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The Hebron confessions

As ex-soldiers speak out about seeing Palestinian
civilians being killed, Donald Macintyre talks to the
victims' families
Published: 25 September 2005

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...icle314940.ece

Still dressed in the loose sharwal trousers that he
wears for his work as a gardener, the 22-year-old
ex-soldier sits across the café table in a central Tel
Aviv shopping mall, and says that when he joined the
Israeli army he just "wanted to kill Arabs".

Like most of the other 300 ex-soldiers who have so far
testified about their experiences to Breaking the
Silence, an organisation formed a year ago by a group
of young men who had done their military service in
Hebron, the soldier doesn't want to give his real
name. But he tells how his attitude gradually changed
when he came into contact with Palestinians and
Bedouin for the first time and saw the long delays,
and sometimes harassment, faced by them at the
checkpoints he manned in the Jordan valley.

The ex-soldier, who joined the religious Nahal brigade
despite having already shed his own ultra-orthodox
background, talks about "initiated action" he saw when
serving at the military base at the Psagot settlement
on the edge of Ramallah in early 2002, and to which he
says officers sometimes turned a blind eye.

Instead of carrying out the instructions to use their
machine guns and M16s only when fired at by
Palestinians militants, he suggests, "a soldier would
say: 'Why let them decide when the shooting takes
place? Let's show them who's boss.'"

With time, he says, "the soldiers got the feeling that
they were at a firing range, and for every shot fired
... they'd fire hundreds of bullets in return. There's
no need to add that they hit innocent people, and
sometimes afterwards we saw ... ambulances arriving
there. Nobody cared that they were liable to hit
innocent people, they found the whole thing funny."

So far the testimonies gathered by Breaking the
Silence have triggered 17 official Israel Defence
Force investigations and one internal disciplinary
process. Three of the accounts (see panels) have also
been followed up by The Independent on Sunday with the
families of the victims.

They have also helped to fuel a growing debate within
parts of Israeli society and the media about many
military operations during the present conflict, which
was ignited exactly five years ago this Friday.

Central to the rapid escalation of that conflict were
attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers which since
October 2000 have claimed the lives of 745 Israeli
civilians, and wounded over 5,100. But the Israeli
human rights agency B'tselem estimates that some 1,700
Palestinian civilians have also been killed in the
same period - a figure which many of these disturbing
testimonies go some way to explaining.

Breaking the Silence contends that the inspiration for
many orders, which it says directly violate the
international legal obligations of an occupying power,
came from the highest ranks. Certainly, Booomerang, a
new book by two prominent Israeli journalists, Ofer
Shelah and Raviv Druker, reports that at a conference
of officers as early as May 2001, Shaul Mofaz, now the
Defence Minister but then Chief of Staff, asked for
the tape to be switched off before telling them that
he wanted a "price" exacted from the Palestinians of
10 killed a day on each of the Army's seven fronts.

And after six Israeli soldiers were killed in Ein Arik
in February 2002, the book says, Mr Mofaz personally
ordered a revenge operation in which for the first
time Palestinian police officers would be shot,
whether they posed a threat or not. One soldier who
took part in a raid which killed four or five
Palestinian policemen at a checkpoint 24 hours after
Ein Arik told the IoS: "It felt bad even at that time.
They said Palestinian police are connected to terror
and that the [killers] passed through the checkpoint.
Maybe the police are connected to terror but for sure
they didn't pass through all the checkpoints [attacked
that day]."

Much later, he says, the soldiers discussed the raid,
using - half-jocularly - the Hebrew term for a
"terrorist attack" to describe the operation: "Pigua."
"Like they are doing terror attack to us and we are
doing it to them." This was also the period in which a
tank shell killed a woman and five children in
Ramallah (see box, far right).

The IDF's conduct during more than four years of
conflict was highlighted this month when a former head
of its southern command, Major General Doron Almog,
was advised not to get off his plane in London because
he faced arrest. A warrant was secured in Britain by a
Palestinian organisation for alleged war crimes under
theGeneva Conventions Act.

Unlike the 27 Israeli air force pilots who refused in
2003 to carry out missions in the occupied territories
at risk to civilian lives, Breaking the Silence does
not advocate refusal. But like the pilots, its
adherents see speaking out as a national obligation -
a "patriotic duty", as Avichai Sharon, the group's
spokesman, puts it. "Ninety percent of the 18,19, 20
year olds serving are regular, good decent guys who
come from good homes," he says, and many "feel
corrupted" by the nature of their service in the
occupied territories.

His bag held explosives, the army said. It was pitta
bread

Nablus, 18 December 2003

Paratroop sergeant: "We set up a machine gun position
in the main street of the [Nablus] Casbah, Firing
orders were: anybody walking around the Casbah at
night was to be shot and killed. The order was given
us in a briefing by the squad commander. From what he
told us, the order originated with the Shomron brigade
commander. The same order was given many times ... And
the answer was always: the info always comes from the
Shabak [Shin Bet, the domestic intelligence service].
How did the Shabak know that Ahmed the baker or Salim
the carpenter didn't have to get up at 3am for work?

"The sharpshooter's position, of which I was a part,
identified a man carrying a bag on Jama'a al Kabir
[street] between 3 and 4am, I don't remember. When
this was reported,, the order was given to 'take him
down'. Killed. A man fell, something in the order of
70m from the house. Then the jeep of the command post
came and 'confirmed kill', throwing two grenades on
the body that smashed it completely. Then they opened
the bag to see what's in it and found: pitot (pitta
breads). Pitot.

