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IDF Is Deft With New Boat

Although probe is criticized as soft

by
Marc Tracy
July 14, 2010
(Abu Muqawama via True/Slant)
(Abu Muqawama via True/Slant)

Haaretz has a damning take on the Israeli military’s probe into the flotilla raid, even as the IDF’s response to a new challenge to the Gaza Blockade indicates that lessons have been learned and wiser, cooler heads have been put into command.

Amos Harel says the IDF report contains “a clear and detailed analysis identifying numerous mistakes, and no recommendations regarding the individuals involved.” It does establish that the activists fired first—something we basically knew already, and yet also something that those who don’t already believe it won’t believe just because the IDF says it is true.

In other words, says Haaretz, the probe was almost useless: “The bottom line, four years after the Second Lebanon War, is that the entire defense establishment had planned for the wrong scenario in the flotilla affair.”

And yet! The IDF was yesterday presented with a real-life second round, and, so far, it seems to be doing something right. A ship sponsored by a son of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi and ostensibly bearing humanitarian cargo left Greece a few days ago. Yesterday morning, it was bound for Gaza; Israeli diplomats publicly cautioned the navy not to forcibly halt the boat before it had entered Gaza’s territorial waters (the flotilla raid took place in international waters); and, yesterday evening, the boat’s captain said that he would set a course for Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, near Gaza, which Israeli authorities are permitting. Problem solved? Here’s hoping, and here’s also hoping it’s not the last crisis to end in so un-crisis-like a manner.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.