Israel’s Gaza raid hindered by weak intelligence tools

A number of military analysts are questioning why advanced intelligence systems were not used to give a real-time intelligence to tactical commanders who oversaw the May 31 raid by Israeli forces on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, reports David Eshel at Aviation Week’s Ares Blog.

The use of sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicle sensors and satellite images might have provided Israeli commandos participating in the raid with sufficient information to have achieved success for the pre-dawn mission with no loss of civilian life. Yet as the mission played out, at least nine passengers were killed and as many as 100 wounded.

One glaring question is why the commandos, armed with only paintball rifles, were sent on such a highly hazardous task. The commandos apparently expected a relatively passive reception from human rights activists in the six-boat aid convoy, but the presence of militant Turkish and Palestinian Islamists in one of the vessels appears to have been blatantly ignored during the pre-mission briefing.

The aid convoy was organized with much fanfare by the Turkish IHH, a group well known as having links to Al-Qaeda and global jihad networks that supports Hamas and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and one identified by the CIA in a report issued after 9/11 as one of more than a dozen agencies employing members or otherwise facilitating activities of terrorist groups.

The commandos who participated in the raid likely belonged to Shayetet 13, an elite commando unit of the Israeli Navy, Victor Ostrovsky, a former officer in the Mossad told Intelligence News blog.

During the ships’ passage from Turkish ports to Cypruss, where they anchored for three days before proceeding, Israeli intelligence communities had sufficient time to gather reliable information on the nature of the occupants that the commandos would be facing when boarding the ships, and especially the crowded SS Avi Marmara, which was the primary target.

The intelligence vacuum meant that mission planners failed to take advantage of advanced intelligence systems, underestimated the number of troops needed to commandeer the Avi Marmara, control the wheelhouse, and pilot it to Ashdod port, as directed by political authorities. The commandos assigned to board that ship, who rappelled down from a helicopter, were immediately overwhelmed and subdued by the ship’s passengers. Only when reinforcements boarded the ship were weapons used to disperse the furious chaos, which raged uncontrolled aboard the ship’s upper and lower decks.

Better intelligence information might have led the Israeli commanders responsible for the mission to employ additional non-lethal weapons and tactics, such as stun grenades, smoke and even tear gas, which might have prevented the initial riots and allowed sufficient troops to engage the violent crowd simultaneously during the takeover phase.

Despite the political tension between Turkey and Israel in the aftermath of the raid, business relations between the two companies are continuing as normal, reports BBC.

Interestingly, Turkey placed an order in 2005 with Israel Aerospace Industries and Elbit for 10 Heron UAVs. Four are believed to have been delivered in March and the rest are expected to be delivered in June or July.