Senior Blue and White officials have been speaking out against the security situation in the Gaza periphery of late, criticizing the government's response to missile fire from the terrorist enclave.
Gantz has promised to "go tough" on the Gaza Strip, asserting that his party would strive for a decisive victory against Hamas and would send ground forces into the territory for as long as necessary.
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These are nice declarations, as far as declarations go. But when Gantz was responsible for Israel's security as IDF chief of staff during 2014's Operation Protective Edge, the military avoided a ground operation until Hamas made use of its cross-border attack tunnels, leaving the military with no other choice. And when the military did finally take action, it was limited to neutralizing the tunnels and not at achieving a decisive victory over Hamas or maintaining a presence in Gaza. While the government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at its head bear full responsibility for this, Gantz was no low-ranking official. In fact, the state comptroller's report on Operation Protective Edge includes Gantz's positions on the matter in real-time, meaning when people's lives, and not the success of an election campaign, were at stake.
The comptroller's report points to an IDF that under Gantz's command – on more than once occasion – abstained from presenting alternatives to the cabinet in a balanced manner.
So, for example, in a cabinet meeting held on July 14, 2014, around one week after the IDF embarked on Operation Protective Edge, the ministers sought to learn whether the IDF could conquer the Gaza Strip and what that would entail. Gantz replied: "I propose there be some other opportunity … to really hold the strategic discussion as to what the significance is of going and conquering Gaza now … I think we should talk about the strategic problem."
Cabinet ministers would later testify that Gantz and senior IDF General Staff officials had, in fact, prevented them from holding a substantive discussion on the matter.
"With all due respect to [the fact] that we were presented with four options, they weren't really presented to us in full – how much time it would entail, what the expected price would be, and all of the cost-effectiveness analysis. Operational possibilities were presented in a general manner, and that is how we ended up with this operation," Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan would go on to say.
Then-Finance Minister and now Gantz's fellow Blue and White leader Yair Lapid also expressed indignation over a cabinet meeting held on March 23 that was supposed to focus on the question of Israel's strategy but in practice served "to demonstrate why Gaza shouldn't be conquered."
This was no coincidence. At the time, Gantz believed in a defensive and cautious strategy, the likes of which the government had adopted at the time. In March 2015, Gantz told the state comptroller it was his belief that "in Israel, it has been understood that you only opt for a broad escalation when there is no choice. And as a matter of principle, it is not right to embark on a broad, proactive military process that cannot be controlled … in the face of a situation where one still feels there is another option."
And even when the situation escalated, as it did during Operation Protective Edge, Gantz was of the opinion that a defensive strategy was preferable. As he explained to the state comptroller in November of 2016: The IDF had chosen "the optimal operational solution according to its professional discretion – a defensive response. The decision was … rooted in the absence of sufficient intelligence."
According to Gantz, "This is not the only security threat … where the response is based, in essence, on a defensive response, combined with counterfire, airstrikes, and a ground attack."
One can criticize the government's policies in recent years, but the fact is that all those who had a role in the decision-making process have more or less taken the same position. Gantz and his fellow party leader Moshe Ya'alon were up until recently senior partners to the management of operations in Gaza, and the government's conduct on the matter has not undergone a material change of late. In order to convince the public that "things will be different" with them, Blue and White's leaders will need to explain when and how exactly their security philosophy changed.
