Grappling With Protests, Israel Seeks to Limit Use of Force
By JOSHUA MITNICK
MIDDLE EAST NEWS
SEPTEMBER 22, 2011
Source - Wall Street Journal
Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian youth during clashes that erupted between the soldiers and Palestinian stone-throwers at a checkpoint on the edge of Ramallah Wednesday.
TEL AVIV—Israel's army is training soldiers to use minimal force to deal with Palestinian protesters, after a series of fatal encounters.
The Israel Defense Forces' effort to adjust its strategy of responding to adversaries with disproportionate force comes as Israel faces rallies by Palestinians supporting their bid for admission as a state to the United Nations.
Worried that a lethal response could inflame the region, the IDF is making what it calls its most comprehensive preparation for large-scale protests in the history of the decades-old Palestinian conflict.
Ghassan Khatib, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, said Israel is exaggerating the possibility of unrest to undermine support for the U.N. bid.
On Wednesday, several thousand Palestinians attended rallies across the West Bank in support of statehood. The events, overwhelmingly festive and low key, were orchestrated by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's political wing and organized in city centers, away from Israeli checkpoints and settlements, to minimize the potential for clashes. The Palestinian Authority also put thousands of security officers on the streets.
Palestinian flags adorned cars and hung from windows.
A few clashes did take place. In Hebron, Palestinian security officers arrested youths throwing rocks; at the Qalandiya checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem, Israeli forces used tear gas and fired rubber bullets at rock-throwing youths.
In an effort to keep Israeli soldiers in check, the IDF, led by Brig. Gen. Mickey Edelstein, its chief of infantry and paratroopers, has developed a menu of nuanced and measured responses, bulked up on nonlethal weapons, revised guidelines for using live ammunition and conducted drills with actors posing as enraged, but unarmed, protesters.
"In wartime the meaning of winning is to capture a hill and many times it means killing the enemy," Gen. Edelstein said. "But when you are coming to deal with disorders or demonstrations, you ask for other things.…You ask for more restraint."
The concern in Israel is that subsequent rallies could get out of control and target large numbers of Israelis, risking a bloody crackdown that could spark a new Palestinian uprising.
A 90-page manual titled "Coping With Disturbances" outlines the IDF's new commitment to avoid, when possible, the old tendency to pummel its adversaries. In one section of the manual, which was briefly shown to The Wall Street Journal, colorful diagrams illustrate how to respond to a Palestinian march on a Jewish settlement in the West Bank by deploying soldiers to protect the settlement without using overwhelming force.
The Defense Ministry says it is spending tens of millions of dollars on stink bombs, water cannon, stun grenades, tear-gas dispensers, high-frequency speaker systems and other nonlethal crowd-control weapons.
The ministry is also deploying videographers to wage propaganda war against Palestinian protesters who routinely use mobile phones to record clashes with Israeli troops and post video on YouTube.
Gen. Edelstein said Israel learned this lesson from its raid last year on a Turkish ship aiming to break a sea blockade of the Gaza Strip, a raid that left nine activists dead.
"Even if we do have mistakes, we will be able to explain them," the general said.
An Israeli policeman, center, and other security forces took action in clashes with rock-throwing protesters at Qalandiya checkpoint on Wednesday
The army is also training rapid-response teams made up of residents of most of the 120 West Bank settlements on how to deal with approaching Palestinian crowds. The training emphasizes that "quiet" demonstrations are legitimate.
Yet leaders of Israel's settler movement have greeted the new guidelines with skepticism and warned that if settlers don't get military protection, armed teams of settlers would open fire on Palestinian trespassers.
Shlomo Vaknin, security chief of the Yesha Council, the main settler organization, said the settlers aren't equipped with nonlethal crowd-control weapons. If the IDF were absent, the settlers would apply their own interpretation of the rules, he said.
