Doubts grow within Israeli Army
Military argues over tactics against Palestinians
An Israeli soldier watches over handcuffed Palestinian residents during a raid in the West Bank town of Nablus in August.
By Molly Moore
THE WASHINGTON POST
JERUSALEM, Nov. 18 — The hunt for suspected militants sent Sgt. Lirom Hakkak bashing his way through a wall into a Palestinian family’s threadbare living room, his slender frame sweating under nearly 35 pounds of body armor and combat gear, his M-16 rifle ready.
HE NOTICED the grandmother first, her creased face so blanched with terror that she appeared on the verge of collapse. A middle-aged couple huddled close by, trembling.
“They could be my parents,” Hakkak, the 22-year-old son of an Israeli poet, recalled thinking. In that split second of recognition, he said, “you really feel disgusting. You see these people and you know the majority of them are innocent and you’re taking away their rights. You also know you must do it.”
As the Israel Defense Forces enter a fourth year of battle with the Palestinians, the most dominant institution in Israeli society is also embroiled in a struggle over its own character, according to dozens of interviews with soldiers, officers, reservists and some of the nation’s preeminent military analysts.
Officers and soldiers have begun publicly criticizing specific tactics that they consider dehumanizing to both their own troops and Palestinians. And while they do not question the need to prevent terrorist acts against Israelis, military officials and soldiers are speaking out with increasing frequency against a strategy that they say has forsaken negotiation and relied almost exclusively on military force to address the conflict.
Nearly 600 members of the armed forces have signed statements refusing to serve in the Palestinian territories. Active-duty and reserve personnel are criticizing the military in public. Parents of soldiers are speaking out as well, complaining that the protection of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is not worth the loss of their sons and daughters.
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