civilian settlements "some time in the future."

When a television reporter asked Mofaz after Barak's victory press conference last week if the line is sufficiently secure, he replied that "the IDF will do the best it can under the circumstances" - a standard meaningless response, since the sufficiency of these "circumstances" themselves is the issue.

The holes in the border are an open invitation to the various terrorist groups. Each team can claim to be from an organization no one ever heard of before (Fatah was a master of this ruse) and even claim they did not come from Lebanon. Rather than the swift retaliatory response the Barak model relies on, Israel could quickly find itself engaged in long drawn out debates over who, if anyone, should take the blame.

So the terrorists can continue their campaign to drive the Jews out of Palestine by crossing over and killing Jews in their homes and schools while leaving the arguments over Lebanon's responsibility to the debating societies of world diplomacy.

This is why the line was so important. This is why it was criminal not to build it in time.

Barak also frittered away a year without coming up with anything close to an honorable resolution of the fate of our SLA allies. This Sunday, his team cynically launched a new spin, with Communications Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer blaming the SLA men for failing to look out for themselves after Barak started his withdrawal countdown.

That Israel now sees fit to attack its former ally for failing to save their own skins, when the easiest way to do this would have been by turning against Israel, could have a profound impact on the viability of any future relations with potential allies.

One can either learn from one's mistakes or repeat them. So far it appears that Ehud Barak is determined to ignore them.

I fear that, bolstered by his good luck, Barak may repeat the same errors on other fronts. And we will pay dearly.

One of the key precepts of Judaism is not to rely on miracles. Our challenge is to get the message through that the policies of the future cannot rely on a repetition of the miracles of the past. Otherwise one day that oncoming car may just hit us.

The writer is director of Independent Media Review & Analysis.