Interview with Colonel Miri Eisin
Reporter Debbie Whitmont interviews Coloniel Miri
Eisin, spokeswoman for the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
 I
want to refer back to the bombing in Netanya, Operation Defensive
Shield was launched just after that, but it must have been planned for
a lot longer - was it something that was on hold, waiting to go?
Well surprisingly it actually wasn't planned for a lot longer. There
is a difference between the concept of the fact that you have to go
into these areas to be able to contend with the terrorism that the
Palestinian authority is not doing, and between having an exact plan
and responding to what was a horrendous month of terrorism in Israel -
143 civilian Israelis killed in suicide terrorist attacks. So at the
end it was a response towards all of those different attacks - the
exact plan was really formulated only at the time of the attacks.
So it was put together within a week, really?
Even a bit less. We have already started with operations within the
cities, so that the concept of going into the city to dot that type of
work - going in to arrest terrorists - to find where they're hiding
out - to find the explosive labs was something that we had done in the
six weeks before that around seven times in different cities. The
operation this time was different in the fact that we went - not
simultaneously but at the end we were in six different Palestinian
Authority cities at the same time, operating simultaneously in all of
them.
Some of the reserves called up for example, some of the ones who
served in Jenin have been quoted as saying they had about one days
training - is that enough?
Well the idea of the reserves in Israel is the fact that they're
trained every year for throughout the years that they're in the
reserves, so there is always the question of the immediate effect that
they need of what type of training they need and the fact that they're
always ready to be called up - that's the whole idea of the Israeli
military. We have a very small regular army and a very large reserve
army, and those were infantry people that were called up to do what
they know how to do best.
So one days training was sufficient?
At the end it's a question of each one will always feel if they had
done more or less - I don't think that the issue here is the question
of training. These are elite infantry units that know how to do the
job.
It seemed almost to be announced that there was going to be an
incursion into Gaza last week - what happened? Why didn't it happen?
To a large degree it's the sort of thing that'll happen now and it'll
probably happen a few more times. We're prepared to do as a military
what the government tell us to do - either in response or in
initiative as long as the Palestinian authority refuses to take care
of terrorism and yes - there was another suicide bomber at the time -
it was thought that he'd come out of the Gaza Strip and it was no - at
the time everybody knew that more reserves had been called up. The
reason it was called off at the end - I don't even know if there was a
specific reason. It never had a specific day where it was supposed to
happen, and as I say in those sorts of things we have plans, we have
general plans. We try them and then we see if we really need to
implement them. The decision at the end is a political one - not a
military one.
Some people say Gaza would've been too hard - it was too crowded a
civilian area that there would've been too many casualties - is that
true?
I think the Gaza is definitely what you would call a hard place to go
into. Urban fighting is the harshest kind of urban fighting you have
anywhere in the world today. But I don't think that Gaza would've been
any more difficult than Nablus, which is a very tight closed fit - we
went into two refugee camps just in Nablus alone and refugee camps are
places which are very, very, very crowded. But yes - Gaza would've
been hard but the fact that it's hard doesn't mean that you don't do
it. At the end, we're doing this to have security. We're not doing
this because we want go on a field trip.
But it would mean a lot of casualties?
To both sides, which is harsh. I think that one of the things that
happened is that the Palestinians are much more aware of the fact that
we're willing to do this, and that we're not going be held back by the
fact that they're not doing anything, and in that sense it's a
question of deterrence that we - they believe that we will go in and
that's important to us, and I think that because of that Gaza is not
something that's taboo. If we feel that we have correct intelligence
to go in, to arrest terrorists, to find explosives, to stop even one
suicide bomber before they explode in Israel - I think that we would
have qualms about doing that.
Of course the other side of deterrence is bitterness and reprisal,
isn't it?
I think that one of the sides which is the harshest of the violent
cycle is the side of education, because they're being educated to
extreme hatred and to killing Jews and to killing Israelis and to
thinking of it as an ingrained part of their culture, and yes - there
is the side that when you go in and do operations in these cities, you
add to that hatred; but the basic fact of the hatred doesn't come from
our operations. It comes from something a lot more deep seeded within
the Palestinian Authority.
And what is that?
Mainly the fact that here we are - almost 10 years into the Oslo
process and in their school books they don't recognise the state of
Israel. Yasser Arafat for the first time last week to Wolf Blitzer on
CNN - when asked point black does he recognise the right of Israel to
exist said yes - but that's the first time he's said that, and for us
10 years into the Oslo agreement - you made an agreement with the
other side based on the fact that they recognise your right to exist -
no more than that - let alone the actions of not doing terrorism
against us. Everybody seems to forget that we were in a political
process when they decided to initiate the violence and it was a
decision that they made. It wasn't spontaneous, it didn't start from
some reason that a lot of people have brought in reasons, and it was
something that was planned months in advance and that they wanted to
use. They wanted to use violence to achieve what they didn't achieve
in political - in the political process.
