Israeli Army Fights to Stay Out of Politics

“God forbid!” a senior Israeli army officer complained to a friend the other day. “They’re trying to drag us into the election campaign.”

The officer was referring to some of the country’s top politicians and to an unusual, recent flurry of public debate over the army’s performance in trying to quell nearly seven months of Palestinian unrest in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Some of the criticism comes from leftist politicians, who complain about what they see as a disturbing pattern of excessive force and even outright brutality used by troops against civilian Palestinian protesters.

Right-Wing Charges

But much more frequent are charges by Israel’s political right that the military is being too soft. The uprising would have been crushed long ago, such critics contend, if the army command had only ordered soldiers to open fire at Arab stone-throwers and initiated widespread deportation of inciters.

Early last week, former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, a hard-liner, took to task the military chief of staff, Gen. Dan Shomron, and other army officers who have been saying publicly that there is no military solution to the Palestinian uprising--only a political one.

Sharon, the architect of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, has declared his certainty that if he were in charge, he could suppress the violence in no time.

That and similar complaints by militant Jewish settlers and other rightist ministers sparked sharp editorial reaction in some Israeli newspapers.

“The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) has no chance of accomplishing more than it already has in a confrontation with the intifada (Arabic for ‘uprising’)--somehow keeping it in a state of a ‘conquered uprising,’ ” commented the independent Haaretz.

“Whoever wants to free us of this burden cannot hope that additional force will solve the problem,” Haaretz added. “Only by extricating the political process from its deadlock can one work toward quieting the territories.”

The officers “are not telling (the politicians) what kind of a political solution,” said Zeev Schiff, Haaretz’s respected military analyst, in an interview. “They’re just saying: ‘Come and do something. We’ll prepare the ground.’ The important thing is that the politicians are not willing to do it.”

For an army that has long prided itself on staying out of Israel’s always intense political fray, its current position in the spotlight is an uncomfortable one.

‘Under Great Pressure’

“The army remains above politics,” said a senior military commander. “What has been politicized in Israel is the general situation because of the upcoming (national) elections,” which are now scheduled for Nov. 1. Nevertheless, this commander conceded, the situation “puts us under great pressure.”

Ever since the founding days of the state, when rival, formerly underground Jewish fighting units avoided a potential civil war by deferring to a new, unified national army, there has been an extraordinary sensitivity here to the dangers of politicizing the military.

Unquestioning service in the citizen army, enforced with few exceptions through a universal draft and compulsory annual reserve duty until age 50, is a great unifying force in what is still a highly diverse society composed mostly of immigrants or children of at least one immigrant parent.

The IDF is the principal guardian of one of the world’s most security-conscious states, and while in the past there might have been post-mortem criticism of its performance, few questioned its mission. Similarly, while soldiers might not agree with government policy, they are expected to express their dissenting opinions openly only when out of uniform.

Cracks in Consensus

The Lebanon campaign generated the first serious cracks in this domestic military consensus. Some soldiers chose jail rather than service in what they saw as an unjust war of aggression, and a senior commander publicly resigned rather than participate in the siege of Beirut.

The politicization surrounding the army’s battle since last December against the Palestinian intifada in the West Bank and Gaza, however, is in some ways even more pronounced.

For one thing, the central issue involved--the occupation--is probably the most divisive in the country. When it comes to policy in the territories, Israel has, for practical purposes, not one but two governments. Also, the fighting is not on the other side of a distant border, but just a stone’s throw away in territory so physically integrated that until December, when the uprising began, few remembered where the old boundaries were.

In addition to angry Palestinians, the army is having to deal with some armed and militant Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, whom Chief of Staff Shomron has described as a source of continual tension in the territories. The settlers are prime targets for Palestinian rock- and Molotov cocktail-throwers. And of well over 200 Palestinians who have died in the unrest, as many as 25 are believed to have been killed in clashes with settlers.

Two Kinds of Law

While the Palestinians are under army rule, the settlers are protected under Israeli civil law, which inevitably leads to a double standard of justice. The army orders Palestinians; it cajoles settlers.

When a teen-age Jewish girl from a West Bank settlement was killed during a clash in an Arab village last spring, her funeral turned into an extraordinary explosion of catcalls and whistles aimed at the army general in charge of the area. In order to head off what it feared could be a bloody vigilante counterattack by the settlers, the army arrested scores of Arab villagers and destroyed 14 houses of suspected rioters.

