B'Tselem and
IDF: Unlikely Partners
By
In the past few months B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights watchdog that has been a relentless critic of IDF practices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has branded the army's permit system for Palestinians crossing the security barrier "racist."
It has asserted that a system restricting Palestinian use of hundreds of kilometers of West Bank roads is "harsh, extensive, indiscriminate" and arbitrary, a violation of freedom of movement rights and "reminiscent of the apartheid system."
Most damning of all, it has charged that the IDF has killed "at least 1,656 Palestinians who took no part in the fighting" of the past four years, amid "rules of engagement that encourage a trigger-happy attitude among soldiers... [and] allow indiscriminate gunfire," with a "climate of impunity" that, to date, has seen just a single soldier "convicted of causing the death of a Palestinian."
Publicly, the army has long followed a practice of either responding to some of B'Tselem's flow of allegations with a robust defense of its actions, or choosing to ignore them. Privately, and remarkably, however, it has gradually been exposing more and more of its soldiers directly to their B'Tselem critics.
B'Tselem staff have been delivering lectures to the IDF, at the Military Educational Academy at Har Gilo, south of Jerusalem, on a sporadic basis since the mid 1990s. But over the past two years, precisely as B'Tselem's critiques of the army have reached new heights, the frequency of such lectures has increased dramatically.
In close coordination with senior officers from the IDF's Educational Corps, B'Tselem staffers now lecture at least two or three times a month to a broad spectrum of IDF soldiers including Border Police, the officers who staff the District Coordination offices handling entry permits for Palestinian civilians, officers training for the Educational Corps, and members of a new checkpoint unit.
AT B'TSELEM, where I have been working as an intern, the lectures are regarded as an important opportunity to convey to soldiers the need to interact with Palestinians at checkpoints with restraint and civility. They are also an opportunity to highlight that B'Tselem believes aspects of IDF policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians to be in unequivocal breach of international law. B'Tselem's reports are also available at the academy.
"For a lot of soldiers, B'Tselem was a nameless, faceless critic," says B'Tselem's director, Jessica Montell. "Now that soldiers can engage with B'Tselem and its criticism, we have become real people with real criticisms."
At the IDF Spokesman's office, Capt. Jacob Dallal says he thinks the lectures provide substantial benefits to both parties.
"The soldiers get something out of it," he says, "and B'Tselem is explaining what it thinks to a very important audience. It is being given access to people in the field, while the soldiers are able to understand the issues from a human rights perspective."
Not all the soldiers who have attended the talks are so enthusiastic.
One soldier from the Educational Corps, who attended a B'Tselem lecture in early 2004 and asks to remain anonymous, says the lecture caused "quite a balagan" - chaos - in the audience.
"B'Tselem says you're not moral, you support the occupation; the soldiers want Israeli society to support them, they want to be moral," says the soldier.
Usually lasting an hour and a half, the lectures cover a wide range of topics.
Eyal Raz, B'Tselem's outreach coordinator and its principle lecturer to the IDF over the past three years, says the talks begin with a discussion of international law, and the task and capabilities of a human rights NGO. The soldiers are presented with B'Tselem's positions and this often leads to discussion about the separation fence, checkpoints and similar issues.
RAZ, WHO won't tell his IDF audiences what he used to do in the army, adds that he likes to stay in the realm that places the least blame directly on the soldier.
"I talk to them about B'Tselem," says Raz. "They've heard of it, but they don't know the motivations behind our organization. They don't understand how we can work for whom they perceive as the enemy."
Montell says B'Tselem is skeptical about the IDF's motives for inviting it in. "They need to fill out their training program, and they are trying to eradicate violence at checkpoints," she says. "So it's a good thing to say they have invited us to speak."
But, she adds, "We know we're a fig leaf for them."
Asked to elaborate, she calls the B'Tselem access a token act by the IDF that makes the army look good, enabling it to assert the image of a tolerant army, or at least one that is aiming for reform.
Dallal, at the IDF Spokesman's office, sounds very different.
"The reality the soldiers face is complex," he says. "B'Tselem might emphasize this complexity, but this is a good thing. It will help soldiers to see a wider perspective."
THE RESPONSE to a B'Tselem lecture from the Educational Corps soldier hardly bears this out, however.
"The B'Tselem spokesperson said that the terrorists don't pass through the checkpoints, but rather that the checkpoints just harm civilians," he reports. "For most people listening, it was hard to accept this viewpoint."
The army, he goes on, has been constantly telling soldiers that the checkpoints are a first line of defense against terrorism. Now along comes B'Tselem and says the opposite - they are not really stopping terrorists, just harming civilians. They are not really good guys, and have no business being there. Soldiers are hearing this at an IDF-run forum, and yet it runs directly counter to IDF doctrine.
Raz is well aware of the confusion provoked by his talks.
"The idea that an Israeli guy will come and criticize them! They think, 'We're ready to hear it from Europeans, Americans, and Arabs, of course - but from Israelis?'"
He adds that one of the questions he is asked most often is: "Why do you publish [reports that are critical of Israel] in English?"
Publishing in Hebrew might be okay for the soldiers, he says, but using English is considered traitorous, since it entails "going to them."
Because he is Israeli, Raz says, his talks garner more legitimacy. Soldiers feel no one understands how hard it is for them, he says.
"But I can say, 'I'm here, I was in the army, a suicide bombing targets me as an Israeli.'
"I think this makes it easier to talk to soldiers."
THE LECTURES are by no means the only point of interaction between B'Tselem and the IDF. The IDF allows soldiers to provide testimony for its reports and supplies written comments to be included in the published versions.
"The army comments on B'Tselem's reports, and B'Tselem is closely in touch with the civil administration in the territories," says Dallal.
"We appreciate B'Tselem and the work it does, and this facilitates coordination on many different levels."
Last year, B'Tselem issued 5,000 pocket guides to soldiers stationed at checkpoints offering practical rules consistent with IDF standing orders. Among the entries: "YOU MUST ALLOW medical teams to cross through checkpoints"; YOU ARE FORBIDDEN to beat, abuse, degrade or 'punish' Palestinian residents," and "It is forbidden to fire 'rubber bullets' at children." Montell says the IDF did not respond one way or the other to the distribution of the guides.
B'TSELEM IS not unique in being granted access to soldiers. And Dubit Ater, head of the department of education for the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), says her organization's approach is more effective.
ACRI works with the Border Police, facilitating eight-hour workshops that deal specifically with human rights and soldier conduct at checkpoints.
For Ater, "lecturing is not enough. We are dealing with values, fears and attitudes - you have to discuss them and deal with them through experiences."
Lecturing puts the soldiers on the defensive, she says. Workshops are a more effective means of "presenting human rights to soldiers, making it part of their thinking."
Raz admits that the soldiers do sometimes feel they are being attacked in his talks, even personally.
And this writer was told that some soldiers were angry because they felt the lectures focused only on negative generalizations about the army and did not give the soldiers any tangible solutions to the problems they face on the ground.
But the IDF itself recently formed a Checkpoint Unit, as part of a conceptual and organizational shift aimed at adjusting itself to the routine daily needs of the Palestinians. The new unit is comprised of military police who have studied spoken Arabic, and its members will attend lectures by organizations such as B'Tselem.
Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Internal Investigation Office, which deals with the West Bank and Gaza, has approximately 250 ongoing investigations concerning alleged abuses by soldiers at checkpoints.
B'Tselem's Raz says he hopes lectures like his will impact future conduct.
Sometimes it can make a difference, he says, when soldiers "just hear another point of view."
The writer, an intern at B'Tselem, is also an editorial intern at The Jerusalem Post.