Getting back to Jenin, obviously there've been widely diverse
accounts of what happened, yet the UN fact-finding commission was
refused entry. Wouldn't it have been better for Israel - wouldn't it
have been better for everyone if an outside body had been able to come
in and make that determination clarify exactly what happened?
I think there's a difference between an outside commission coming in
to find out what happened in Jenin, and to what actually happened to
be with the United Nations commission and I say this sadly because in
Jenin there was a battle and the only reason that the United Nations
have thought to send this commission is because of the so-called
"massacre", and even after the United Nation people themselves said
that there was no massacre they continuously wanted to send in the
commission and the commission's really made up mostly of people - only
of people who were looking into a very specific issue - the
humanitarian one - which is not easy. There was a very harsh battle
and there were harsh results to both sides, and the humanitarian issue
was one which was at stake and we have said and on sad terms -
civilians were killed - not many; a lot of structures were destroyed
but structures can be rebuilt. Lives can't be brought back. But in the
heart of a refugee camp, there was a mini fortress made up out of
booby-traps and that side was not within the, what the commission was
going check it all and in that sense I understand why and I say this
as on the political side - why the Israeli politicians decided to
refuse the entrance.
Despite the argument though over massacre, human rights groups have
alleged human rights violations - war crimes even. Isn't that
something that should be investigated?
I think it's something that has to be seen in also in the wider
context of what's going on. I wouldn't mind if they'd come and
investigate a suicide bomb exploding in Rishon LeZion and Tel Aviv….
I think they're doing that too. What about this...
No - they don't. Nobody's ever sent a commission here to find out
about suicide bombers. It's never been considered to be a...
Human Rights Watch is doing that now.
They watch it. They don't necessarily send in a commission and there
is a difference in that sense. As I said between a United Nations
commission and other people coming on in - I imagine that maybe along
the road a bit there will be some type of people coming in to check it
out but not necessarily the way that it was at the time where at the
end - we sort of felt I think to a large degree that they knew exactly
what they were going to say even before they arrived in Israel, which
for us is very harsh.
Does it concern you as part of a professional army when you hear
allegations, for example of soldiers using civilians as human shields
- putting them in windows to...
I've read, I've read so many of these...
Do you believe those things?
What's interesting is if you read - and I read them very carefully and
I've spoken to the soldiers and I think a bit more extensively than
most of the reporters or even the Human Rights Watch people who are
watching this.
Maybe that's because the reporters aren't allowed to.
No - the reporters at this stage along the way - soldiers are soldiers
in many military. It's not something unique to the Israeli military
that soldiers aren't allowed to talk to the media.
Well you'd have to agree it's very hard for journalists to talk to
soldiers.
Oh I don't think in that sense. It depends on the record or off the
record - I've said outside the idea from that sense as they do
anywhere allow where they can and what we can. But there was a bomber
there that was a very harsh battle and I've read some of the things
that were said and we consistently looked for all of those different
things because we try to check ourselves. We don't try to say you're
wrong and you don't know what you're saying, and we're right and we're
always right. One of the things that we have in Israel which is
something that you have in every office - I'll look for it in a moment
here too - it's on the wall, is the code of ethics and that's
something that's ingrained within our military and if people have gone
against that code of ethics for us it's a very harsh thing. To date we
know of 10 soldiers that have been bought to trial for things that
were against the code of ethics and that doesn't...
During Operation Defensive Shield?
During Operation Defensive Shield and they are in jail.
And what were those things?
Most of those were about looting and even though it was petty looting
- any looting is impossible.
Do you accept it, believe that that there were only 10 such cases?
I know of 10 that were brought to trial and I know that we're
consistently looking for it, and I know that we consider it
unacceptable. That doesn't make it any better. What that means is as
far as we're concerned, we have to find it and take it out from within
us and if our soldiers haven't as much as we want to have found
exactly what's going - I'm talking about looting, we have the other
side of the picture also - reserve soldiers going in and leaving money
for a family because they occupied their house and they left them a
sum of money for what they felt they had used within the house - which
is the other extreme, and those are the ones which aren't as
interesting because it doesn't show the one side; and there was
destruction - the destruction is an integral part of the battle and I
think that one of the problems is that everybody is considering this
operation as having been a clear, surgical operation that you go into
a city, you find exactly what you want and you go out. Life isn't so
simple. The Palestinians allowed within all of their cities - not just
the ones that we entered into, cause we didn't go into Gaza and we
only went in for a few days into Hebron and we didn't go into Jericho
at all. But in the different cities they allowed an incredible
terrorist organisation infrastructure to grow and just look at Israel
today. We've been arresting people who have conceived of doing any
type of terrorist activity against the Palestinians and we go against
them. We condemn them. I stand here and condemn it on any side, but we
do active things against it. Palestinians for the last year and a half
did nothing against terrorism coming out of their areas - not only
that, in the last six months they egged them on - they paid more money
- they made sure that they had all of the conditions without giving
the bottom line of saying go do an action, right now against the
Israelis in Haifa.
