The commander’s dilemma
Op-ed: Should IDF be allowed to use Arab civilians in order to minimize risk to soldiers?
This week, I mulled the issue of Givati soldiers charged with dispatching a Palestinian child to examine a suspicious object. Again, as is the case every time these questions come up, I was deliberating between what is appropriate to say and write, and my own familiarity with the complex realities on the ground – that is, a clash between being politically correct and being correct in respect to my own personal logic as an Israeli and as a reserve commander.
I wrote, and erased. I wrote again, and explained, and again deliberated, because this story is much more complex than a few lines in the newspaper.
First, I should note that in my view, the abovementioned case is simple. The distorted utilization of an innocent child is taboo and incommensurate with the moral standards of the IDF, whose moral superiority I truly believe in.
Yet the decision on the issue hides a much deeper debate regarding the utilization of civilians in various combat scenarios. A moral war is one where all efforts are made to avoid harming civilians. This is the basic assumption of IDF commanders. Yet what happens when a commander in the field faces an existential dilemma? A substantive threat to his subordinates’ lives vis-à-vis unpleasant violence towards the enemy’s associates?
Israeli courts intervened in this question for the first time when they ruled that the so-called “neighbor procedure” is forbidden. Up until that miserable decision, when IDF troops would detain a terror suspect using the “pressure cooker” procedure, and a moment before using destructive means, a neighbor would be sent to the suspect’s home.
The neighbor’s job was to stabilize the situation, convince the suspect to surrender, and enable him to emerge from the siege around his house alive. And yes, this tactic was also undertaken in order to minimize the danger faced by our troops.
The donkey dilemma
On many occasions, the neighbor’s familiar voice and the fearful look in his eyes was enough to save the terror suspect’s life. On other occasions, when IDF troops entered the house on their own as not to jeopardize civilians, it ended in disaster. This was the case in May 2002, when Major Avihu Yaakov of blessed memory, a Golani company commander (and a personal memory,) led his troops into a suspicious home in Nablus and was killed.
The annulment of the “neighbor procedure” and the heavy price paid by the IDF as result prompted the “pressure cooker” tactic to become briefer: The troops announce the arrest, fire warning shots, and if there is no response they destroy the home and those in it. At times, for lack of other choice, the neighbor’s home is also destroyed.
A similar question emerges when troops reach a suspicious home during battle -without engineering equipment or an ability to stick around for long. Will the commander ask a local resident to open the door, or will the troops enter on their own? Will the commander allow the soldiers to raid the home while hurling hand-grandees and firing in all directions, even if he fears that some people inside the house won’t be able to come out, just because the High Court approved this?
And what about a donkey that may be carrying explosives? Will the commander shoot the donkey and eliminate a local resident’s source of livelihood? Or will he force a local who happens to walk by to check who the owner is, so he can move the donkey from the road without risking the troops?
According to the courts, the answers are clear and unequivocal; in all these cases, troops are not allowed to utilize civilians, as not to turn them into human shields. And this is precisely where the problem lies. Boundaries are needed at war, yet in Israel they have been set in the impossible space of the commander’s dilemma: The need to choose between facing bereaved parents and facing a lawsuit.
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