...In simplified terms, Operation Peace for Galilee (as the invasion was code-named) was based on a combination of misconceptions about Israel's alliance with the Maronites in Lebanon and an overestimation of Israel's military capabilities, underlined by the mistaken belief that force could achieve real peace. Israel saw Lebanon as a Christian state and the Maronites as the predominant community backed militarily by the Lebanese Forces. Moreover, Israel perceived the Maronites it was liaising with as representative of the community and as reliable.
To fully understand this failure in Israel's national intelligence estimates, not only the actual misconceptions but also the process of intelligence evaluation needs to be analyzed. Moreover, within this framework, it is essential to examine the signals as well as the noise that obscures them and can prevent them from being understood. In the Lebanon War, as in other historical examples, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2 the Yom Kippur War,3 or the US failure to predict the Iranian Revolution in 1979, 4 the intelligence failure was not due to lack of information about the adversaries, but to an incorrect evaluation of the available information, noise, false signals or deception, misconceptions and ideology....
Bookmarks