What do you say to the allegations that civilians were used as
shields? Do you accept it's true?
I know of one such case in Jenin itself and I've spoken of that one
case where a women came out of a house and they told the woman to go
back inside and to call on the house and to tell the people to come
out, which is also essentially - it's against the rules of the
engagement and I say it's against the rule of engagement and that
person who was told of that was put on trial within the system of what
happened at the time.
OK - what about the story of the woman who's asked to come along
while the soldiers knock on a door; the soldiers put a bomb at the
door, they're calling out "Open Up, Open Up"; the woman inside hears
them calling, comes to open the door and the bomb blows up in her
face?
I always say at these things because I read that and then I looked at
that and I saw interestingly neither one of them say that they were
wounded; neither one of them were in the hospital, they're very well
to be able to tell after a bomb blew up in their face and I really
wonder about those stories.
They say someone was killed.
They say so but they have no body, they have no name and we've looked
for that also. Throughout this operation...
You don't believe that story?
No I don't. I don't believe that story and I don't believe many of the
other ones. Sadly, and I say this sadly because again it goes back to
the type of culture - they have a history of telling lies and one of
the things I think within this entire long conflict that maybe we've
made a mistake but we don't know how to do otherwise, is the fact that
they tell lies and we sort of say Tut! - they're lies.
You don't think sometimes both sides might tell lies?
Possibly, but I really do think that there is a difference between a
democratic country like Israel, where within Israel itself if you tell
any lies, believe you me it comes out - it comes out in our
parliament, it comes out in our papers, it comes out in our media - we
have far left and far right and if we have any terrorists within us
then we're going to condemn them and bring them out as we're doing
right now, and I don't see anything equivalent on the Palestinian
side. They say that all of the problems have to do with the fact of
occupation, but all these cities have been under Palestinian authority
from 1993. Not all of them from '93, but the Gaza Strip and as it went
on Jericho and the other cities from 1995 and they were already under
their own authority, yet they chose to go to the violent path.
But what people are talking about is the way over the last 18
months the cordon has tightened if you like - there are more
checkpoints, there are more restrictions and their argument on that
side is that frustration has grown - that's the occupation I think
they're talking about.
And I say that they should look at their own leaders and maybe only
Yasser Arafat himself and say why? Why was he in a political process
and he said "no" to everything that was given to him? Why at every
stage along the way when any mediator has come to here, has Israel
said yes to things which were against Israeli security reason and said
yes because they said the world wants us to say yes, and they said no
and continue to, and made it worse and worse. Why, two weeks after
9/11 the terrible terrorist attacks inside the United States, did they
continue to say horrendous things against Israel? Why when General
Zinni came did they say no? Why is every single thing that comes up
from the outside world, and only their side is the right side; so yes
- maybe it's somewhere in the middle. I agree that there are two
sides, but it seems to us very one-sided on that sense, and the fact
that they started the violence - nobody remembers that anymore and at
this stage along the way everybody expects us to sit back and take
terrorist attacks in the middle of our cities.
Coming back to Jenin - at what point does destruction say of houses
by bulldozers, become disproportionate to the military objectives? I
think you say 95 houses destroyed...
No we said very clearly 130 houses destroyed within the camp itself,
which is out of 1,545 houses in the camp.…which is about 10%.
Hundreds of people homeless?
It's not hundreds of people homeless because the United Nations
Refugee Association that runs that camp itself says officially within
this camp there are 14,000 people who are assigned. We know that there
are only 9,000 people living there and in addition all those people
whose houses were knocked down and we've never denied that, were given
alternative housing within Jenin itself - that's never shown. What's
constantly being shown all around the world is the - a little bit
larger than football area that we knocked down and we did - and not a
city of Jenin which has 60,000 people who live there.
But alternative accommodation surely isn't the issue here. These
are people's houses. You walk around there, you see their toys, their
carpets, their books, their things in the rubble - that is destruction
of people's houses. At what point does that become disproportionate to
the military objective?