"This thing was never investigated. The regiment
commander cheers us up. 'Listen guys, don't be
demoralised. This man wasn't just walking around
innocently.' Of course he didn't have any substantive
information - 'Be assured that anyone walking round
the Casbah at that hour is no friend of Zion. He
probably had a terrorist agenda, and you performed a
good job'"

Ala Adin Masud Adawiya 24, left home at around 2.30am
on his second day of work in the Silawi bakery in
Nablus's old city. His 25-year-old brother, Ayman,
said he had just switched jobs to be nearer home. As
Ala Adin neared the square, he could see Israeli Army
tanks massing.

Under strict instructions to tell his mother when he
had reached the bakery, he used his cellphone to
report what he saw. His mother told him to come back
immediately, but never heard from him again. Ayman
went out to search for his brother in the narrow
streets of the Casbah, repeatedly trying to reach him
on his mobile phone. "My mother was weeping and
praying," he says.

The Army, which said in early 2004 the victim had been
identified as a "terrorist" with Islamic Jihad, and
that the bag contained explosives, now acknowledges
the shooting was a mistake. The family have a gruesome
video, made by a Palestinian TV company, of people
crowding round his multiply wounded body, in
underpants soaked through with blood.

Why did the tank crew really fire?

Ramallah, 4 March 2002

Commander at tank position, Psagot settlement. Around
8am, as the visiting battalion commander stood by, the
tank fired three shells at a police car in a populated
area, but missed totally. The shells fell in open
ground. Later that morning, "the Battalion Commander
left the barracks, leaving me in command. He told me:
'If you see [policemen] again, shoot'.

The commander receiving the order left his deputy in
charge by the tank and returned to his office - only
to hear a few moments later the loud boom of another
shell. He ran back to the tank, where his equally
surprised deputy said he too had given no orders to
fire. The explosion from the shell was now sending up
a black column of smoke from the entrance to the Amari
refugee camp.

Amazingly the commander says he did not demand to know
why the tank crew had fired without orders. But he
told them to revert to previous rules of engagement,
and shoot only at targets who had "intent as well as
means" to do harm. He heard subsequently that one of
the tank crew "reacted emotionally" to what had
happened and was moved to a non-combat role, and that
the tank and its crew were later replaced.

The only inquiry, he says, was carried out by a
colonel heading an investigating committee six months
later, and he did not know the outcome. He added: "I
don't know if the initial order was legal, but it was
stupid. You can't fight like this all the time. You're
taught means and intent - and suddenly you are
shooting for nothing." In his view, such shelling may
have been one element which escalated the conflict
into Operation Defensive Shield and full blown war.

Arafat al Masri, 16, and his four-year-old cousin
Sheema had minutes earlier climbed with four other
children into a Subaru driven by Arafat's uncle Imad.
As they left al Amari camp, a Mitsubishi was coming in
the opposite direction. It was driven by Bushara Abu
Kweik, 37, who was bringing her children - daughters
Aziza, 14, and Bara'a, 13, and son Mohammed, 10 - home
from school. At that moment the shell struck, killing
Arafat, Sheema, Mrs abu Kweik and her three children.

Arafat's father, Ibrahim al Masri is still convinced
three years later that his son died because of a
failed assassination attempt on Mrs Abu Kweik's
husband Hussein, a prominent political figure in Hamas
who ran a local charity. But the testimony of the
soldier, who has no vested interest in supporting the
official version that Mrs Abu Kweik's car was not
targeted, strongly indicates that the families'
assumption is wrong. The Army says the tank was
attempting to hit armed Palestinian police.

Mr al Masri said the loss of his son did not fully
sink in until the third day of mourning: "Then I
missed him." He added: "I do not believe in vengeance
against Israelis. God will punish those that did it."

'No one thought we were going to shoot kids'

Nablus, 19 February 2003

Avichai Sharon, 24, elite unit, Golani Brigade. In
late 2002, two men in his unit, in an open backed
vehicle during a search and arrest operation, fired
live ammunition at people throwing bricks at them. He
and fellow soldiers told the squad officer: "The rules
of engagement are not clear enough in this kind of
situation. We don't have any rubber bullets or tear
gas or any alternatives other than our lethal
weapons." He says the men never got a reply.

While the squad was surrounding a house in Nablus a
few months later, one of its members fired at the legs
of a teenager throwing stones. But the boy was bending
down to pick up a stone, and was instead shot in the
chest. Mr Sharon said the unit heard on the radio that
the boy, between 14 and 16, had been killed. "And then
we just went back. We finished our operation and
continued our daily routine. There was no questioning.

"No one did it intentionally. No one thought we were
going to shoot kids. Its just no one cares - it's just
total disregard for human life. Life is just totally
cheap ... the guy that shot him really felt bad about
it, he was really uncomfortable."

Mohammed al Saber, 15, went off with some friends at
the time of a military operation. His brother Saed,
25, trying to piece together what happened from
Mohammed's friends, thought he had been on a roof at
one point. "They were eating biscuits; they were also
playing with bottles. They may have been throwing
stones."

Mohammed was dead on arrival at Rafidia Hospital. The
medical report says he was shot by a bullet with an
exit wound through the right shoulder; there was
another wound in his right leg. His father, Rabbia al
Saber, 58, says the shock of his son's death caused a
stroke which left him partially paralysed. Looking for
a likeness of Mohammed, one brother brought out a
typical Fatah-produced "martyr" poster, depicting him
carrying a gun, but the family asked for it not to be
photographed. One said: "It makes him look like a
soldier, but he wasn't. He was a normal boy."