"If there are 2,000 demonstrators facing the [settlement] alert squads armed with M-16s, it will surely not be photogenic," he said. "Tolerance ends at the settlement fence."
Some military officers say Palestinian civil unrest, inspired by popular uprisings across the Middle East, might pose as much of a long-term challenge to Israel as armed insurgency does.
An army psychologist involved in the IDF's effort said forbearance would become a lasting part of basic training if Palestinians embrace mass protest as a long-term strategy.
Stones were a weapon of choice in the first Palestinian uprising, in the late 1980s, and remain a popular means of resistance against Israel, even as the West Bank leadership espouses nonviolence.
Israel was caught off guard in May when thousands of Palestinians and their supporters, some throwing firebombs, tried to breach its northern border with Lebanon, and crossed from Syria into the disputed Israeli-held Golan Heights during protests recalling the 1948 birth of Israel, which Palestinians refer to as a naqba, or disaster. Seven people were killed and 111 wounded when Israeli and Lebanese forces opened fire.
Those clashes, after peaceful uprisings that deposed the longtime rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, crystallized a rethinking of Israel's riot-control tactics that had begun months before the Arab Spring revolutions, according to Ron Ben Yishai, a military analyst for the newspaper Yediot Aharonot.
Gerald Steinberg, a political-science professor at Bar Ilan University, said the attempt at restraint reflects a long-term shift by officers who have spent their adult lives fighting wars.
"It took Israel 10 years to understand the lethality of a one-sided media image," he said, referring to the power of video footage of Israeli attacks to spur further upheaval.
The psychologist said field commanders are being shown archival footage for lessons on crowd dynamics. One aim, he said, is to help them identify soldiers who are likely to crack under pressure and resort to excessive force.
Flipping through the new handbook, Gen. Edelstein described the message being delivered to soldiers. "We say, 'Guys, even if [a group of Palestinians] are going into a settlement, it doesn't mean they are becoming terrorists,' " he explained. "If they cut the fence, should we shoot them? Not always."
—Richard Boudreaux and Bill Spindle contributed to this article.
By JOSHUA MITNICK
MIDDLE EAST NEWS
SEPTEMBER 22, 2011
Source - Wall Street Journal
Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian youth during clashes that erupted between the soldiers and Palestinian stone-throwers at a checkpoint on the edge of Ramallah Wednesday.TEL AVIV—Israel's army is training soldiers to use minimal force to deal with Palestinian protesters, after a series of fatal encounters.
The Israel Defense Forces' effort to adjust its strategy of responding to adversaries with disproportionate force comes as Israel faces rallies by Palestinians supporting their bid for admission as a state to the United Nations.
Worried that a lethal response could inflame the region, the IDF is making what it calls its most comprehensive preparation for large-scale protests in the history of the decades-old Palestinian conflict.
Ghassan Khatib, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, said Israel is exaggerating the possibility of unrest to undermine support for the U.N. bid.
On Wednesday, several thousand Palestinians attended rallies across the West Bank in support of statehood. The events, overwhelmingly festive and low key, were orchestrated by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's political wing and organized in city centers, away from Israeli checkpoints and settlements, to minimize the potential for clashes. The Palestinian Authority also put thousands of security officers on the streets.
Palestinian flags adorned cars and hung from windows.
A few clashes did take place. In Hebron, Palestinian security officers arrested youths throwing rocks; at the Qalandiya checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem, Israeli forces used tear gas and fired rubber bullets at rock-throwing youths.
In an effort to keep Israeli soldiers in check, the IDF, led by Brig. Gen. Mickey Edelstein, its chief of infantry and paratroopers, has developed a menu of nuanced and measured responses, bulked up on nonlethal weapons, revised guidelines for using live ammunition and conducted drills with actors posing as enraged, but unarmed, protesters.
"In wartime the meaning of winning is to capture a hill and many times it means killing the enemy," Gen. Edelstein said. "But when you are coming to deal with disorders or demonstrations, you ask for other things.…You ask for more restraint."
