As the occupation grows bloodier, officials draw on an ally's experience
with insurgents.
By Esther Schrader and Josh Meyer Times Staff
Writers
November 22, 2003
WASHINGTON — Facing a bloody insurgency
by guerrillas who label it an "occupier," the U.S. military has quietly turned
to an ally experienced with occupation and uprisings: Israel.
In the last
six months, U.S. Army commanders, Pentagon officials and military trainers have
sought advice from Israeli intelligence and security officials on everything
from how to set up roadblocks to the best way to bomb suspected guerrilla
hide-outs in an urban area.
"Those who have to deal with like problems
tend to share information as best they can," Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of
Defense for intelligence, said Friday at a defense writers breakfast
here.
The contacts between the two governments on military tactics and
strategies in Iraq are mostly classified, and officials are reluctant to give
the impression that the U.S. is brainstorming with Israel on the best way to
occupy Iraq. Cambone said there is no formal dialogue between the two allies on
Iraq, but they are working together.
Indeed, the U.S. is loath to draw
any comparison between what it says is its liberation of Iraq and what the
international community has condemned as Israel's illegal occupation of the West
Bank and Gaza Strip.
But Israeli and American officials confirm that with
extremists carrying out suicide bombings and firing rocket-propelled grenades
and missiles on U.S. forces in Iraq, the Pentagon is increasingly seeking advice
from the Israeli military on how to defeat the sort of insurgency that Israel
has long experience confronting.
The Israelis "certainly have a wealth of
experience from a military standpoint in dealing with domestic terror, urban
terror, military operations in urban terrain, and there is a great deal of
intelligence and knowledge sharing going on right now, all of which makes
sense," a senior U.S. Army official said on condition of anonymity. "We are
certainly tapping into their knowledge base to find out what you do in these
kinds of situations."
Many of the tactics recently adopted by the U.S. in
Iraq — increased use of airpower, aerial surveillance by unmanned aircraft of
suspected sites, increased use of pinpoint search and seizure operations, the
leveling of buildings used by suspected insurgents — bear striking similarities
to those regularly employed by Israel.
Two Israeli officials — one from
the Jerusalem police force and a second from the Israel Defense Forces —
confirmed on condition of anonymity that U.S. officials had visited Israel to
gain insight into police and military tactics. They also said Israeli officials
have visited Washington to discuss the issues.
U.S. officials were
particularly interested in the "balancing act" that Israeli officials say they
have tried to pursue between fighting armed groups and trying to spare civilians
during decades of patrolling the occupied territories.
"There are routine
channels that have been there for years, and those channels have been
energized," an Israeli official said of the communications. "The American
military has been very interested in our lessons … in how do you do surgical
strikes in an urban zone, how do you hit the bad guy with minimum collateral
damage."
Some U.S. officials acknowledge that they blanch at the idea of
the Pentagon adopting tactics from Israel, a nation regularly criticized for
security tactics it employs to battle armed groups it has never managed to
quell. And even Israeli officials acknowledge that they are somewhat reluctant
to give advice.
"After all," one Israeli official said, "we've made
plenty of mistakes ourselves."
Indeed, criticism of the Israeli army's
tactics against Palestinians has been mounting within Israel. The current chief
of staff, Moshe Yaalon, along with a group of retired heads of the Shin Bet
internal security service and even some active-duty soldiers say the methods
have been unduly harsh and threaten to destroy Israeli and Palestinian society
if no solution is found to the conflict.
But such concerns have not
slowed the flow of information between Washington and Jerusalem.
When
Iraqi insurgents began firing from vehicles on U.S. troops at checkpoints, U.S.
officials were prompted to reinforce their ties to the Israeli military and
glean tips on how to prevent such attacks, Israeli officials said.
Now,
in frequent meetings with their American counterparts, Israeli army officials
share ideas on how to protect soldiers from attacks and booby traps, Israeli
officials said.
U.S. military officials also have reviewed a common
Israeli tactic of conducting house-by-house searches for armed fighters by
knocking down interior walls with a portable battering ram. The tactic
eliminates the need to pass through doors and windows — one of the most
dangerous aspects of urban combat, because of possible booby traps.
In
the last week, U.S. soldiers began leveling houses and buildings used by
suspected guerrillas, a tactic long employed by the Israeli military in the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip, where they use bulldozers to knock down the homes of
militants or their families.
"The Americans learned a lot from the
Israelis' use of them [bulldozers] in urban combat," a former Israeli official
said. "Israelis learned that if you have fighting in an urban area, you just
take down the house."
This spring, U.S. soldiers, anticipating that they
could be fighting on the streets of Iraqi cities, traveled to Israel to train in
a mock Arab town that the Israeli army uses to simulate the urban battlefields
of the West Bank and Gaza, U.S. and Israeli officials said.
That
training was an extension of the growing use of Israeli military ranges by the
U.S. over the last decade. During that time, said Lenny Ben-David, a former
Israeli deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Washington, Israeli military
ranges have been increasingly used by American helicopter pilots for training,
because they could not fly at night in places like
Germany.
"There are bases in Israel that for the last
couple of years would be turned over to a foreign army for a few days, a week or
so. The Israelis would be hosts. The U.S. is one of them," said Ben-David, now a
private security consultant. "They could use equipment, they could use
facilities, use the ranges. You'd get a mix of pilots and they would sit and
talk tactics."
After years of working closely together at all levels, the
Israeli and U.S. militaries in some respects think increasingly alike, said
Shoshana Bryen, director of special projects at the Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs, a nonprofit group in Washington interested in links
between U.S. and Israeli defense tactics and policy.
"Part of what's
going on here is the culmination of years of picking each other's brains," Bryen
said. "There is no sudden alliance, but what you end up with over the long term
is a lot of guys from both countries who think and look at things the same way.
After 9/11 they discovered they had more things to talk about."
For
generations the Israeli military has enjoyed close relations with the Pentagon,
which prides itself on its ability to learn from, not just preach to, the armed
forces of its allies. At any time, dozens of Israeli officers are studying at
Pentagon-run war colleges and training centers.
American special forces
regularly train with their Israeli counterparts, both in the U.S. and in Israel.
After the Israelis used unmanned drones in battlefield situations in Lebanon in
1982, the Pentagon studied the tactic. Some of the sensor technology that the
United States military uses to protect the perimeters of its bases was pioneered
by Israel.
Much of the information shared with the U.S. involves the
defensive tactics and training that Israel has constantly updated for its troops
and police in the occupied territories, where they are familiar not only with
the most current tactics and code of ethics but the international laws that
apply as well, the two Israeli officials said.
This month, for example,
Lt. Col. Amos Guiora, the commandant of the Israeli army's School of Military
Law, was in Washington to demonstrate some new software developed by the
Israelis to train commanders how to conduct themselves in the occupied
territories. During his visit, he showed the software to a group of American
officials, he said.
"I'll say only this," he said. "They saw it, and
they were impressed."
Israel's defense minister typically visits the
Pentagon three to four times a year. The current defense minister, Shaul Mofaz,
met Nov. 10 with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Officials privy to the
meeting said the subject of Iraq came up, but declined to elaborate.
The
two nations also compare notes on battle operations and equipment, particularly
if something goes wrong.
"After some incidents, if there is a failure in
the system — an F-16 goes down — there is discussion, cooperation among the
armies that use these and the United States," Ben-David said.
"It used
to be that generals and admirals would come by in almost state-like visits,"
said Ben-David, who in his consulting works with Israeli and U.S. officials.
"But the relationship is such that you now get line-type soldiers coming here to
meet with their counterparts."
Times staff writer Laura King in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
