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�We Are Saving Many, Many Lives�
Leslie Susser
Why, critics ask, are so many Palestinian attackers getting hit in the head and upper body? Because, says the army, defending its �restraint,� the enemy gunmen crouch when they fire.
About two weeks into the Al-Aqsa Intifada, as the death toll mounted, Israeli military experts started scouring arsenals the world over for less lethal means of containing the violence.
Officers made dozens of visits to armies and police forces on five continents, but turned up just one device they thought might help. Military officials refuse to disclose what that device was or where it was developed. All they�ll say is that the country in question refused to sell it to Israel.
Clearly the implications of the rapidly rising casualty toll worried the army from the outset of the violence. Senior officers acknowledge that, apart from humanitarian aspects, they were aware that the daily fatalities would radicalize positions on the Palestinian side, making future accommodation more difficult, and that Israel would lose the international public opinion battle.
But while now, three months into the intifada � in which some 300 Palestinians, and 40 Israelis, have been killed � there are a handful of senior officers privately arguing that the army could have exercised more restraint, the overwhelming belief in the military is that it has been acting as responsibly, and intelligently, as possible.
The critics do not directly target Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, but they argue that his firm approach to the intifada � his guiding insistence that soldiers not be sitting ducks and that civilians not be left unprotected � has sometimes been too freely interpreted by young soldiers and by brigade commanders seeking quick results. Mofaz rejects their claims out of hand. He and the top brass counter that, given the level of Palestinian violence � and specifically the number of Palestinian-initiated shooting incidents � the death toll, regrettable as it is, is not nearly as high as it might have been.
And Mofaz has the full backing of the government and the defense establishment. Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh told The Report: �If this level of violence had been maintained against any other army in the world, the death toll would have been at least 3,000, not 300.�
The Palestinians, not surprisingly, are scathing in their criticism of the army, accusing Mofaz of following a deliberate shoot-to-kill policy from day one.
Dr. Mustafa Barguthi, who heads the Palestinian Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute, claims that the intifada statistics tell a clear story of deliberate, disproportional and excessive use of force. �Look at the patterns of injury,� he says. �About 48 percent of those who died were shot in the head or neck. That means the soldiers shot to kill, as if they were anxious to prove their marksmanship and create a strong psychological effect. If you are in a life-threatening situation, you don�t take your time to pinpoint the head.�
Barguthi, a cousin of Tanzim militia leader Marwan Barguthi, claims that the army deliberately escalated what started out as civilian protests. �This in our view was a strategic move to avoid being accountable for the excessive use of force.�
According to Barguthi�s figures, 319 Palestinians were killed in the 12 weeks from the start of the intifada on September 29 to December 18. Sixteen percent were aged 15 or less, 20 percent 16-18, 44 percent 19-29, 12 percent 30-39 and 8 percent above 40. Five percent were killed in armed clashes, 56.7 percent in civilian demonstrations and 4.1 percent were assassinated, by his count. The others, Barguthi claims, were killed in non-confrontational situations. �If you put all these facts together, they add up clearly to the use of excessive force.�
The Palestinian account has received a measure of support from the American branch of the Nobel Prize-winning Physicians for Human Rights organization, which toured the areas in late October: The PHR team found that �the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has used live ammunition and rubber bullets excessively and inappropriately to control demonstrations, and that based on the high number of documented injuries to the head... soldiers appear to be shooting to inflict harm, rather than solely in self-defense.�
The complaints of excessive force have also been echoed at the United Nations, by Amnesty International and by Israel�s own B�Tselem human rights watchdog.
THE IDF ACCOUNT OF WHAT has been happening is very different. According to the army�s chief spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ron Kitri, in the early days of the intifada soldiers were stormed by waves of demonstrators throwing stones, Molotov cocktails, hand grenades and pipe bombs. In most cases the soldiers, hugely outnumbered, only fired rubber bullets when tear gas proved ineffective. And they only fired when the demonstrators had come close enough to create a life-threatening situation.
That, says Kitri, explains why rubber bullets were often fired at ranges closer than normally intended, causing more serious injuries than they normally would. Kitri adds that very often armed Palestinian gunmen fired over the demonstrating mass at the soldiers, who responded with live ammunition at the sources of fire. �Sometimes non-combatants were hit in the head when, through the dust and smoke, they moved into the line of fire at the last minute. There was nothing deliberate about it. We are very sorry for what happened. But people who didn�t want to get hit shouldn�t have been there in the first place.�
According to army figures, in the first 12 weeks of the intifada, Palestinians initiated more than 2,500 armed attacks on Israeli troops and civilians. Given the number and nature of these incidents, the army says the Palestinian death toll is not high. Kitri confirms that, after the �tunnel riots� of September 1996, the army trained sharpshooters so that in any similar confrontation in the future there would be no indiscriminate firing. This controlled use of snipers, firing only at armed Palestinians, he argues, has kept Palestinian casualties down.
Moreover, he says, throughout the intifada Israeli troops have never resorted to automatic fire, but have fired only single shots. One reason Israel suspects IDF fire did not kill Muhammad Dura, the Gaza boy who became the symbol of the uprising, was that the evidence suggests he was killed by a burst of automatic fire.
Kitri says that the Israeli death toll is significantly lower than the Palestinian because the army was well prepared. After the Palestinian �days of rage� last May, the army strengthened its fortifications and introduced new protective gear.
Indeed, says Kitri, this also helps explain what he calls the relatively low number of Palestinian casualties. �When soldiers feel well protected and confident, they can play it cool. Their fingers are much less quick on the trigger. They are slower to shoot, and if they shoot, they move more slowly from rubber bullets to live ammunition.�
As for the preponderance of head wounds, Kitri denies this stems from a shoot to kill policy. On the contrary, he says, army regulations are clear: soldiers must aim low. �But those who try to attack us, Tanzim militiamen or Palestinian policemen for example, approach from crouched positions. If they are hit, it will almost inevitably be in the upper body.�
SNEH DIVIDES THE intifada into three phases. First came the early weeks of mass Palestinian protest. The second stage saw shooting attacks by Tanzim gunmen and Palestinian security personnel, with the support of the Palestinian Authority. Israel responded with heavy fire from helicopter gunships on the offices of these groups � a response designed, Sneh says, to send the message that �we knew who was to blame, without causing heavy casualties. Unfortunately, there was a discrepancy between the reality of few casualties and the image of the powerful gunships.�
In the third, current phase, there has been an upsurge in shooting attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, and Israel�s response has been to minimize and preempt this by killing or capturing militia activists, �cutting off the head of the snake,� as Sneh describes it.
Senior officers call the new policy �low signature� because the actions quietly target precisely the right people and cannot be photographed for propaganda purposes by the other side. They believe it has been extremely effective, and that over time it will become even more so, as it forces militia field commanders into hiding (some Hamas activists have even asked the PA to take them into protective custody), sows distrust within and between the various militias and disrupts operational plans.
Sneh dismisses moral arguments against the preemptive killings and abductions. �In dealing with these people,� he says, �we are saving many, many lives.�
Remarkably, both Sneh and Kitri believe that despite all the bloodshed, Israeli and Palestinian security forces will be able to cooperate again if there is a peace accord. It will take time, but what has been destroyed, both say, can be rebuilt.
Palestinian sources, speaking privately, also see a future of potential cooperation � but only, they say, after a permanent peace deal has been reached, and �every vestige of Israel�s occupation has been removed.�
Says Kitri: �There are deep cracks in trust on all levels, but this intifada, which is only three months old, is not something new in the context of 100 years of conflict. It�s just another point on the complex axis of relations between the two sides. A better modus vivendi is certainly still possible.�
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