Report finds new Israeli war doctrine targets civilians
Press release, The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, 3 December 2009
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) released today [2 December 2009] a new report which exposes the shifts in Israel’s combat doctrine as evidenced in the prosecution of operation “Cast Lead” and from numerous public oral and written statements made by high ranking military officers and senior Israeli government officials.
The report, “No Second Thoughts: Changes in the IDF’s Combat Doctrine In Light Of Operation ‘Cast Lead’,” demonstrates Israel’s application of a new combat doctrine during the hostilities in Gaza, which is based on two principles:
“Zero Casualties”: The complete prioritization of avoiding IDF [Israeli army] casualties while disregarding the increased risk to Palestinian civilians. The implementation of this policy is evident in the massive use of fire power, the use of white phosphorous weapons in densely populated areas, and in firing at Palestinians in the streets, with no discrimination between combatants and civilians, this even after the IDF would order the evacuation of residents from civilian homes.
“Dahiyah Doctrine”: named after the residential Dahiyah district in Beirut, where Hizballah enjoyed support and also had its headquarters. The district was massively bombed by the IDF during the Second Lebanon War. The doctrine promotes targeting civilian infrastructure in order to cause widespread destruction and suffering among the civilian population so as to foment popular opposition to Israel’s opponents (namely Hamas and Hizballah).
As a result of the implementation of these principles, the fighting in the Gaza Strip caused intentional and large-scale damage to civilian infrastructure as well as the killing of hundreds of non-combatant civilians (despite the absence of an official policy to intentionally kill civilians). Israel’s actions directly contradict official statements claiming that the IDF acted in accordance with international humanitarian law and took every possible measure to avoid harming non-militant civilians.
This combat doctrine morally stains the citizens of Israel. It may lead to increased international isolation of Israel and to a situation where Israeli soldiers, officers and leaders will face arrest outside of Israel and be charged with war crimes. The writers of the report summarize: “So fundamental a shift in the IDF’s combat doctrine, which has such a far-reaching impact, shouldn’t be considered only in the closed forums of the General Headquarters and the Security Cabinet, but demands substantial public discussion.”
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The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel
Gaza Freedom March less than one month away
Press Release, Gaza Freedom March, 4 December 2009
The Gaza Freedom March that will take place in Gaza on 31 December is an historic initiative to break the siege that has imprisoned the 1.5 million people who live there. Conceived in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and nonviolent resistance to injustice worldwide, the march will gather people from all over the world to march — hand in hand — with the people of Gaza to demand that the Israelis open the borders.
Marking the one-year anniversary of the December 2008 Israeli invasion that left more than 1,400 dead, this is a grassroots global response to the inaction on the part of world leaders and institutions. More than 1,000 international delegates from 42 countries have already signed up and more are signing on every day.
Participants include Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker, leading Syrian comedian Duraid Lahham, French Senator Alima Boumediene-Thiery, autthor and Filipino Parliament member Walden Bello, former European Parliamentarians Luisa Morgantini from Italy and Eva Quistorp from Germany, President of the US Center for Constitutional Rights Attorney Michael Ratner, Japanese former Ambassador to Lebanon Naoto Amaki, French hip-hop artists Ministere des Affaires Populaires, and 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein.
We also have families of three generations, doctors, lawyers, diplomats, 70 students, an interfaith group that includes rabbis, priests and imams, a women’s delegation, a Jewish contingent, a veterans group and Palestinians born overseas who have never seen their families in Gaza.
The international delegates will enter Gaza via Egypt during the last week of December. In the morning 31 December, they will join Palestinians in a nonviolent march from northern Gaza to the Erez/Israeli border. On the Israeli side of the Erez border will be a gathering of Palestinians and Jews who are also calling on the Israeli government to open the border.
