Le Monde diplomatique
March 2002

The Peace Movement Revival

Israel's Army Refuseniks

As Israel and the Palestinian territories descend into chaos, there are
new international humanitarian efforts in the West Bank and Gaza; and
the Israeli peace movement has revived, with big demonstrations, a new
joint action group and a growing refusal by Israeli soldiers to serve in
Palestinian territories. A third of Israelis now back this refusal.

By Joseph Algazy *

"We, combat officers and soldiers who serve the state of Israel for many
weeks each year, regardless of the heavy personal cost, have rendered
reserve service throughout the occupied territories and received orders
and instructions that had nothing to do with the security of the state,
and whose sole purpose is perpetuation of our domination of the
Palestinian people;

"Having witnessed with our own eyes the bloody toll that the occupation
takes on both sides of the divide;

"Who have sensed how the orders we received erode every value we have
imbibed in this country;

"Who understand today that the price of the occupation is loss of the
humane image of the IDF and corruption of the entire Israeli society;

"Who know that the territories are not Israel, and that the Jewish
settlements there will ultimately have to be evacuated;

"Declare that we will no longer fight in the war for the welfare of the
settlements in the territories. We will not continue to fight beyond the
Green Line [Israel's pre-1967 border] for the purpose of dominating,
expelling, starving and humiliating an entire people.

"We will continue to serve in the Israel Defence Force in any assignment
that will serve the defence of the state of Israel. The assignment of
occupation and repression does not serve that aim and we will have no
part in it."

First published as an advertisement in the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz on 25
January 2002, this statement was signed by 52 soldiers and reserve
officers (1). By the end of February it had collected more than 280
signatures. The statement brought into the open a growing wave of
refusal that the army had hitherto managed to keep out of the public
view. Throughout February the initiative erupted into the popular
awareness and provoked a debate that extended to the army and even to
the Knesset.

Also on 25 January the popular daily Yediot Aharonot had published
firsthand reports by reservists. Ariel Shatil, a non-commissioned
officer in the artillery, said that he had found soldiers in his unit
sniping at innocent people. David Zonshein, a lieutenant in the
paratroopers, had seen soldiers seize houses and demolish them. Ishai
Sagi, an artillery lieutenant, was sent to
defend settlers who were beating Palestinians and burning cars in the
West Bank. Shukki Sade, a NCO in the paratroopers, heard men in his
battalion tell, with indifference, how they had killed a child in Khan
Younis. These four, veterans of wars in Lebanon and committed Zionists,
were still prepared to serve their reserve duty, but not in the occupied
territories where, said the paper, "they felt that were losing their
humanity. They are no longer prepared to remain silent. Their aim is to
start a movement of popular protest that will change national
priorities."

No-one, or almost no-one, in Israel really believed that the army could
put down the Palestinian intifada without committing war crimes. Even
the transport minister, ex-Brigadier General Ephraim Sneh, had warned of
the danger of things spinning out of control six months after the
intifada began: "Sharon can go to the International Court in The Hague
without me," he said (2). But it took time for people to realise the
extent of the army's violence in its war against the Palestinians; this
reached its height in the middle of January with the demolition of
dozens of houses - lived-in houses - in Rafah in the south of the Gaza
Strip. The denials of the IDF spokesman - belied by detailed television
footage - convinced no-one.

The black flag of illegality

A week earlier there was a conference in Tel Aviv called "Have you taken
the road of The Hague?". There Yigal Shohat, a doctor and former colonel
and fighter pilot who became a prisoner of war when his plane was shot
down in Egypt during the "war of attrition" in1970, referred to the
trial of IDF officers and men indicted for the Kafr Kassem massacre (29
October 1956), at which the judges ruled that soldiers are bound to
disregard any order distinguished by "the black flag of illegality".

Shohat declared that "killing civilians intentionally is a war crime".
He called on soldiers not to serve in the occupied territories, pilots
not to bomb cities, drivers of bulldozers not to destroy houses, and
asked everyone to disobey orders "covered in the black flag of
illegality". He added: "There are people who never notice the black
flag, even when they are killing a bound Arab.
There are others who notice it only when they get old. Like me. When I
was a young pilot, I didn't examine the choice of methods" (3).

In the middle of this debate, the former Shin Bet (internal security)
chief, ex-General Ami Ayalon, expressed surprise that "very few soldiers
disobey manifestly illegal orders. After all, to kill unarmed children,
that is an illegal order" (4). Ayalon's remarks were the final straw.
The furious political-military establishment decided to destroy the
movement. The chief of staff, General
Shaul Mofaz, warned all who had signed the petition that they would be
punished if they persisted in refusing to serve in the occupied
territories, even court-martialled (5). His predecessor, former General
Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, described their refusal as a breach that threatened
to bring down the "wall" of the state of Israel (6).

The movement had first appeared in Israel at the end of the 1970s when
soldiers refused, on an individual basis, to serve in the occupied
territories - and later in Lebanon. They did not imagine that, years
later, their children would find themselves in the same situation.
Earlier, in 1970, during the war of attrition between Israel and Egypt,
a group of high-school students had written an open letter to Prime
Minister Golda Meir before their mobilisation, calling on her not to
renounce all hope of peace. Ten years later 27 young people declared to
Ezer Weizmann, then defence minister, that they refused to serve in the
occupied territories. Some of them were sentenced to prison. Then, in
summer 1982, a group of people decided that they would not serve in
Lebanon and founded Yesh Gvul ("There is a limit").

