Kinetic lawfare in Israel helps Hamas

Barbara Opall-Rome:

ISRAEL is deploying a power ful new secret weapon with its frontline forces in Gaza. Problem is, the innovation is going to help Hamas - the enemy in the attrition war raging along the terror-infested southern border.

In one of the biggest absurdities in its ineffective, self-defeating actions in Gaza, Israel is replacing warriors with lawyers.

Hundreds of them, and not only from the government's traditionally obstructionist attorney general's office, but from the active-duty and reserve ranks of the military.

Dozens of these lawyers - usually professional officers ranking from captain to colonel - work every day on planning and managing Israel's counter-terror war.

And they don't only offer legal advice. They're key players in war rooms from the General Staff's underground "pit" in Tel Aviv right down through forward-deployed brigades with the authority to approve targets and even abort operations in progress.

Consider last week.

The Israeli Defense Forces had launched a four-day incursion into northern Gaza aimed at destroying the increasingly lethal, long-range rockets that have rendered life intolerable for the 160,000 citizens unfortunate enough to reside within 12 miles of the border. But the lawyers intervened at least twice in (unintentional) support of the enemy.

First, they forced the IDF's Southern Command to surrender the element of surprise by warning specific apartment blocks of impending attack. Then they ordered a halt to airstrikes once Hamas sent in innocents as human shields in the Israelis' crosshairs.

An IDF officer said no operation is too small to escape legalistic micromanagement: "It's really unbelievable. These guys are monitoring live video feeds from the field and giving the thumbs up or thumbs down to ongoing ops," he said.

No wonder Gazans responded with taunting cheers when Israel recalled its forces on Monday from an operation (codenamed Hot Winter) that failed once again to halt or even much mute rocket launches. A day later, IDF infantry and armored bulldozers returned for another night of destroy and arrest operations, but retreated by daybreak.

After nearly a week of continuous ground warfare, the IDF managed to destroy several caches of homemade Qassam rockets and confiscate rocket-propelled grenades and explosives-rigged cellphones hidden in a mosque. It also killed dozens of terrorists and brought back truckfuls of suspects for Shin Bet interrogation.

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But the self-imposed lawyer-driven handicap that hampered effective warfare didn't spare the IDF from international reproof. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned Israel for using excessive force, while an Amnesty International-led coalition faulted Israel's punitive closure of Gaza for fomenting the worst humanitarian situation there since 1967.

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Will the boomerang experience of Operation Hot Winter deter future frontline IDF use of its attorney brigade? Hardly. Even now, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and top advisers are haggling with lawyers over permission to use artillery to pound the irrepressible, martyr-aspiring militants into submission.

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Israel will never be able to appease the terrorist rights crowd. If it is going to use lawyers it should do so offensively, instead of defensively. It should be pointing out the war crimes of Hamas in firing rockets onto non combatants. Instead they get into a Hamas double game where it is alright to kill Israeli non combatants and also alright to use human shields to protect the war criminals firing the rockets. this is a PR battle the Israelis should win if they were no so defensive.