Inside Gaza, excitement is growing. Representatives of all aspects of civil society, including students, professors, refugee groups, unions, women’s organizations, nongovernmental organizations, have been busy organizing and estimate that at least 50,000 Palestinians will participate. People from the different sectors will march in their uniforms — fishermen, doctors, students, farmers, etc. Local Palestinian rappers, hip-hop bands and dabke dancers will perform on mobile stages.
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An end to vagueness: Ha’aretz
By Zeev Sternhell
We should welcome the open differences of opinion in the Likud party regarding the future of the territories occupied during the Six-Day War. The political establishment is approaching a point where it will no longer be possible to evade decisions that will be among the most crucial in the state’s history.
It is a mistake to play around with the idea that such decisions can be made without an open confrontation with the settlers. Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak will have to decide what they prefer: to be remembered as having capitulated to the settlers or as having taken a courageous leap forward, as befits important national leaders.
The rift on the right is genuine, and can be exploited to reorganize the political system. The settler wing, from Moshe (Feiglin) to Moshe (Ya’alon), should join the National Union party and all the others who share their viewpoint, and together they can all create a new political body. However worded, the implication of the split in Likud, for the new rebels, will be a conscious choice to continue the occupation without any kind of time limit.
Such a decision will be based on a reasonable assumption that, in the absence of any genuine progress, a third intifada will break out in the territories – which will lead to a closing of the ranks in Israel and a postponement of any negotiations until sometime in the unforeseeable future. But in any case, a barrier will be created between the settlement right and the ordinary, sane right; the difference between the latter and Kadima is mainly psychological and laden with personal grudges, but no more than that. Everyone there understands that true peace and security – or in other words, the ability to stop, if not completely destroy, Iran’s nuclear capability and following that to become gradually integrated into greater Europe – requires an immediate and total freeze on expansion in the territories.
In terms of leadership and personal relationships, if Netanyahu is now able to live in peace with people like Silvan Shalom, Benny Begin and Dan Meridor – who for years did not hesitate to publicly express their disgust with him – there’s no reason why he can’t find a way to cooperate with Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz.
The Labor Party, which effectively split a long time ago, must institutionalize the present situation. Barak and his people will assume their natural place in the center, on condition the defense minister can accept the fact that he doesn’t have what it takes to be a party leader.
On the other hand, the left will start a social-democratic party, similar to what exists in Europe.
Does the expanded center and the left have a majority in Israel that will support it? We can reasonably assume that it does; not all the ultra-Orthodox are happy to bite the hand that feeds them, nor is the Russian immigrant population composed entirely of rightists like Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Not everyone there considers settlement beyond the Green Line the Zionist ideal, and not everyone is willing to sacrifice Israel’s future on the altar of the settlers’ interests.
Thus we are gradually seeing the beginning of a situation in which Israeli society will have to decide what it prefers: a future of peace, relative security and economic prosperity in exchange for territories, or holding on to the territories while endangering the future of the Jewish state.
It’s true that the people who believe the situation in the territories can continue indefinitely, because the population under occupation in any case has no choice but to accept the fact of Israeli power, are with their own hands preparing the foundations for a binational state. The first stage toward that gloomy tomorrow is the unprecedented delegitimization of Israel, which has become prevalent among wide circles of the Western intelligentsia. We are already in the midst of this stage. All those who believe they can do whatever they please in greater Jerusalem, including its Arab neighborhoods, in spite of the fact that two nations live in the city, would do well to reconsider.
For the political elite, the coming month will be a final opportunity to prove that among them are also leaders who want to enter the history books, not only politicians who will be satisfied with barely a footnote, like President Shimon Peres.
In any case, a surrender to the Jewish uprising in the territories will signal the end of the careers of both Netanyahu and Barak. The two would do well not to rely on the fact that a successful attack against Iran, if there is one, will atone for their weaknesses and enable them to pose as heroes. Time is short, and it is a time of trial: History does not forgive those who fail at the crucial moment.
