Israeli Reservists Reject West Bank, Gaza Duty

JERUSALEM —  What began with a terse note tacked to a Tel Aviv University bulletin board has mushroomed into the most serious protest movement against the Israeli army’s conduct in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 16 months of fighting with the Palestinians--and it is coming from soldiers themselves.

In newspaper ads, more than 100 reserve combat officers and soldiers have denounced the army for what they call immoral behavior toward Palestinian civilians and have vowed that they will no longer serve in the West Bank or Gaza. Alarmed by the declaration, the army has begun relieving some of the dissenters of their commands and is threatening to court-martial them.

Speaking to Israel Radio on Friday, Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, the army’s chief of staff, said that if the protesters were “ideologically motivated” by a political view that Jewish settlements should be abandoned and the occupied territories handed to the Palestinians, then “this is not only refusal but grave sedition.”

The dissent has touched off a firestorm of debate in a nation where army service is a pillar of citizenship and where the conflict with the Palestinians that erupted in September 2000 is seen by most as an existential threat that mandates national unity.

The men represent a minuscule fraction of the tens of thousands of Israelis who perform reserve duty annually, but their status as long-serving reservists in combat units gives their criticism weight both inside the army and in Israeli society.

The movement started when two reservists posted a note at Tel Aviv University, where they study, that said: “If you are thinking about refusal and you’re having a hard time with it, call us.”

Within 10 days, more than 30 reserve personnel--many of them officers in combat units--had called the attached number. More than 50 officers and soldiers signed an ad published Jan. 25 in the mass-circulation daily Yediot Aharonot, saying they will not serve. On Friday, more than 100 reservists signed a reprint of the letter that ran again in Yediot.

“We hereby declare that we will no longer fight the war for the settlements’ safety,” the reservists wrote. “We will no longer fight beyond the Green Line [Israel’s pre-1967 border] with the purpose of controlling, expelling, starving and humiliating an entire people.”

The soldiers said that they will do reserve duty “in any assignment that serves the defense of the state of Israel” but that “the assignment of occupation and oppression does not serve this cause, and we will have no part in it.”

In a poll of 504 Israelis conducted by Israel Radio, whose results were aired Thursday, about 30% of those questioned said they supported the reservists’ protest. Forty-five percent said they believed more reservists will join the movement and refuse service in the West Bank and Gaza.

“We relate to this phenomenon seriously and severely,” Mofaz told Israel Radio. “Why seriously? Because some of those officers who wrote the dissenting letter also volunteered in the past to take on responsibility. They contributed to state security on many occasions. They led soldiers to battle. They endangered their lives.”

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shared Mofaz’s ambivalence about the dissenters.

“I see this as a very serious matter,” Sharon told Yediot in an interview Friday. “If the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers don’t carry out the decisions of the elected government, that will be the beginning of the end of the democracy.” But because the men are combat veterans, Sharon said, he is considering meeting with them to discuss their grievances.

Although they may not change the government’s policy, the protesters have already sparked the first real public debate here about the army’s conduct toward Palestinian civilians--and about whether the military is routinely asking troops to carry out illegal orders--since the Palestinian revolt began.

In interviews with Israel Television and the Maariv newspaper, retired Adm. Ami Ayalon, former head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, said he disagrees with the reservists’ public protest. But Ayalon also expressed surprise that more soldiers have not refused to carry out what he said are “blatantly illegal orders” in the West Bank and Gaza.

“From what I know of what is going on on the ground, many illegal orders are being issued and there are very few cases of refusal,” Ayalon told Maariv. “That means that too few soldiers refused to carry out too many illegal orders. When we kill unarmed children, that is an illegal order.”

Some of the dissenting reservists have given harrowing accounts to Israeli reporters of acts they said they committed against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza, acts that some of them said they feared constituted war crimes.

“We were raised to be officers with values, and they’ve turned us into combatants who deal in bloodshed and war crimes,” said Lt. David Zonshein, a 28-year-old software engineer who was one of the founders of the movement. Zonshein told Yediot that he hopes to sign up 500 reservists in the movement because “when we reach 500 people, they will have to decide--occupation or the IDF.”

