IDF chief of staff crowdsources Gaza strategy in appeal to mid-level officers

Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi has turned to the IDF’s career soldiers to crowdfund suggestions for Israel’s strategy in Gaza, requesting creative insights as to how the armed forces could best win the next round of fighting with Hamas.

Channel 12 news on Wednesday reported that Kochavi sent a letter to some 40,000 commissioned and non-commissioned officers asking for their ideas about what should be changed in the IDF’s organizational culture. Its goal was to widen the pool of suggestions beyond those generated by the army’s top brass.

The answers will go into a database called “startup insights” and will be sorted automatically, with the army chief hoping to generate five to seven usable concepts.

In April, three months into his tenure as army chief, Kohavi set out the framework for his multi-year plan to improve the Israel Defense Forces.

According to the IDF, Kohavi’s plan, known as “Readiness and Change,” focuses on continuing and strengthening two existing trends within the military: greater distribution of technology and intelligence throughout the military and better cooperation between its various different branches and units.

The plan is to diversify the military’s courses of actions in order to give the government more options and flexibility, and to limit the scope and duration of fighting.

The Israeli military’s plan for a potential future conflict in the Gaza Strip is to hit Palestinian terror group Hamas hard, but not to attempt to defeat it entirely, leaving it weakened but still capable of controlling the Strip, military officials told Hebrew-language media on Wednesday at the conclusion of a large-scale drill.

The exercise was the biggest in the Israel Defense Forces’ Gaza Division since Operation Protective Edge, the 2014 Gaza war fought five years ago.

“A very comprehensive and serious process has been carried out here, and my impression is that the level of preparedness for a possible battle in the Gaza Strip is very, very high,” Kohavi said at the drill’s conclusion.

A few hours later, in the early hours of Thursday, three Israeli soldiers were injured by Palestinian gunfire near the Gaza border early Thursday, sparking the heaviest cross-border fighting in weeks. An officer and two soldiers were hit by fire from a Palestinian gunman who crossed the border into Israel, according to the Israeli military.

The attacker was armed with a rifle and grenades and wearing a Hamas uniform, according to the IDF. However, an army spokesperson, said the military believes the attacker was acting alone and not on orders from Hamas.