In November of 2001 a BBC Correspondent went into downtown - the heart
of the refugee camp and he six months ago and believe you me - you
cannot accuse him of having been on our side - stood in the centre of
the refugee camp and said I am in the middle of a booby-trapped area
where they're just waiting for the Israelis to come inside. They
brought this upon themselves - to continuously come against us and say
how could you do this to these poor people? How do these poor people
let the whole heart of the refugee camp become a booby-trapped area
where every single house was completely caught up with all sorts of
different types of bombs?
What was the military objective in levelling those houses?
In the operation itself what we said at the time was that we were
going to hit the terrorist infrastructure. That word has been totally
overused. I'll try and give it a little bit more idea of what that
means: terrorist organisation don't just happen to be and they're not
spontaneous. These are people who have an ideology and the ideology in
this case is the destruction of the state of Israel. It's not the
establishment of a Palestinian state in the 1967 war. It's the
destruction of the state of Israel, and they base themselves within
the Palestinian Authority areas meaning they draft people; they draft
the potential suicide bombers, Jenin had 28 suicide bombers coming out
only of Jenin itself - 23 exploded and of those they all came out of
the refugee camp itself. It means that the ideology was very embedded
there.
So what's the objective in levelling their houses though?
Well when we were going in, it's not necessarily the fact of levelling
the houses - we did that in other areas also, not as extensively - is
that the houses themselves were booby-trapped and as we were going in
and looking for the terrorists and for suicide bombers in this
operation alone the first one when we went in - actually as I said it
was the third one in Jenin when we went in - we arrested 10
suicide-potential bombers who had already videotaped their suicide
farewell, and we captured them alive inside the heart of that refugee
camp.
Have you shown those videotapes?
We haven't as of yet.
You have them?
We have them. We have all of these were arrested. We've allowed two of
these suicide bombers to already be interviewed by outer (foreign)
press but they are under arrest or being detained right now, to try
and find the threads. The suicide bombers aren't the leaders. We have
to differentiate between the leaders and the terrorist organisation -
the active terrorist like a suicide bomber and the passive ones - the
ones who help sort of the entire refugee camp within Jenin that allow
it to be within that. But Jenin was the capital of the suicide
bombers. The ironic side is that the Palestinian Authority in their
own documents from March of 2002 called Jenin the capital of the
suicide bombers.
What do you say to the claims that the idea if the army prevented
ambulances from proceeding?
We have a complete report of the entire days of the battle within
Jenin.
But why prevent ambulances?
At the end I could say that it - in hindsight might have been a bad
decision by a military commander. I can say that in hindsight. But the
fact that after the fact it was a bad decision, you have to see it
again in the context. There was a very harsh battle at the heart of
the camp, and one day the ambulances wanted to go in and we said they
could only go in if they co-ordinated with the military forces. They
refused - cause as I said we can work wherever we want, whenever we
want. They went in without co-ordination. When they came out we
stopped one of the ambulances and inside were two wanted terrorists.
The next day when they wanted to come in we said only if you do it
with co-ordination and they refused. The third day when we already
said, when there were already obviously casualties inside and we told
them they could go in, there were two occasions when we told them you
can go in now and they said No we don't want to go in now - it's
dangerous inside there. There was a sequence of days when both from
their sides, and they don't deny it - they just don't like being asked
that question - they were told you can go in and they said No it's
dangerous in there.
In hindsight it was a bad decision?
In hindsight.
What would happen in future? What should happen?
I think it's something that nowadays commanders are more aware of.
There definitely is in this battle here a whole battlefield which
we're not used to. I don't know how much you know on battlefields, but
urban warfare which the IDF unhappily has now become the worlds most
renown army that knows how to do urban warfare - there are four ways
to take care of a place like Jenin: you could do what basically the
Americans did in Afghanistan - of course I say this with all of the
difference in the world, but you can fire F16s or F15s from afar and,
and in approximately two bombs and one hour you wouldn't have a
refugee camp and you'd achieve as if what your mission is. We didn't
choose to do that.
You did fire F16s.
We did not. Not a single one, an F16. We did not use a single
aircraft.
Apache helicopters?
Helicopters - not apache helicopters, a different type of helicopter,
but the helicopters themselves that were used and this is considered
to be a complaint, use pin-point intelligence. They can fire into a
window - like the window I have behind me and all that will happen is
that the room here will be burnt. If there are people inside the room
they won't even necessarily be killed. All that they fire into the
room itself is 30 kilo, which is considered to be very, very little -
an F16 throws half a ton with one small bomb and we didn't choose to
use any of our heavy aircraft at all anywhere within the territories.