Israel's real heroes

The first prominent personality to encourage this "selective refusal"
was Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz (1903-94). In March 1969 he warned
Israel against the dangers of occupying Arab lands and controlling
hundreds of thousands of Arabs. He saw Greater Israel as a "catastrophic
monster" which could "pervert" Israelis and "annihilate the Jewish
people, poisoning education
and harming freedom of thought and criticism" (7). Years later he
explained: "I say that these young refuseniks are Israel's real heroes
because they refuse to obey the government and the army, that is to say
two legal institutions whose orders transform the nature of the state of
Israel, which was not founded in order to dominate another people. Our
civilian and military leaders want to turn the political organ of the
Jewish people's national independence into a repressive instrument of
Jewish power, which uses violence against another people in order to
impose a Jewish grip, coated with American steel, on all the territories
beyond the Green Line" (8).

Since the start of the present intifada, Yesh Gvul has supported the
growing number of soldiers refusing to serve in the occupied
territories, including those of them who have been sentenced to prison.
The group has also led a campaign that says: "The war to defend Jewish
settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and their bully boys is not our
war". Yesh Gvul has collected close on 300 additional signatures of
reservists on its own "declaration of refusal' to take part in the
repression of the Palestinian people or safeguard the Jewish
settlements. The group estimates that there are now in total nearly
1,000 refuseniks, whether in intent or in fact (9).

Yesh Gvul is taking a new step with press advertisements aimed at
soldiers, reminding them that shooting at unarmed civilians, bombing
inhabited neighbourhoods, taking part in targeted assassinations,
destroying houses, depriving people of food and medical supplies, are
all war crimes. It is calling on all conscripts and reservists to reply
"Not me".

In a separate move, 62 high school pupils have sent a collective letter
to the prime minister, defence minister and armed forces' chief of
staff. In it, they condemned the government and army's racist,
aggressive policy and said they would refuse to take part in the
repression of the Palestinian people (10). Two of them were sentenced to
military prison in January.

My country, right or wrong

Selective refusal is no longer a marginal activity. It is a growing
phenomenon, one that now touches new sorts of people, ordinary soldiers
and officers in regular army units, as well as reservists. It is
reaching out beyond the young left, pacifists and non-Zionists to
Israelis who define themselves as Zionists, who until recently were part
of the national consensus and saw it as "my country, right or wrong".

The growth of the movement shows an evolution in Israeli opinion. Many
no longer want to be part of the violence that goes on in the occupied
territories. Others more broadly reject the policy of the present
government in all its aspects, in particular political and economic.
There is anguish and fear of the Palestinians' armed resistance, their
terror attacks against civilians, not just military targets. Many who
voted for Ariel Sharon are disappointed that he has dismally failed to
keep his promise to bring peace and security. A number of Labour voters
view as treason that their party leaders, by joining the government, are
backing Sharon. Others just lament the failure of the left, which has
not mobilised, or tried to mobilise, public opinion against the
disastrous policies of the present government. Criticism extends to the
media which, for the most part, serve the authorities instead of
providing honest information (11).

An opposition movement is trying to fill this political vacuum. It is a
loose but generally harmonious coalition of leftwing groups and
grassroots human rights associations (like Doctors for human rights,
Rabbis for human rights, the Committee against the Destruction of Homes,
B'Tselem, the Information Centre for human rights in the occupied
territories, Gush Shalom) and a new
Arab-Jewish group called Taayush ("live together" in Arabic).

Taayush started after the intifada broke out. In a few months it
mobilised a new generation of young activists to organise activities
both inside Israel and in the occupied territories. These young people,
appalled by the tragic events of October 2000 when the Israeli police
killed 13 Arab Israelis, called for an Arab-Jewish action group that
would speak out against racist, segregationist policies. Taayush aimed
to organise non-violent mass protest, on a local basis, on concrete
problems, through which to create a Jewish-Arab alternative political
platform. The group wants to stop the demonisation of Palestinians and
reach out in solidarity: it says there must be a direct, grassroots
alliance to overcome fear and racism.

The group has so far organised eight convoys of food for Palestinian
villages under siege. Local Palestinian activists have helped with these
convoys of lorries and cars. They have had trouble getting through the
military blockades and the army has even tried to stop them by force.
Last summer 400 Taayush activists took part in a three-day Jewish-Arab
work camp in the Arab Israeli
village of Dar al-Hanoun where they built a road and a children's
playground (12).

For months on end the Israeli government and army were able to bear down
on the Palestinians of the occupied territories without meeting any real
resistance from ordinary Israelis. That bleak page may now have been
turned. A peace movement is opposing Sharon's policies with growing
strength. With it comes hope that there may still be light at the end of
the tunnel.


* Journalist, Tel Aviv

(1) www.seruv.org.il

(2) Yedioth Aharonot, Tel Aviv, 20 April 2001. A reference to the
failure of the Israeli judicial system to deal with human rights abuses
against the Palestinians and the move to take such cases before other
courts (The Hague, Belgium).

(3) Haaretz, TelAviv, 18 January 2002. Unless indicated otherwise, all
quotations are from Haaretz.

(4) Channel 1, 1 February 2002

(5) No "refusenik" has ever been court-martialled, possibly because the
army is scared of being challenged with the "black flag" principle.

(6) Channel 2, February 2002.

(7) 16 March 1969.

(8) Yeshayahu Leibovitz, La mauvaise conscience d'Israël, Entretiens
avec Joseph Algazy, Le Monde-Editions, Paris, 1994.

(9) www.yesh-gvul.org. During 16 months of the intifada, Yesh Gvul
records over 400 soldiers who refused duties in the occupied
territories. Of these, some 50 received prison sentences.

(10) 6 September 2001.

(11) Le Monde, 10-11 February 2002.

(12) http://taayush.tripod.com/taayush.html


Translated by Wendy Kristianasen