Israeli Army, Politicians Trade Blame on Pullout

Politicians and soldiers in Israel turned on each other Wednesday in a war of words over who was to blame for the army’s hasty withdrawal from newly reoccupied Palestinian land--an about-face that many here said made the country appear confused and too easily swayed by U.S. opinion.

Israeli troops on Tuesday seized a sliver of the Gaza Strip ceded to the Palestinians seven years ago. But scant hours after military commanders determined to halt Palestinian mortar fire announced that they would remain in the area indefinitely, they withdrew after a stern rebuke from Washington.

Embarrassed Israeli officials Wednesday insisted that U.S. pressure had nothing to do with the decision to abandon the Gaza area, saying they had meant all along to withdraw Tuesday night. But that seemed to be news to the field commanders, not to mention Palestinian residents of the Gazan town of Beit Hanoun who watched the Israeli tanks and bulldozers digging in well past dusk Tuesday.

And despite the denials, the strong American reaction may stand as a warning to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to think twice before launching another such ambitious operation against Palestinian territory.

In a rare public show of discord, the politicians and army commanders offered contradictory accounts and traded charges Wednesday about who ordered what when. Radio talk shows and newspaper columns were full of debate, with many anonymous army officers questioning why the government issued such abrupt withdrawal orders. The official version of events seemed to evolve as the day wore on.

“What happened here is that Ariel Sharon fled from the Gaza Strip for fear of the Americans, and now they want to dump it on the army,” said leftist opposition lawmaker Ran Cohen.

From the right wing: This was a capitulation to the White House, claimed National Religious Party leader Shaul Yahalom. “It is clear to everyone that on the eve of our Independence Day, Israel is not independent!” he declared.

And Foreign Minister Shimon Peres telephoned his American counterpart, Colin L. Powell, to explain that a “breakdown in communication” led to the confusion.

Mixed Messages From Israelis to the U.S.

In fact, according to an American account, alarmed U.S. officials were being assured all Tuesday by the Sharon government that Israel would withdraw quickly from the 2-square-mile wedge of Gaza that had been reoccupied. At the same time, the army was telling U.S. officials that it had received no orders to do so during the day or even by nightfall.

Israeli Ambassador David Ivri in Washington spent much of Tuesday attempting to head off what he sensed would be a censure from the Bush administration. He failed, and the administration tendered its most explicit criticism of the Jewish state to date.

While Ivri worked Washington, the commander in charge of the Gaza incursion, Brig. Gen. Yair Naveh, announced at a late-afternoon news conference that his troops would remain in the reoccupied area as long as needed--”days, weeks, months.” His statement set off alarm bells from Jerusalem to Washington and thrust him into the center of Wednesday’s squabbles.

Once the pullout was completed, the prime minister’s office took the unusual step Wednesday of openly contradicting a senior officer, saying that Naveh had exceeded his authority.

Later, a different explanation was offered by the government: Naveh simply had been misunderstood; he had meant to indicate that his soldiers would be willing to stay for days, weeks or months.

Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told state radio that he doubted Naveh meant any harm. “He meant to say, ‘Friends, our message should be clear that there is a limit to our patience.’ Naveh is an excellent commander, and I certainly do not intend to blame him for all this.”

And another version surfaced. The army floated a statement saying that while the government ordered the withdrawal earlier Tuesday, the army’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, asked that the pullout be delayed until nightfall to avoid having to retreat under Palestinian fire.

But military officers, incensed that Naveh was being “hung out to dry” and the army made a scapegoat, told Israeli radio that the Gaza mission was launched with full understanding that forces would remain until the goals--including the halting of Palestinian mortar attacks on Israel--were achieved. By all accounts, such a mission would take days at the least.

Israeli television referred to the withdrawal as a “zigzag,” a needling reference to the legendary vacillations of Sharon’s predecessor, Ehud Barak. The hard-liner Sharon won election with promises to be firm and make Barak’s hesitations and reversals a thing of the past.

However, another possible explanation for the hasty retreat was that Sharon did intend to occupy the Beit Hanoun area for a longer period and was stung by the American reaction. Washington had not criticized Sharon very harshly until that point, even as he steadily escalated retaliation against an also-escalating Palestinian assault.

“I think the army thought it had carte blanche,” said one diplomatic source. “I don’t think the government thought about what the actual occupation of Area A [which designates Palestinian-ruled territory] would mean for them politically, and not just with the Americans, either.”

Sharon just last week upbraided his generals for failing to do enough to crush the nearly 7-month-old Palestinian uprising, in which more than 450 people have died. More action, less talk--that was the message clearly delivered.

Sharon cut short an emergency Cabinet meeting Wednesday afternoon to speak by phone with President Bush and Powell and offer explanations.

Agreement That ‘a Line Had Been Crossed’

The seizing of Gaza land itself did not inspire much Israeli criticism. To the contrary, Israelis seemed in broad agreement that “a line had been crossed” when Palestinians began directing wildly inaccurate mortar fire at Israeli villages. It was the withdrawal that had everyone up in arms.

“The [army] went into Beit Hanoun, cleaned up the area from where mortar shells had been fired, demolished buildings and uprooted orchards,” Alex Fishman, military affairs analyst for Israel’s largest newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, wrote Wednesday. “A day later was the best time to tell the army commanders: Get out. It is lucky for us that the Americans do our thinking for us.”

No sooner had the withdrawal from the Beit Hanoun area been completed than Palestinians launched another barrage of mortars Wednesday morning at Israeli targets in Gaza. Wednesday night, more mortars slammed into a kibbutz and town in Israel, as well as Jewish settlements in Gaza. Israeli forces briefly reoccupied the southern tier of the Gaza Strip, demolishing a police station and at least one home.

Loud explosions reverberated near the southern and northern ends of Jerusalem as Israeli forces battled Palestinians in the West Bank near Ramallah and in Bethlehem and several villages.