We didn't use any artillery. Israel has the finest artillery in the
world. You can use bulldozers which is the third stage, or you can use
infantry, and we chose to go in, in a way that in military term most
military look at us in awe at the idea that we went in with infantry
because it's the harshest kind of the harshest battle that you go
into, and only at the last stages in Jenin and mostly because of the
booby-trapped houses - not because of the other reasons of the
fighting as it was at the time, and because you could either knock the
house down or blow it up, and it was easier to knock it down because
it was booby-trapped. We went into all of these cities with infantry.
We went into the city of Nablus, which is larger than Jenin with
infantry - into two refugee camps and there were no civilian
casualties at all within that camp.
OK how did the strategy change in Jenin after the ambush?
It didn't change after the ambush. The problem with the booby-trapped
houses happened before that and it changed a day and a half before
that where they started bringing in more bulldozers. It's not a new
strategy. As I said in urban strategy you always have those four
stages and the use of the bulldozers and not just the use of infantry
- going in house by house came 36 hours before when they were having
problems with the booby-trapped houses, and it was mainly used to
clear out the roads and it was only at the last stages that it was
used to knock down the houses because all those houses were
booby-trapped as they went on and in to make sure that nobody exploded
upon us.
So what impact did the ambush have?
I don't think that the IDF is ever going to even fondly believe for
itself at the end that there were 23 soldiers killed in the battle of
Jenin - 13 in the one ambush. It definitely makes something in the
sense that everybody sort of sits and moves around but they were
already at the heart of the camp at that stage along the way. It
wasn't in the outskirts. It was when we were already at the areas
which we knew were booby-trapped. So did it have an impact? It
certainly didn't make anybody at the time more interested in doing any
demolition, and I want to remind you these are reserve soldiers. One
of the advantages of reserve soldiers, and it's definitely an
advantage that we're aware of, is that they're older, they come from
families - I don't know if you managed to talk to any of these people
even off the record but you have doctors and lawyers - these are
people who were called up and from their own civilian life they can
run a store, they can be a teacher, they can have some type of a
company and they come and they're called up and they go into these
areas and they have no interest in what I've heard also the idea of
revenge. Bulldozers were used before that. They had a mission and the
mission was that this time the city of Jenin and especially the camp
itself which was the heart of the suicide bombers would not continue
to be a base for where terrorists, suicide bombers could come out and
attack Israel, and I remind you that right as we were doing that -
during that there was a suicide bomber that came out of Jenin.
OK - I'm sure you've heard this too - you bring in infantry - one
of the problems can be indiscriminate firing. We've heard stories for
example of people in rooms in their houses who were shot.
It's sort of funny how you bring in the tanks, indiscriminate fire,
you bring in everything else. Indiscriminate firing - we went into six
different cities and in all the cities this time and we did them day
after day - for some of those that we did on the same day - when we
went into Ramallah, we went - surrounded and entered in and around
Arafat's compound, we certainly did enough urban warfare. Infantry
warfare is the most pinpointed and exact that you can do. It's the
harshest. They're the most casualties on our side because of that and
our snipers are trained - I'll just give the raw data of the fact that
we killed three of our own soldiers in this operation - not just in
Jenin from friendly fire. We had in Jenin itself at least a dozen
occasions of what we call friendly fire, meaning our own forces firing
on our own forces. You come in from all sides very close circuit -
that's one of the problems of what they've done. They're within
civilians we have harsh rules of engagement of never firing at a
civilian. You never fire at a civilian unless you see that they have a
gun and that they're aiming it at you.
But there were plenty, plenty of people who will tell you in Jenin
that their houses were fired on, that people were killed standing in
rooms of their houses, at gates...
...and, and again it goes back to the fact that when you go back and
you ask these people who are all these civilians were killed? There
are no names. There are no people. There weren't…
There are names. These are fathers, husbands...
Oh fathers and husbands who were holding firing - we've shown out in
the world to date at least three different occasions within Jenin;
when they were firing out of the minaret or out of the mosque - a very
easy target. We didn't fire back or try to enter the Mosque.
You don't accept then, that civilians were shot in their homes from
indiscriminate fire?
No I do not at all. We have all the different - I mean we also - we
did a lot of documentation of our own which is the way that we do
that, with our troops when we go along. The fact that you can make
mistakes does not mean that you don't understand an overall picture.
There was a battle. I think that people take it out of context and
think that it was like this lovely little going, you know a stroll
down the alleyway. We were firing at a group of 200-armed terrorists -
when I say 200 I don't know the exact number to this date. We captured
over 100 - around 50 to 60 to 70 and the numbers are still not that
exact, were killed and we know three civilians that the Palestinians
themselves say are civilians - a woman and two children, and aside
from that the additional men that they're talking about - I'll give
other examples of what our soldiers have told … of a group of people,
three men coming out of a house with a baby in their arms. They told
the men go back, bring the baby back inside, and the men refused. They
said bring the baby back inside the house. They brought the baby back
inside the house and the man was wearing a suicide belt and he was
coming towards the soldiers with a baby in his arms to explode himself
at the soldiers - and these are the things that happened. It was in
the context of the battle. There were strong exchanges of fire and if
you interview Marrawah who was one of the heads of the Palestinian
Jihad who decided to surrender - he says I couldn't believe it. They
walked in - couldn't have expected more; and for them it was amazing
that we didn't use our great fire that we have, and we do have in that
sense.
