Haaretz
Adar1 11, 5765
Following years of systematic demolition of
Palestinian homes, when it became difficult to distinguish between a
policy of deterrence and one of punishment or vengeance, the chief of
staff decided a few months ago to form a committee to examine the question
of whether house demolitions are in fact an effective security
measure.
Not surprisingly, it turned out that even a committee on
behalf of the Israel Defense Forces came to the same conclusion that had
previously been the critics' alone - that home demolitions are more
damaging than beneficial. The deterrence, says the committee in its
findings, is not equal to the hatred that the harsh measure evokes among
the Palestinians.
The government of Israel wasn't the inventor of
the policy of punishment by means of house demolitions. The policy was
brought to the region by the British government during the Mandate period.
The British demolished hundreds of Arab homes in Palestine in suppressing
the revolt, and the Tel Jaffa neighborhood is historical testimony to a
British military operation in response to firing from Jaffa homes at
British ships anchored in the port. As is well known, the policy did not
help to consolidate British rule in the region.
The very fact of
the committee's establishment, with the intifada raging, can be seen as
further sobering up from the illusion that exercising ever-increasing
force against the Palestinian population will put an end to the acts of
hostility and resistance to the Israeli occupation.
As the intifada
turned more harsh and violent, the IDF sought more belligerent and
deterring responses. While in the beginning only the homes of those
involved directly in terror were demolished, in an effort to influence
suicide bombers to spare their families the punishment, all restraint
seemed to disappear as time went by.
Just 270 of the numerous homes
that were demolished from 2002 through to last summer were homes of
Palestinians involved in terror. All the remaining demolition operations,
carried out primarily in the Gaza Strip, came under the policy of clearing
areas and opening up better access routes for tanks, or in response to the
firing of Qassam rockets or the planting of roadside bombs - collective
punishment by means of razing an unknown number of residences. Estimates
speak of thousands.
Home demolitions en masse in the Gaza Strip
went ahead in an unmonitored manner, often testifying to the lack of
control over events in the field at the senior command level. One of the
reasons behind the chief of staff's decision to establish the committee
was the sense that junior commanders were not always submitting accurate
reports on the scale of the demolitions. Sometimes, the IDF command
learned of the dimensions of the destruction only from journalists'
questions and reports from international aid agencies.
The
demolition policy was evidence of - among other things - helplessness, and
the inability to quell the intifada by military means.
The findings
of the committee must cause the IDF and the government to rethink matters
- not only retroactively, but with a view to the future, too. The
conclusion that the environmental destruction caused by the IDF to an
innocent population does not add to Israel's security, but only increases
hostility and etches it in the conscience of the people must be a guiding
light for the next chief of staff - and for those that
follow.
Under a future settlement that will include the rebuilding
of the territories, there is place for Israel to offer compensation to
Palestinian civilians whose homes were destroyed during the course of the
army's operations.