Settlers reject Netanyahu plea to respect settlement freeze: Ha’aretz
Defiant West Bank settler leaders rejected on Thursday a personal plea from the prime minister to respect a construction freeze in the territories, vowing to keep confronting security forces sent to enforce the edict.
In the West Bank, settlers blocked inspectors from entering a settlement to search for unauthorized construction, the third straight day of such confrontations. There has been no violence, but authorities have made at least six arrests.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned settler leaders to a Tel Aviv meeting on Thursday morning in a bid to defuse the tensions.
During the talks, West Bank regional council heads told the premier that they would continue to fight the moratorium, and voiced doubt that it would end after 10-months, as declared by Netanyahu. The head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, David Alhiani David Elhani, lambasted the prime minister over the freeze.
“Am I your enemy?” he asked. “Why are you treating me like an enemy?”
Settler leader Dani Dayan called the three-hour meeting difficult and emotionally charged. Speaking on Israel Radio, he said the settlers would continue their struggle against the freeze, both through civil disobedience and legal challenges. The settlers have scheduled a mass demonstration next week in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu’s bureau, for its part, said the meeting was businesslike and was held in a respectful manner.
At the end of the meeting, the bureau said, Netanyahu noted 30 complaints the settlers made about the implementation of the freeze, and said he would relay them to Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
During the two-hour meeting, Netanyahu told the settlers he respected their right to disagree, but told them they must respect the rule of law. “You have the right to demonstrate. You have the right to protest. You have the right to express an opinion, but it’s unacceptable not to respect a decision that was taken by law,” Netanyahu said, according to a statement released by his office.
“The solution is dialogue; we need to get through this period together by cooperation, instead of creating an atmosphere of crisis in order to focus on leaving the period of moratorium, and overcome the problems together,” Netanyhau was quoted as saying.
Earlier Thursday, Chairman of the rightist National Union party, Ya’akov Katz, also vowed to continue fighting the construction freeze.
Katz called on settlers to declare an “uncompromising struggle by taking off the gloves against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s anti-Semitic and racist decree.”
At the meeting, Netanyahu had planned to offer various measures to ease the settlers’ lives, including more funding for schools and other services. Netanyahu was to stress that he intends to enforce the freeze fully, but he was to promise that construction will resume when the freeze expires in 10 months.
One of the most senior settler leaders, Pinhas Wallerstein, told Army Radio on Thursday that they have no intention to halt all construction.
Since Friday, when the freeze began, Netanyahu, Barak and other officials have held daily meetings to monitor enforcement of the freeze, which the premier said is meant as a confidence-building gesture to get peace efforts with the Palestinians back on track.
Palestinians have said the move is insufficient because it does not include East Jerusalem.
Barak softens terms of building freeze in bid to placate settlers
In another effort to placate angry settlement leaders, Barak vowed on Wednesday to restore mayors’ power to approve minor renovation projects such as enclosing balconies or building pergolas over a porch – powers they had initially lost under last week’s cabinet decision on a settlement freeze.
Barak made the promise at a meeting with settlement mayors following a day of clashes throughout the West Bank between settlers and the inspectors enforcing the freeze.
Meanwhile, the state told the High Court of Justice that the freeze would force it to postpone the evacuation of several illegal outposts and the demolition of thousands of illegal buildings against which demolition orders had already been issued. Officials said the people needed for these evacuations and demolitions were busy enforcing the freeze.
Settlement leaders met in Jerusalem last night and expressed satisfaction with what they called “the success of the determined struggle” so far. But after some participants expressed concerns that the struggle might turn violent, they decided to launch an explanatory campaign stressing that activists must not raise their hands against the building inspectors. They also decided to hold a mass demonstration in Jerusalem next Wednesday.
Throughout the day, police often had to use force to disperse demonstrators and allow the inspectors to do their job. Altogether, six settlers were arrested.
Netanyahu received a boost Wednesday from a meeting at the Knesset with some 50 veteran Likud mayors and activists – all considered pillars of the party – who voiced support for the freeze. Some even threatened to “settle accounts” with any Likud minister or Knesset member who failed to back the premier by working to keep them off the party’s slate in the next election.
