AL QUDS: Israel's army is going through its worst image crisis in decades, with generals quitting over the Lebanon war and hand-wringing over an offensive in Gaza after artillery shelling killed 19 Palestinian civilians.
A poll this month showed more than half of Israelis feel the army provides only minimal or mediocre security. Half the respondents doubted the credibility of a military long held in the highest esteem by most citizens of the Jewish state.
The survey, by an institute headed by a prominent reservist general, contradicted past findings of wide public support for the army, in which most men and many women over 18 serve. Experts point to a steady erosion of the unqualified backing for the army that most Israelis used to show and signs that some even think twice about doing compulsory service.
“If you look across the board you can see that the army has become far more vulnerable to criticism and far less sacrosanct than was once the case,” said Stuart Cohen, a military analyst at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv.
“Public deference for the military, respect and enthusiasm have been on the decline,” a process that has peaked since Israel's failure to crush Hezbollah guerrillas in a 34-day war in Lebanon in July and August, Cohen said.
Experts say military recruitment has begun to decline in recent years, with the army exempting unprecedented numbers of teens from service for religious or health reasons. The army doesn't release troop figures.
“There's a fundamental frustration with the army,” said Michael Oren, author of a book on the 1967 Middle East War, when Israel defeated the combined Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq in six days.
It all ties in to a feeling that the military, although the most powerful in the Middle East, has lost its way in efforts to confront militants in the Palestinian territories and most recently the Hezbollah guerrilla group in Lebanon.
Public criticism and protests forced Major-General Udi Adam, who headed Israel's northern front against Hezbollah, to quit a month after the war ended with a truce in mid-August.
Brigadier-General Gal Hirsch, a division commander in charge of troops on the Lebanese border, stepped down this week.
Hirsch quit as an army probe was released that showed the capture of two soldiers by Hezbollah on July 12 could have been prevented. That incident sparked the war, in which some 1,200 Lebanese and 157 Israelis, most of them troops, died.
Many in Israel view the resignations as the start of what might become the most dramatic military shake-up since the ouster of two top generals after a 1973 Middle East War, when Israel was surprised by invading Arab armies.
Internal army bickering over the resignations has ignited a revolt by reservists against the handling of the war. Newspaper commentators have demanded the military chief, Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz, also quit.
Halutz has admitted the army made mistakes during the war but has vowed to draw lessons and has rejected calls to resign.
“I don't remember a situation since the Yom Kippur (1973) War when the Israeli army was in such despair” and beset by such a lack of confidence in its top generals, said Reuven Pedhatzur, a military analyst for the left-leaning Haaretz daily.
Major-General Eyal Ben-Reuven, who served in the recent war, told Israeli newspapers the army was “in worse crisis” than in 1973 because officers were now also turning against each other and that Hirsch had been forced out by his own military peers.The storm has overshadowed another embarrassing blow to the army -- the shelling of homes in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun last week that killed 19 Palestinian civilians, including women and children as they slept.
Israel apologised for the deaths and said it was due to a technical failure, but defended the use of artillery to target militants who fire rockets at Israeli towns from Gaza. Israel withdrew from Gaza last year after 38 years of occupation.
The shelling was a reminder of an air raid on the Lebanese village of Qana on July 30 that killed 27 civilians. Israelis have said that was the turning point in international support for the offensive against Hezbollah.
“We have that intolerable feeling that we've already seen this movie before, yet we don't seem to have learned anything,”
Israeli journalist Yuval Albashan wrote in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
Oren says some of the anger is directed against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert particularly by some Israelis who feel the army could take tougher measures against Palestinians. Others feel the military inflicts too many civilian casualties.
But military officials have also borne the brunt of some criticism.
Thousands of reservists, the backbone of Israel's army, held protests complaining of supply shortages, a lack of training and confusion on the frontlines during the Lebanon war.
“If Israel doesn't address some of the shortcomings exposed in the war last summer, the next time a crisis like that comes up much of the army simply won't show up,” Oren said.
“I can envisage a situation where the government will throw a war and nobody will come.”—Reuters
