Israel Facing Cabinet, Army Critics on Tactics in Uprising

While warding off criticism from abroad for its handling of the Arab uprising, the government of Israel is facing verbal attack from unexpected quarters: Cabinet ministers and senior army officers.

It is highly unusual that suggestions for a softer line on dealing with the uprising should spring from the Cabinet or the Israel Defense Forces, and the public criticism appears to highlight the turmoil within Israel’s leadership as the uprising persists.

On Monday, Minister Without Portfolio Ehud Olmert censured his own government for the escalating fatalities among Palestinians in the territories. Olmert is a member of the rightist Likud Party, headed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

“The casualties must weigh on us from the moral point of view and also because it creates difficulties for Israel to cope in the political arena (abroad),” Olmert said on Israel Television.

“When I get up in the morning and hear an Arab boy has been killed, I don’t get up with it well,” Olmert said. “I don’t sleep with it well.”

He added: “I certainly support the use of force, but there must be some kind of general policy that will reinstate order and lower the number of casualties.”

Energy Minister Moshe Shahal, from the center-left Labor Party, the main junior partner in the coalition, added his condemnation of the rising Arab death toll. “We must find a solution,” he said.

The reproaches from Shahal and Olmert are of the sort usually uttered by leftist politicians outside government. Previous criticism from inside the Cabinet suggested that measures to put down the uprising, rather than being too harsh, were too soft.

Fatalities in the West Bank and Gaza continue to mount; on Monday, two Arab teen-agers died from bullet wounds. In the last five days, 10 Palestinians, all younger than 18, were shot to death in the occupied areas. More than 345 Arabs have died in the uprising since it began 13 months ago. Foreign human rights groups and governments have frequently criticized Israeli methods of subduing the Palestinians, including the use of live ammunition, expulsion of activists and detention without trial.

Official Views Undercut

Voices from the armed forces, meanwhile, indirectly undercut official government views on the intifada, as the uprising is known in Arabic.

Last week, the army chief of staff, Gen. Dan Shomron, said the uprising cannot be wiped out. “There is no such thing as eradicating the intifada because in its essence, it expresses the struggle of nationalism,” he said.

Shomron stopped short of suggesting that the military pull out, but he made it clear that the army’s role is not to end the uprising but to buy time for the government to find a solution.

Later in the week, Gen. Menachem Einan, who retired as head of the army’s logistics branch, warned of the adverse effects of military actions in the occupied lands.

Morality Issue

“I’m very worried by the level of morality among soldiers,” he told Israeli newspapers. “I think we foster a bad mixture of youthful urges with the authority to use force.

“We are exposing the individual to provocations--and maliciousness surfaces too quickly.”

The words of both generals undermined government insistence that the intifada is like any other war Israel has fought against Arabs and that the army is the best tool to end it.

Shomron went further by challenging the government’s official line on Palestinian terrorism, which holds that the Palestine Liberation Organization remains an unrepentant terrorist organization despite recent comments in which its leader, Yasser Arafat, renounced terrorism. In comments last week to the Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, Shomron said recent attempts by infiltrators to cross into Israel from Lebanon were not sponsored by Arafat and his mainstream Fatah faction, nor any other group under his control.

It was not clear whether Shomron thought that recent infiltrations were carried out by other PLO branches not directly under Arafat’s control. Still, by singling out Fatah as having abstained from attacks on Israel, Shomron countered the government’s contention that all terrorist groups are one and the same and that all answer to Arafat.

Monolithic Theory

Foreign Minister Moshe Arens is one of those subscribing to the theory of a monolithic terrorist organization, and he cites that as a reason for refusing to deal with Arafat and the PLO.

Prime Minister Shamir scored Shomron for his comments on both the intifada and the PLO. “I don’t think I should argue with him, but these statements were superfluous,” he told the Jerusalem Post.

Avi Pazner, Shamir’s spokesman, confirmed that the prime minister disagreed with his chief of staff over the issue and accused Arafat of encouraging daily acts of terror.

“Mr. Shamir believes there is a lot of terrorism by Arafat in the territories (West Bank and Gaza Strip) and Israel proper,” said Pazner, noting that a cell of Fatah, the mainstream PLO faction led by Arafat, was recently uncovered in northern Israel.

“There are acts of terrorism daily in the territories and attempts in Israel, and Mr. Arafat encourages those,” Pazner added. By Shamir’s definition, the Palestinian uprising is itself a terrorist action.

While calls for a softer line on the West Bank and Gaza are a novelty, demands for the government to crack down harder on rebellious Arabs continue. Recently, in response to complaints from Israeli settlers who live on the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, the government has quietly begun implementing new means of deterring rock-throwing Palestinians, Israel Radio and military sources said Monday.

In recent weeks, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin has ordered the army to broaden measures designed to punish Arab stone-throwers. The measures include more demolition of houses and longer jail sentences.

Home demolitions were once ordered mainly to deter or punish suspected terrorists and anyone caught throwing a firebomb, as well as their relatives. Now, stone-throwers, considered a less dangerous breed, are liable to face such punishment as well.

Stiffer Sentences

Heretofore, Arabs convicted of hurling rocks were sentenced to no more than 1 1/2 years in jail. Now, a maximum sentence of five years is possible.

“It is true we are dealing with new measures,” said Eitan Haber, a spokesman for Defense Minister Rabin. “We are always looking for new ways to restore order.”

Other measures stretched to cover stone-throwers include fines, imposed not only on the offenders but--if the attackers are younger than 18--on their parents as well. Stores or houses in which the rebels might take refuge may be emptied and sealed up.

The first open implementation of the new policy occurred last week in the Gaza Strip, where parents of some two dozen Palestinian youths paid fines of up to $550 to gain the release of their children from jail, the sources said.

Frequent Targets

Jewish settlers are frequently among the targets of rock-throwing Arabs. The settlers, many of whom travel armed, are threatening to take the law into their own hands. In Hebron, a West Bank city where Arabs and Israelis live close to one another, settlers have announced the formation of vigilante patrols to safeguard roadways.

“We think that if the army would try harder, it could end the trouble--overnight,” said Israel Amshai, a resident of Elazar, a small settlement near Hebron.

Amshai was on an impromptu patrol of his own, looking for leaflets that Palestinians drop on the roadside to encourage their fellows to protest Israeli rule.

“We are told that when we shoot, we have to fire up in the air,” said the unarmed Amshai. “All that means is we are carrying a loud cap gun. It is useless.”