The dissenters’ allegations that troops are routinely asked to carry out illegal orders have been strenuously denied by Mofaz, the army spokesman’s office and other reservists. They all insist that troops are serving legally in the territories and that instances of abuse cited by the protesting reservists are aberrations that are punished when uncovered by army investigators.

“When there are illegal orders with a black flag, it is right not to obey them,” Mofaz said. “But I must say that in the fighting that has been going on for over 16 months . . . I can say with full confidence that very few armies in the world would . . . behave on the same moral and value level as IDF soldiers and commanders do in the field.”

In the past in Israel, dissenters have refused to serve in various wars, as well as in the West Bank and Gaza after the Jewish state occupied those areas in the wake of the June 1967 Middle East War. Usually, however, such acts of protest have been carried out on an individual basis, rarely as a collective, public act.

“These aren’t just 50 guys,” said Peretz Kidron, spokesman for Yesh Gvul, a leftist group that counsels individual soldiers on refusing to serve in the West Bank and Gaza. “They made a point of mentioning their ranks and the reserve unit they serve in, and they are all with highly regarded combat units. This is an elite group.”

Two other groups of reservists responded to the dissenters with their own ads Friday in Yediot.

“We are ashamed of you as fighters whose duty it is to fight alongside you, and we regret the decision of the army and state, who mistakenly deemed you worthy of the right to serve and command,” wrote one group of nearly 100 reserve officers and soldiers in an open letter to the protesters.

“We are opposed to the explicit and implicit attempts to describe the IDF’s actions to protect security throughout Israel, including the territories, as a war crime or illegal command,” wrote a second group of more than 100 reserve officers and soldiers in another letter. “We trust the IDF’s morality and that of the unity government guiding it, even if we do not agree with every step of policy.”

Nir Abudram, one of the counter-movement’s founders, told Yediot Aharonot that his group, the Right to Serve, had collected more than 100,000 signatures in a single day of canvassing.

The dissenting reservists are refusing to speak with foreign reporters. A spokesman for the group, however, agreed to respond to some of the criticisms in a chat with a Los Angeles Times reporter.

“Our statements are aimed against a political system and not the army,” said Amit Mashiah, who is also a reservist. “The Israeli army is the people’s army. It is based on citizens who care about their country. We never criticized the army--we criticized the people who sent them there. Our movement is a part of a struggle in order to determine the face of our society. We believe that what we are doing is for our society and for our country.”

Mashiah said that the group decided not to speak to foreign media because it believes “this is an internal Israeli issue” that should be debated within Israeli society. “We don’t want to do anything that would harm Israel,” he said.

But in interviews with Israeli reporters, the dissenters have said that they were asked too many times to carry out orders that violated their consciences.

“I stopped ambulances at checkpoints as a paratroop officer,” Zonshein told talk-show host Yair Lapid after the army relieved Zonshein of his command last week. “I stripped areas clean of groves and trees that are people’s livelihood as a paratroop officer. I entered houses and threatened the father as a paratroop officer, and I fired at neighborhoods as a paratroop officer, and, as such, I signed the letter, to say: Enough.”

Sometimes, Zonshein said, he has allowed Palestinians in distress to pass through roadblocks “against regulations” stipulating that ambulances are supposed to coordinate their passage with the army in advance of arriving at roadblocks.

Israelis who criticize the dissenters, Zonshein said, “must remember that everyone who signed the letter is willing to be killed for this country--but there are basic moral conditions. Not everything is allowed, not even in war.”

In an interview, reserve Col. Ron Shechner said he views the protest movement as dangerous to both the army and Israeli democracy. It is important, Shechner said, that the men who signed the ad be disciplined for their act of disobedience.

“There are moral dilemmas in every war,” Shechner said. “But this group of reservists is dishonest and ungrateful. Claiming that the army is immoral is false. It is a lie. We are dealing with this whole difficult, complex situation with silk gloves, in a surgical way. We are endangering our own lives so as not to hurt innocent people.”