The cease-fire announced Tuesday between Israel and Palestinian factions
— if it holds — will end seven weeks of fighting that killed more than
2,200 Gazans and 69 Israelis. But as the rival camps seek to put their
spin on the outcome, one assessment of Israel’s Gaza operation that
won’t be publicized is the U.S. military’s. Though the Pentagon shies
from publicly expressing judgments that might fall afoul of a decidedly
pro-Israel Congress, senior U.S. military sources speaking on condition
of anonymity offered scathing assessments of Israeli tactics,
particularly in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City.
One of the more curious moments in Israel’s Operation Protective Edge
came on July 20, when a live microphone at Fox News caught U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry commenting sarcastically on Israel’s
military action. “It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation,” Kerry said.
“It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation.”
Rain of high-explosive shells
Kerry’s comment followed the heaviest bombardment of the war to that
point, as Israeli artillery rained thousands of high-explosive shells on
Shujaiya, a residential area on the eastern edge of Gaza City. A
high-ranking U.S. military officer said that the source of Kerry’s
apparent consternation was almost certainly a Pentagon summary report
assessing the Israeli barrage on which he had been briefed by an aide
moments earlier.
According to this senior U.S. officer, who had access to the July 21
Pentagon summary of the previous 24 hours of Israeli operations, the
internal report showed that 11 Israeli artillery battalions — a minimum
of 258 artillery pieces, according to the officer’s estimate — pumped at
least 7,000 high explosive shells into the Gaza neighborhood, which
included a barrage of some 4,800 shells during a seven-hour period at
the height of the operation. Senior U.S. officers were stunned by the
report.
Twice daily throughout the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) operation, a
select group of senior U.S. military and intelligence officers at the
Pentagon received lengthy written summaries of Israeli military action
in Gaza. The reports — compiled from information gleaned from open
sources, Israeli military officers with whom U.S. officials speak and
satellite images — offered a detailed assessment of Israel’s battlefield
tactics and the performance of its weaponry, a considerable portion of
it supplied by the United States.
Although these reports shy from offering political judgments on the
operation, a number of senior U.S. military officers who spoke about the
contents of those daily reports were highly critical of some of the
IDF’s tactics, particularly in the Israeli ground invasion of Shujaiya.
An official spokesman at the Pentagon declined to comment on the
contents of this article.
On July 16, the IDF dropped leaflets into Shujaiya, warning residents of an imminent Israeli attack and urging them to evacuate the area. The
next day, after a short artillery preparation, three IDF units, led by
the Golani Brigade, began a ground assault into the neighborhood to
destroy Hamas bunkers and break up Hamas formations.
‘Take off the gloves’
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