The concern in Israel is that subsequent rallies could get out of control and target large numbers of Israelis, risking a bloody crackdown that could spark a new Palestinian uprising.
A 90-page manual titled "Coping With Disturbances" outlines the IDF's new commitment to avoid, when possible, the old tendency to pummel its adversaries. In one section of the manual, which was briefly shown to The Wall Street Journal, colorful diagrams illustrate how to respond to a Palestinian march on a Jewish settlement in the West Bank by deploying soldiers to protect the settlement without using overwhelming force.
The Defense Ministry says it is spending tens of millions of dollars on stink bombs, water cannon, stun grenades, tear-gas dispensers, high-frequency speaker systems and other nonlethal crowd-control weapons.
The ministry is also deploying videographers to wage propaganda war against Palestinian protesters who routinely use mobile phones to record clashes with Israeli troops and post video on YouTube.
Gen. Edelstein said Israel learned this lesson from its raid last year on a Turkish ship aiming to break a sea blockade of the Gaza Strip, a raid that left nine activists dead.
"Even if we do have mistakes, we will be able to explain them," the general said.
An Israeli policeman, center, and other security forces took action in clashes with rock-throwing protesters at Qalandiya checkpoint on WednesdayThe army is also training rapid-response teams made up of residents of most of the 120 West Bank settlements on how to deal with approaching Palestinian crowds. The training emphasizes that "quiet" demonstrations are legitimate.
Yet leaders of Israel's settler movement have greeted the new guidelines with skepticism and warned that if settlers don't get military protection, armed teams of settlers would open fire on Palestinian trespassers.
Shlomo Vaknin, security chief of the Yesha Council, the main settler organization, said the settlers aren't equipped with nonlethal crowd-control weapons. If the IDF were absent, the settlers would apply their own interpretation of the rules, he said.
"If there are 2,000 demonstrators facing the [settlement] alert squads armed with M-16s, it will surely not be photogenic," he said. "Tolerance ends at the settlement fence."
Some military officers say Palestinian civil unrest, inspired by popular uprisings across the Middle East, might pose as much of a long-term challenge to Israel as armed insurgency does.
An army psychologist involved in the IDF's effort said forbearance would become a lasting part of basic training if Palestinians embrace mass protest as a long-term strategy.
Stones were a weapon of choice in the first Palestinian uprising, in the late 1980s, and remain a popular means of resistance against Israel, even as the West Bank leadership espouses nonviolence.
Israel was caught off guard in May when thousands of Palestinians and their supporters, some throwing firebombs, tried to breach its northern border with Lebanon, and crossed from Syria into the disputed Israeli-held Golan Heights during protests recalling the 1948 birth of Israel, which Palestinians refer to as a naqba, or disaster. Seven people were killed and 111 wounded when Israeli and Lebanese forces opened fire.
Those clashes, after peaceful uprisings that deposed the longtime rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, crystallized a rethinking of Israel's riot-control tactics that had begun months before the Arab Spring revolutions, according to Ron Ben Yishai, a military analyst for the newspaper Yediot Aharonot.
Gerald Steinberg, a political-science professor at Bar Ilan University, said the attempt at restraint reflects a long-term shift by officers who have spent their adult lives fighting wars.
"It took Israel 10 years to understand the lethality of a one-sided media image," he said, referring to the power of video footage of Israeli attacks to spur further upheaval.
The psychologist said field commanders are being shown archival footage for lessons on crowd dynamics. One aim, he said, is to help them identify soldiers who are likely to crack under pressure and resort to excessive force.
Flipping through the new handbook, Gen. Edelstein described the message being delivered to soldiers. "We say, 'Guys, even if [a group of Palestinians] are going into a settlement, it doesn't mean they are becoming terrorists,' " he explained. "If they cut the fence, should we shoot them? Not always."
—Richard Boudreaux and Bill Spindle contributed to this article.