However, some cracks in Likud ministers’ hitherto united front are showing. In an interview due to be published Friday in the weekly Makor Rishon, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon assails the freeze’s implementation, saying construction that should have been allowed to continue is being frozen, making the freeze “much more sweeping than we intended.”
Also Wednesday, Netanyahu and Barak agreed to set up an exceptions committee that settlers can apply to for permits to build in special cases such as sewage or electricity problems.
So far, enforcement of the freeze has been carried out entirely by the police. The army has not been involved at all – and is very much hoping to keep it that way.
Boycott of Ahava Dead Sea products makes an impact: The Electronic Intifada
Adri Nieuwhof, 2 December 2009
The international campaign to boycott Ahava beauty products has recently won the support of a Dutch parliamentarian and an Israeli peace group. During the past few months, activists in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Israel, the United States and the Netherlands have campaigned against the sale of Ahava products because of the company’s complicity in the Israeli occupation.
The Stolen Beauty campaign has included protest actions by “bikini brigades” around the United States organized by the American peace group CODEPINK, and allied actions have taken place in London, Paris, Vienna, Montreal and Amsterdam. The Dutch “bathrobe brigades” that appeared in shopping centers in Amsterdam and Haarlem, not only caught the eye of the press, but also that of Dutch parliamentarian Harry van Bommel.
Ahava manufactures its cosmetics in a factory in the illegal Mitzpe Shalem settlement in the occupied West Bank. However, Ahava labels its skin care products imported into the EU as originating from “The Dead Sea, Israel.” Van Bommel, concerned about this misleading labeling, asked Dutch minister of Foreign Affairs Maxime Verhagen to investigate the origin of Ahava cosmetics, and Verhagen agreed.
The settlements Mitzpe Shalem and Kalia, located deep within the Israeli-occupied West Bank, own 44 percent of the shares of the company. Before the June 1967 war, Palestinians lived on some of the lands that are now part of the two settlements; there were Palestinian communities in Nabi Musa where Kalia is now located and in Arab al-Taamira next to Mitzpe Shalem.
According to the Israeli group Who Profits From the Occupation? (www.whoprofits.org), the mud used in Ahava products is taken from a site on the shores of the Dead Sea inside the occupied territory, next to Kalia. Ahava uses Palestinian natural resources without the permission of or compensation to the Palestinians. Meanwhile, Israel denies Palestinians access to the shores of the Dead Sea and its resources, although one-third of the western shore of the Dead Sea lies in the occupied West Bank.
This week Palestinian tourism minister Khouloud Daibes voiced her disagreement with Ahava’s practices in the West Bank. In protest of Israel’s aspirations to nominate the Dead Sea for the Seven Natural Wonders of the World competition, Daibes wrote her Israeli counterpart a letter to express her objection to “promoting the Dead Sea in the competition, alongside products like Ahava, which are produced illegally in the Israeli settlement on occupied Palestinian lands.”
Recently, the international campaign to boycott Ahava beauty products received support from the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, which sent an open letter on 17 November to Ahava’s management, urging the company to move its operations out of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Gush Shalom stated: “Your decision to locate in Occupied Territory and make use of natural resources which do not belong to Israel was a mistaken gamble which already harmed your interests and might harm them even much further. Sooner or later you will have to get out of this damaging and illegal location — and the sooner, the better.”
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, parliamentarian Van Bommel told The Electronic Intifada he welcomes the international Ahava campaign. “It might appear a minor issue, but it is important as an example of [Israel] economically hampering the realization of a Palestinian state.” He added that he would welcome initiatives in other EU countries to raise the issue in their parliaments. “Subsequently, the pressure on Israel will increase and more importantly, we can engage the public in the debate.”
Adri Nieuwhof is an independent consultant based in Switzerland.