Rethinking Contemporary Warfare: A Sociological View of the Al-Aqsa Intifada

10. "Human Rights," "Precision Warfare," and Violence

151 10 “Human Rights,” “Precision Warfare,” and Violence Minimizing Casualties and the Al-Aqsa Intifada Introduction The organizational structures and practices through which the IDF pursued the Al-Aqsa Intifada are different from the ones used in the previous intifada. The major part of the previous intifada (the Palestinian uprising) saw the use of mass beatings, the arrests of large numbers of people for lengthy periods, and the rather limited use of elite forces. In this conflict, we find first a host of new structures and practices related to what may be called “precision warfare.” These include the frequent use of snipers, the utilization of assassination squads, precision air strikes, and an emphasis on the systematic, methodical use of conventional forces to minimize casualties. A plethora of innovative measures accompanied these violent practices; these measures included a new code of ethics, legal experts and representatives of the IDF spokesperson placed at the level of field units, and seminars and briefings to ground-level commanders about human rights and human dignity. To be clear, we are not maintaining that all of these measures are somehow totally new, but, like Harel and Isacharoff (2004, 194), we maintain that their fully sophisticated use came about during the second intifada. These developments manifested themselves in the IDF’s selfimposed limit (not always followed) not to harm innocents, whether out of consideration for external and internal legitimacy (Drucker and Shelach 2005, 162) or the self-perception of soldiers and officers. 152 Rethinking Contemporary Warfare One company commander used the Hebrew rendering of situation— situatsia—in order to characterize the circumstances within which the company operates. The use of the English may be related to the fact that all of the commanders and many of the soldiers are well aware of the fact that their actions against the Palestinians may carry global political implications. The image is one in which “every bullet” may have very wide-ranging implications (in contrast to conventional war) and in which soldiers actions are monitored not only by the military hierarchy but also by the local and world media. When parents of IDF soldiers who had been killed in the attack on the Jenin refugee camp met with the Israeli chief of staff they asked something that a number of field commanders had pushed for (Harel and Isacharoff 2004, 257)—why a decision had not been made to simply bomb the camp with F-16 bombs. His answer was, “We have our limits.” And the battalion commander of the infantry reserve unit, whose twelve soldiers had been killed in Jenin, stated, “It would have been the easiest way, to enter each house with a grenade. We had enough ammunition, and in that way no one [from our force] would have been hit. We didn’t do it because we were afraid of hurting civilians . And then they say that we massacred” (MA April 14, 2002). In addition, while Israel was ferocious in the cities and refugee camps of Lebanon during the 1980s, when it used artillery and bombs downed by airplanes, media reports “suggested that some Israeli officers had opposed the indiscriminate bombardments, but that their opposition gave way due to their fear of Israeli infantry casualties” (Ron 2003, 178). Yet, interestingly, the IDF did not use the same methods in the cities and refugee camps of the West Bank and Gaza. Rather, it resorted to other violent means, such as the “exposure” of streets, agricultural areas, or buildings in order to keep casualties to a minimum. Hence, when placed in a comparative perspective—to African conflicts in such places as Somalia, Uganda, or Rwanda, or with the Russian wars in Chechnya—the IDF seems relatively restrained in its actions during the Al-Aqsa Intifada. But how are we to understand such restraints? How are we to understand this combination of organizational frameworks and actions (some of which are rather novel in the context of the IDF) that have been instituted over the past few years? This chapter attempts to answer these questions. One of the most significant developments in regard to contemporary armed forces has been their growing transparency to external agents such as political leaders, the media, the judiciary, pressure groups, or international nonstate institutions such as the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, or Amnesty International (Burk 1998; Dandeker 1998a, 34; Eiland 2001; Finnemore 1999). As a succession of schol- 153...