How do you rate the success of the operation in Jenin?
In Jenin specifically in pure military terms we did the mission and
the mission itself was to achieve as much as possible. The arrest and
the detention of potential suicide bombers and of terrorist and we
arrested 10 suicide bombers as I said who had already made their video
tape and an additional 100 terrorists including the top men of
Palestinian Islamic Jihad - we did not capture the top one of the
Hames - some of the more lower ones and some of the ones from Fatah Al
Aqsa brigades.
But two days ago you were in there again - when will it end?
It won't end - as long as the Palestinian Authority does not do
anything again the terrorism there, then it's a question of time, and
we said that ahead of time, and in that sense that's always the sign
which we put with the military. As long as we're not sitting within
those areas and we have no interest to sit there. I say that as an
Israeli more than anything as the IDF maybe - personal opinions aside,
but as long as we're not there and the security is not our
responsibility in those areas because the Palestinians took it upon
themselves in Oslo in 1993. As long as they don't implement that. They
make it a very difficult situation for Israel, for the military
because the more we uncover, the more we understand that it's so
widespread that until there is a different type of solution, we have
no choice and they don't do anything.
Does it worry you personally that this is all a pattern of reprisal
and attack and reprisal and attack and it will never end?
I worry as a mother more than as a military person that the education
on the other side...
What about the education of your own children?
I'm not worried about that. I don't teach my children to hate. I don't
teach them to hate the other side and I say even the most extreme
Israeli settler who sits there - and I take that as extremes of within
Israel, does not educate to hate and if you go talking to a little
child there, they'll say that the one thing that they want to do is to
kill Jews and Israelis. We don't have that education here.
We've been to Ramallah, as you would imagine. We've seen for
example the damage in the ministry of culture, the ministry of
education...
Yeah I think they'll leave that forever to make sure everybody sees
it.
What is the military strategy there? Can you explain that?
Most Israeli soldiers don't know Arabic and when they go in and
they're told that they're supposed to go into different structures
because there are terrorists inside or there are explosive labs inside
or they're supposed to go in for whichever reason - it's not that they
necessarily know what structure they're going into.
But surely if they're told to look for a lab they would be told
this is a lab. But somebody outside must understand this is a
Palestinian ministry?
Not necessary.
You're saying it's a source of - it's from confusion?
No it's not a question of confusion itself. It's a question that when
you go into an urban area and you go into different structures, you
don't necessarily know exactly what each structure is and it's not
even a question of confusion.
But we're talking here about welfare organisations - health
organisations, humanitarian organisations - theatres. Surely these are
obvious?
The theatre itself, and there's only one that I know happens to be at
a strategically high point that the commander officer has said
afterwards that it was a bad decision on his side to have gone
specifically into there and not to another and I think we have to put
it into context.
There's a TV station in the Ministry of Culture. Now these are very
clearly offices - what is the strategy there?
One of the sides that we see when we go into all these different
places and though you try to evade it, it's an issue, is the education
issue. If I go into the Ministry of Education and I find an arts and
crafts show on the wall which shows a map of the state of Israel -
which is of course a map of Palestine with a dagger in the middle, and
that is hard core incitement against the state of Israel - these are
things that we want to find.
This is a military objective - to destroy these things?
It's not a question of destroying them, it's a question of collecting
them and showing them to the world because the Palestinians don't try
to show the world what they're doing inside their own areas.
But we're talking about in the Ministry of Culture it's an office.
There are files. There are photocopiers. There are computers - what's
the military objective in destroying these things?
There is no - there was no object destruction as it's shown at stage.
Go and ask the Palestinians in Hebron today and in some of the
different cities who now admit to the fact that they had looting of
their own which happened by the Palestinians afterwards. I'm not
saying at the moment that there was no problem within - it's not a
question of a problem within the IDF. When you do go again in the
context of the battle - into a city and you're going into different
areas to find weapons - why are there weapons in the basement of the
governor of Nablus?
But why say in Ramallah are computers destroyed, are records of
humanitarian organisations removed, are artefacts taken, are TV
stations destroyed...
I'll take one humanitarian organisation as an example which is the
United Nations Refugee Association, which was responsible for all of
the camps for both the health - fine and for the education fine, and
I'll take all of the books which are funded by all of the different
countries around the world in which there is not a mention of the
state of Israel, of the right of...
