The lessons of Jenin

In Shattered Gaza Town, Roots of Seething Split, NYT correspondent Ethan Bronner looks at a battle in Israel’s recent war with Hamas and reports:

The war in El Atatra tells the story of Israel’s three-week offensive in Gaza, with each side giving a very different version. Palestinians here describe Israeli military actions as a massacre, and Israelis attribute civilian casualties to a Hamas policy of hiding behind its people.

In El Atatra, neither version appears entirely true, based on 50 interviews with villagers and four Israeli commanders. The dozen or so civilian deaths seem like the painful but inevitable outcome of a modern army bringing war to an urban space. And while Hamas fighters had placed explosives in a kitchen, on doorways and in a mosque, they did not seem to be forcing civilians to act as shields.

Later Bronner reports:

But when the platoon of another commander, Captain Y., took over the neighborhood where a family named Ghanem lived, it blew up their house without going inside, he made clear in a phone interview. A search of it two weeks later by a correspondent for The New York Times joined by a 20-year veteran of the British Army, Chris Cobb-Smith, a weapons consultant for Amnesty International, showed no evidence of explosive material or of a secondary blast.

So why was the house destroyed?

“We had advance intelligence that there were bombs inside the house,” Captain Y. said. “We looked inside from the doorway and saw things that made us suspicious. I didn’t want to risk the lives of my men. We ordered the house destroyed.”

That seemed to be the guiding principle for a number of the operations in El Atatra: avoid Israeli casualties at all cost.

This is a point where more context would have been useful. Here’s Ami Issacharoff (via Yaacov Lozowick)

The IDF is proceeding in Gaza in a slow, orderly, efficient and very destructive manner. During 2002’s Operation Defensive Shield, in the Jenin refugee camp, disagreements developed among the different units as to how much force should be applied. A battalion of the 5th Reserve Infantry Brigade, which employed relatively humane operating methods, suffered 13 casualties in one single day from an ambush and roadside explosives. After those incidents, everyone took up the “Buchris method,” named after the commander of the 51st Golani battalion, Lt. Col. Ofek Buchris (today a brigade commander in the reserves): Forceful entry with “Akhzarit” (“cruel”) armored personnel carriers, which demolished houses’ walls before the soldiers entered them, leaving them a relatively protected corridor.

In Gaza 2009, there are no such debates. Yedioth Ahronoth reporter Yossi Yehoshua, who was embedded with the 51st Battalion in Gaza’s Sajaiyeh neighborhood, heard battalion commander Lt. Col. Shuki Ribak say, “We’ve used artillery shells, tanks and helicopters for close-range assistance. I don’t remember when we ever fired mortars in Gaza before.”

His soldiers explained that, if it boils down to choosing between their own lives and Palestinian houses, the choice is clear. Lt. Col. Cohen of Givati told Haaretz that, in his view, Hamas is at fault, for having booby-trapping populated buildings.

As Yaacov Lozowick commented:

That’s fine with me. It’s important to make efforts not to kill innocent Palestinians, even to the extent of marginally endangering our own troops. But when it’s the lives of troops versus buildings in Gaza, there should be no question. After the war the Iranians will pay for new buildings; lives can’t be re-invented.

Additionally as Evelyn Gordon observed, that extra care during Defensive Shield didn’t help Israel one bit.

In April 2002, the IDF launched a major counterterrorism operation in Jenin. To protect Palestinian civilians, it used ground troops rather than aerial bombing, in full knowledge that this would increase its own casualties. The final death toll, according to a subsequent UN investigation, was 52 Palestinians, more than half of them armed, and 23 soldiers. Not what one would normally call disproportionate.

For months, however, in complete disregard of the facts, the international media, the UN and human rights organizations accused the IDF of massacring hundreds of Palestinian civilians. The UN’s eventual correction was issued only four months later, by which time it attracted little attention. To this day, much of the world still believes Israel committed a massacre in Jenin.

Many of us concluded if we are going to be accused of massacre anyway, we might as well at least protect our soldiers. Hence soldiers in Gaza were told what other Western soldiers are: Avoid civilian casualties where possible, but use the force necessary to protect yourselves.

It’s well and good for Bronner to go to Gaza and try to reconstruct events. I think overall, despite his qualifications, he supports Israel’s version of events. (Hiding explosives in civilian structures is a war crime; even if the population wasn’t used as shields.)

In war, unfortunately, accidents will happen. However it is increasingly clear that Israel did its best to avoid collateral damage and should be praised.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.