WarSclerotic

“Unless the sword is literally on your throat, you don’t use it,” former IDF chief of staff Lt.- Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi  told CNN regarding the military option in the face of the Iranian threat, in a rare interview published Tuesday night.

The interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour was conducted during The Jerusalem Post’s annual conference in New York City and marked the former IDF chief’s first ever on-camera interview outside Israel.

Questioned over Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s request for a “P-plus” plan, reserved for an imminent state of war, Ashkenazi said that the security cabinet eventually decided not to go ahead with this measure.

“The question then was what was the correct time to consider the military option, and we made our recommendations to the cabinet, and my opinion was that we still had time,” he told Amanpour. “I think the military option is the last resort,” he said, stressing that all other options must be exhausted.

Turning to Syria, Asheknazi said the the West must take action, noting that “doing nothing is definitely the wrong message.” He said possible measures may include helping the Syrian opposition in a more concrete way such as providing them with weapons to help topple Syrian President Bashar Assad and imposing a no-fly zone over at least part of Syria. When asked whether Assad’s fall would be “good for Israel,” Ashkenazi responded that “it’s a mixed picture.”

On the one hand, he said it would be good news since it would constitute a major blow to Iran and Hezbollah. “People should understand Syria is a logistic hub for Hezbollah, most of the weaponry Hezbollah possesses came from Syria depots, while the money came from Iran.” Moreover, he said that Iran would lose its only state ally in the region – its gate to the Arab world.

On the other side of the coin he said that Israel may be threatened by cross-border terror, however, he opined that the country “has the experience to deal with it.”

Addressing Turkey, the former military commander – who faces an indictment over the deaths of nine Turks aboard the Mavi Marmara – said that it is important to fix relations between the two countries, and expressed hoped that the current negotiations would yield results. In reference to the Gaza-bound flotilla that cause the rupture in diplomatic ties with Turkey in 2010, Ashkenazi said “we tried to stop them… we did everything in our power.”

The biggest risk to the state of Israel, however, is it’s own internal issues, Ashkenazi posited. Specifically mentioning the haredim, he said the nation must battle the division between sectors, and strive for a more cohesive society, “the way we use to be 30, 40 years ago.” He said all members of society must share duties and rights, “that’s the real challenge.”

Tuesday’s air force strike in Gaza was a surgical, precise attack on a weapons manufacturing expert who, according to the security forces, played a key role in developing the rocket capabilities for global jihadi groups in the Gaza Strip.

It is these small but highly radical al-Qaida-inspired organizations, led by the Ashura Council of Holy Fighters in the Environs of Jerusalem, that refuse to recognize or abide by the Israel-Hamas truce, and that use both the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip as a rocket launching pad to strike at southern Israel.

The air strike contains a number of messages for Palestinian armed factions in Gaza. For global jihadis, it signals Israel’s ability to wait patiently for its intelligence services to mark out those behind ongoing rocket attacks, and to act without hesitation once the targets become exposed.

If the remaining terrorists are busy hiding from Israeli aircrafts in the skies over Gaza, they are less able to plan and execute future attacks.

For Hamas, the air strike signals Israel’s unwillingness to ignore rocket attacks. The strike’s precision is symbolic of the IDF’s efforts to limit its response to those directly involved in aggression against Israel, and to draw a distinction between Hamas and the global jihadis.

But Hamas knows that should it allow the global jihadis to escalate the situation further, it may get dragged into a damaging new conflict with Israel, something it wishes to avoid at all costs at this time.

This is why, in the hours after the air strike, Hamas security forces reportedly spread out around areas in Gaza used to fire rockets, and doubled down on their efforts to prevent the global jihadis from launching more attacks. Only time will tell whether these efforts are effective in the long-run. It is in Hamas’s own interests to do a better job of enforcing the cease-fire.

Meanwhile, in the North, the IDF’s surprise large-scale drill involving the call-up of 2,000 reservists should be seen as more than a mere training exercise. It is true that the IDF has attached utmost importance to keeping reserve forces in optimal battle fitness, as part of lessons learned from the Second Lebanon War.

But the drill’s timing – during a period of heightened tensions with Hezbollah, and uncertainty surrounding Syria’s brutal civil war and chemical weapons sites – is a signal to Israel’s enemies in southern Lebanon, Syria and Iran that it is ready to face down any provocation or attack.

Such a message is also meant to serve as a not-so-gentle reminder that the IDF will respond with much force to any miscalculation by Hezbollah or its puppet master in Tehran.