But what is the military objective in destroying things like this?
It's not a question of destroying. It's a question of taking the
things out and the fact that they don't go in and do it in a beautiful
calm manner is the fact that people were firing at you at the same
time as you go on in, you take things out.
Have you seen the Ministry of Culture, the inside of that?
I have shown the pictures that they've shown extensively all over the
place.
You've seen the shit - excuse me using the word - all over the
place, the broken photocopiers, the files pulled out - what military
objective is there in that sort of rampage?
I don't want to be the one who consistently says that all they do is
lie. But I have a lot of problems with a lot of the pictures that I've
seen - and not because I absolutely say that everything we do is clean
and pure. I just say that we have a code of ethics which is very
different from anything else I've heard anywhere else. If I know for a
fact of what they were preparing in Jenin as lies to show the
commission - I can say for a fact that in all of the different places
where the media came and were shown around; in all of the different
cities - not only in Ramallah and I thought it's interesting...
Let's look at this example in Ramallah. In the Ministry of Culture
- are you saying you don't accept that that was done by the IDF?
We have one example which I think you probably saw in Australia also
which is a fake funeral.
No it's an example of where it's very hard to see what the military
objective is in destroying an office of the Palestinian Authority in
spreading faeces around, in generally trashing something...
I have difficulties in seeing any Israeli soldier anywhere
distributing faeces around and I have no problem with somebody who I
know brought bodies of bodies - animal whatever you call them into
Jenin to make sure that when people came there it would stink and
everybody would think it was bodies. We don't do things like that.
They do things like that.
But you are a professional army. Let's talk about what you might
have done. Is this something that is done by a professional army? I
mean what do you make of this situation in Ramallah?
I think I've answered the question quite clearly. I honestly think
with the code of ethics of the IDF, the IDF has absolutely nothing to
be ashamed of.
So will there be prosecutions? Will there be investigations?
The investigations have already gone on from the beginning - both on
looting and on desecrating on different places. One of the problems
that we saw were, and we've seen them and we've shown them ourselves
and were not things that we're happy with, but not necessarily in
those areas, and the board of education itself should go and also look
the files themselves and the questions, at why within the different
areas around - not only did they not teach about Israel, but they hold
books like Zio-Naziism - these are questions that I ask the ministry
of education.
OK so the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture - other
human rights organisations - why were they targeted as part of this
operation?
Nobody was targeted specifically in this operation. But if within the
heart of a refugee camp you have booby-traps and in their own
infirmary within the camp itself you have up on the wall all of the
posters of the suicide bombers - obviously there is some connection.
It's not a question of going specifically into them or anywhere else.
Any place you have pin-pointed intelligence which tells you that there
are terrorists there - that there are suicide bombers there - that
there are explosive labs there - you go in and you check the
information and the information leads you to other information. We
found them in endless civil structures. It's not as if at the end when
we come and we talk about the amount of explosives that we found - we
found them at all of these different places and if we made different
decisions along the way because we were told that they were inside
there and not inside another place, we went into the other places
along the way. They weren't pinpointed specifically in any other way.
OK - more generally for the IDF - we've spoken to some soldiers
actually about the difficulty of working on a checkpoint. I mean often
it seems here that it's the IDF that has to come face to face with the
political problem here. They're the ones on the front line - being on
patrol in Hebron, being on a checkpoint - the difficulty and the
stresses. I mean how hard is it?
We call it the "strategic implication of the tactical corporal". Every
single corporal in the IDF that is within the different areas which
are Judea and Samaria and near the Gaza Strip can make a decision that
could have strategic implications. What that means is that within our
training and we're talking about training - I say corporal, but we
started even from before - it's something that a rookie soldier from
the beginning is going to be told. The implications are clear for us -
as a soldier, a fight should be a clear fight. He should have a clear
enemy. That enemy should stand and obviously be clear. Here we're
working in an environment of civilians where you want to pinpoint the
terrorist who is dressed as a civilian and he's hiding behind the
civilian - they're using that in the most cynical way and consistently
trying to show us on the other side...
So that's very hard. Does that mean mistakes can be made?
It's very hard - it's an integral part of all of our training right
now. It's something that's taught from the beginning. It's certainly
the most important part of our junior officer training.
But mistakes can be made.
Mistakes can be made by anybody anywhere at any time in a battle. I
think that there's a difference between making decisions and not
necessarily making the wrong decision within a battle. It may be the
wrong decision afterwards when everything's quiet and it looks bad.
But in a battle things look differently. I don't know if you've ever
been fired on?