Later it was revealed that the girl was killed not by a stone but by a bullet fired accidentally from the gun of one of her Jewish guards.

Strain between the settlers and the army responsible for protecting them continues, as evidenced by reports of sharp differences expressed during a lengthy meeting last week between Shomron and 17 Jewish settlement leaders.

No Envy for Soldiers

Even some Palestinians totally committed to the intifada concede privately that they do not envy the soldiers.

Speaking to troops in Beersheba a few days ago, Brig. Gen. Nehemeya Dagan, the army’s chief education officer, was empathetic, according to an account in Haaretz.

“The Israeli soldier, fed up with all this business, is told that instead of getting into a tank, he has to do guard duty in the territories,” Dagan observed. “He reaches the territories and wants very much to return home, but is told that due to disturbances, he has to remain on the base for the Sabbath.

“Such an Israeli soldier, 18 years old, holds a riot baton in one hand and sees before him in Gaza the people he considers the cause of all his problems, the Arabs,” Dagan continued. “An Arab takes a rock and throws it at his face. Through the hand that holds the riot baton flows 2,000 years of exile, the destruction of the First and Second Temples, and a girlfriend at home who lies on the beach while this young soldier remains in Gaza. As chief education officer, I must make sure that this situation does not affect the soldier, that it does not harm his operational and moral fitness.”

Open to Much Debate

How well Dagan and his fellow officers are meeting the challenge is open to considerable debate. According to the Palestinians, there are almost daily instances of army brutality. According to the army command, “deviations” from orders to use only the amount of force necessary to restore order are reassuringly few.

Asked about the impact of the uprising on the army, Gen. Amnon Shahak, head of military intelligence, said last week that from the standpoint of troop morale, it has not had much effect. But more soldiers are expressing concern about where the situation is headed.

According to a major General Staff review of the first six months of the intifada, held on June 24, what lies ahead is more of the same.

The uprising has largely faded from the international headlines, partly out of growing public apathy and partly because the level of violence has decreased. Such comparisons are extremely relative, however.

16 Incidents a Day

At least 14 Palestinians and one Israeli died in violence during June--one-third the casualty levels of March and April. A spokesman said the army is now recording an average of about 16 “incidents” a day in the occupied territories, compared to more than double that during the spring.

However, the June figures alone rival those for deaths and “incidents” for the first 11 months of 1987, until December. And no less an authority than Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin has cautioned that while the flames of the uprising have receded, the embers beneath are still red hot.

Importantly, the IDF’s work plan through next March envisions continued deployment of several times as many troops in the territories as were there before the troubles began.

The General Staff review concluded that the army had been ill-prepared for a massive civilian uprising in the territories but that it has learned many lessons along the way. A senior defense official cited as illustration of army unpreparedness the fact that troops ran through a year and a half’s supply of tear gas, a key riot-control weapon, in the first “several weeks” of the uprising.

‘Strange Type of Warfare’

“It’s a strange type of warfare,” commented a deputy army spokesman, Col. Ranaan Gissin. He said that many of those “deviations” from proper conduct were the result of inexperience.

In all, Gissin said, 15 soldiers have been court-martialed for intifada -related offenses, including one who was sentenced to a year in jail for manslaughter in the death of a Palestinian. “Several tens” of other soldiers faced lower-level disciplinary courts, and according to the army’s judge advocate, about 300 cases are still under investigation.

About 400 Israeli reservists are said to have signed a statement saying they will refuse service in the occupied territories, but the military says only 23 have actually been jailed for refusal. That compares with 15,000 men who are said to have seen service in the territories since December.

For the last three months, Gissin noted, every unit assigned to the territories has received a new, formal, weeklong training program, including a full day devoted to dealing with the media. There have been scores of complaints by journalists of threats and manhandling by soldiers, but the army spokesman said that since instituting the training program, “we’ve seen very positive results on all fronts.”

Older and Cooler

Also, the army has redeployed so that a majority of troops in the territories are older reservists rather than young regulars, who tend to be more hot-blooded and heavy-handed in their treatment of the Palestinians. Both Palestinians and military sources say the most important factor in whether or not a particular unit uses excessive force is the example set by its commander.

One way or another, Gissin said, whether as an occupying force or in some observer role after a future peace settlement, “the army is destined to stay in the territories for some time.” This was a premise of the General Staff review, he noted, and in the meantime, “the only thing we can do is to keep the ‘patient’ in a stable, if critical, condition. I’m under no illusions that to cure the ‘patient’ will require anything less than political surgery.”