"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.
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").
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.
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