No I'm not talking about a battle actually, I'm talking about
something quite simple - a checkpoint which I might have been at quite
frequently. I mean what do you say to claims that Palestinians are
humiliated at checkpoints, that soldiers perhaps out of fear or
ignorance or whatever react excessively? Stories of gas grenades
thrown into taxis, taxis smashed, humiliation at different levels - do
you accept that this occurs?
I accept the fact that in overall, the situation that we have of 21
months of violence which have in effect certainly have an effect and
on both sides. I also think that in the overall picture the difference
of the way that we see it from each side is the fact that we're in a
war that was imposed upon us and the violence of the last 21 months
could've been stopped at any stage along the way by the other side. We
were consistently aiming to do that.
But hold on - we're talking about the behaviour of some soldiers
which it's been put to us exacerbates this situation. Humiliation -
ritual humiliations on a daily basis.
No it's - I wouldn't call it - again that's the side of trying to show
- I'd say that the Palestinians - not just for the last 21 months -
I'd say that it's been very consistent for throughout all the Oslo
years have tried to make an equation now and they call everything the
result of occupation and I say that is a myth. I live in a democratic
country and they start with something…..
Hang on what they say - let me just put this specifically to you- a
person who goes through a checkpoint every day and I won't even say
which one - it doesn't matter. And every day they claim the soldiers
humiliate them. They make people stand in line. They make people march
around, take their shirts off, chant songs - do you accept that this
kind of behaviour might occur?
Have you ever seen a suicide belt? A suicide belt - I could wear
underneath this shirt. It would dress onto it like a vest. All you'd
see was the - that I was wearing some type of a vest and inside the
best - stitched in are lines of explosives. I actually had when I was
in the States the last time two as-if phoney mock-up suicide belts.
You can't see them. When you put them on all it looks is like it's an
overweight person. Sadly there's no other way to check and even more
sadly even today as we speak the possibility of suicide bombers coming
out and they - they look semi-normal. I may consider them animals
myself - I truly do not understand that. That is something that's
beyond my cultural grasp, but the fact that it's human beings who
dress on themselves a suicide belt - they have to get through these,
through these points to be able to get to the centre of Israel -
that's how they explode.
But there's searching and there's humiliation as people describe
it.
I understand and I think that for them any side of it would be
humiliation and in that sense I say that the fact that there are any
road blocks there at all are because in the last 21 months they
started the violence. Until 21 months ago through, throughout the Oslo
years the different checkpoint of going through were much easier.
Those have been put up in response to the terrorist and suicide
attacks. They're not there because we love humiliating the other side
and the fact that at the end every single soldier there has to know
the code of ethics and has to understand the other side. I say in that
sense that's one of the reasons that we like using the reserves - even
though it's very hard for us.
Do you have faith that all your soldiers on those checkpoints act
properly?
Do you have faith in every single person in Australia and everything
that they do? I have faith in the fact that at the base we're a
democratic country that does know how to educate its people for the
fact that there is a code and an ethic of how you behave. The fact
that at the end every single person has to know how to behave. It's
not always as easy and as clear cut as seems, and the fact that
they're under threat - that somebody tells them if a suicide bomber
gets through here, they have failed 100%, and these are things that
they have to know.
Are they also frightened?
Oh I'm sure that they are. I think that it's definitely something at
the end - we're talking about 19, 20, 21 year olds that are told that
they have the mission to give security to Jerusalem and Haifa and Tel
Aviv and they come from Jerusalem and Haifa and Tel Aviv, and the fact
that it's a big responsibility - I think that any type of warfare
anywhere is a strong responsibility. The checkpoints themselves are
one of the harsher sides of the fact that at the moment we have no
better way until the Palestinians themselves would arrest these people
on their own side to making sure that they don't get into out side and
sadly even that is not hermetic. It doesn't mean that they won't be
able to get in.
Well we've seen that. The last 21 months - put it down to that then
- what seems to be happening is now that a number of soldiers are
refusing to serve in the occupied territories.
When you say a number you should be very exact. It's an exceedingly
small percent that has gotten a very large coverage by the world
because it's a good story. But I think that the better story would be
that when we called up the reserves on the day after Passover, which
is a week's vacation in Israel when everybody goes all over the world
- 120% of the different units arrived. They weren't called up, they
arrived.
What do you say though to those people who've refused?
This isn't something that we talk about because for us it's way beyond
the code of ethics so I'll just put that aside at the moment. I'm a
soldier. I can't respond to what they do.
You can't give your own personal comment on what they're doing?
No I won't give it - it's very political. What they're doing is
political. It's not military at all.
Can you understand it?
As I said I don't - I won't talk on anything political - not what
they're doing, not when anything is political - that's completely
political.
Thank you. |