By Amos Harel
GOC Southern Command Yoav Galant's meticulous
planning for Operation Cast Lead was mapped out to the last detail.
The information gathered by the Shin Bet security service over the
preceding two years provided excellent intelligence. But the General
Staff also knew that hovering above was a conflicted political
triumvirate, one member of which (Prime Minister Ehud Olmert) was
eager to amend the dubious legacy he left behind in Lebanon, while
the other two (Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister
Tzipi Livni) were preoccupied with the impending election. In the
backdrop was a fickle public and an impatient and demanding media.
The General Staff expected that Israelis would have trouble
accepting heavy Israel Defense Forces losses.
The army chose to overcome this problem with an aggressive plan that
included overwhelming firepower. The forces, it was decided, would
advance into the urban areas behind a "rolling curtain" of aerial
and artillery fire, backed up by intelligence from unmanned aircraft
and the Shin Bet. The lives of our soldiers take precedence, the
commanders were told in briefings. Before the operation, Galant and
Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi painted a bleak picture for the
cabinet ministers. "Unlike in Lebanon, the civilians in Gaza won't
have many places to escape to," Ashkenazi warned. "When an armored
force enters the city, shells will fly, because we'll have to
protect our people."
The politicians promised backing. Two weeks before the incursion, a
member of the General Staff, talking to a journalist, predicted that
600-800 Palestinians civilians would be killed in an Israeli
operation.
The terrorists operated from within a large and densely crowded
civilian population, which they used as a human shield. This is
asymmetrical warfare, of the type waged by the Americans after the
occupation of Iraq and by the Russians in Georgia. Presumably, the
IDF operated with more restraint than most armies, but the question
is whether Israel uses this as a pretext to justify its actions.
A large part of the operation was conducted by remote control. "The
Palestinians are completely transparent to us," says A., a reservist
whose brigade was posted in the Gaza Strip. "The Shin Bet has people
everywhere. We observe the whole area from the air and usually the
Shin Bet coordinator can also tell you who lives in what house." The
Shin Bet defines the enemy and, for the most part, someone who
belongs to Hamas' civilian welfare organizations (the da'awa) is
treated the same way as a member of its military wing, the Iz al-Din
al-Qassam.
Essentially, a person only needs to be in a "problematic" location,
in circumstances that can broadly be seen as suspicious, for him to
be "incriminated" and in effect sentenced to death. Often, there is
no need for him to be identified as carrying a weapon. Three people
in the home of a known Hamas operative, someone out on a roof at 2
A.M. about a kilometer away from an Israeli post, a person walking
down the wrong street before dawn - all are legitimate targets for
attack.
"It feels like hunting season has begun," says A. "Sometimes it
reminds me of a Play Station [computer] game. You hear cheers in the
war room after you see on the screens that the missile hit a target,
as if it were a soccer game."
The one who makes the final decision of whether to fire is usually
not the brigade commander (who is with the forward forces in the
field), but the "director" of combat, stationed at a command center
in the rear: the deputy brigade commander, the headquarters' chiefs
or majors who are studying and return to the brigade in times of
combat. Another change in operational methods involved reducing
reliance on the independent judgment of Israel Air Force personnel,
who are located relatively far from the field.
'Little racists'
After the intense firepower employed at the outset, the forces were
surprised to discover that they were not fighting in a "sterile,"
civilian-free environment as they had in Lebanon, 2006. Soldiers'
testimonies, from graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military
preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon, and also
from the watered-down descriptions supplied by the army's Bamahaneh
weekly magazine, make this crystal clear. There were civilians who
were too frightened to flee or who didn't read the leaflets dropped
by the IAF, and remained in their homes. As in every war, prolonged
time in the field led to brutish behavior in some of the units.
"The impact of the long confrontation with the Palestinians cannot
be ignored," says a senior reserve officer, "and one should also
bear in mind what sort of values inductees have when they come to us
these days. Every year, the education system produces a significant
number of little racists."
Periodic studies conducted by the IDF contain soldiers' testimonies
about the use of the so-called "neighbor procedure" (forcing
Palestinians to enter nearby houses to ask inhabitants to come out),
abuses at checkpoints, shooting at medical personnel and more. In
Gaza, too, while the official orders called for preserving the
dignity and rights of Palestinian civilians, there were some junior
officers who followed their own code and ignored improper actions by
their troops. And there were, of course, impressive instances where
the opposite occurred, such as the soldiers from a Golani patrol
battalion who helped evacuate dozens of wheelchair-bound
Palestinians from the combat zone.
There is a discrepancy between the official military response, of
denial and horrified disapproval, the testimonies of the Rabin pre-military
preparatory course graduates, and the response to those reports by
key officers, unwilling to be identified.
"What did you think would happen?" a senior officer wondered this
week. "We sent 10,000 troops into Gaza, more than 200 tanks and
armored personnel carriers, 100 bulldozers. What were 100 bulldozers
going to do there?"
The IDF estimates that approximately 2,000 houses were destroyed in
the fighting. The Palestinians say the figure is twice that. IDF
officers, who were not surprised by the testimonies, recalled that
during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, military courts convicted soldiers for
killing civilians, including the British peace activist Tom Hurndall,
who was killed in Gaza in 2003.
Until the soldiers' testimonies were published, the IDF Spokesman's
Office had been highly successful in promoting its version of events.
The international media may not have bought it, but the army managed
to sell the Israeli public an almost impossible package: We were
victorious in Gaza, we suffered minimal casualties and we also came
out of there smelling like roses.
On Monday, during a visit to an IDF induction center, the chief of
staff addressed this matter. His statements ("I do not believe this
happened") raised a few eyebrows in the defense establishment. Lt.
Gen. Ashkenazi is also the commander of the investigators in the IDF
criminal investigation division (CID), who are coordinating the two
investigations that were launched in the wake of the soldiers'
testimonies. Even when we are told time and again that "the IDF is
the world's most ethical army" (copyright: Shaul Mofaz), we are not
obliged to answer "Amen."
Criminal proceedings
This story is reminiscent of both intifadas: A complex, morally
problematic mission, combined with lots of maneuvering room for
field commanders, is liable to culminate in conduct that crosses the
red line. This is what happened under then-defense minister Yitzhak
Rabin during the first intifada ("break their bones"), and it
happened to prime minister Ehud Barak with the outbreak of the
second intifada (in the form of millions of shots fired in the West
Bank by the IDF, in October 2000). Sometimes, legal intervention can
actually help reinstate the norms, but during the second intifada,
the last IDF judge advocate general, Maj. Gen. Menachem Finkelstein,
annulled the practice of opening an investigation into every killed
Palestinian. His successor, Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, is
launching his first investigations only now, after the publication
of the testimonies from the Rabin course graduates.
During the two initial, gloomy years of the first intifada, four
criminal proceedings shaped the rules of conduct: the Yehuda Meir
case, the Golani case, and the Givati Alef and Givati Bet cases.
Col. Emanuel Gross, who presided over the court in the Givati Alef
case, made it clear to the army that breaking bones was unacceptable,
that it was an illegal action "with a black flag fluttering above it."
The Golani brigade commander at the time was today's chief of staff,
Lieut. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1074218.html
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