At War With Themselves
By HAIM WATZMAN
Published: May 20, 2005
Jerusalem
IN May 1988, several months after the first Palestinian uprising began, I was called up for reserve duty with my infantry unit, which was to spend a few weeks in a village near the West Bank city of Hebron. I was a staunch opponent of Israel's occupation of the West Bank because I believed it was both politically unwise and morally untenable. So my instinctive reaction was to refuse to serve, as some other left-wing reservists had done then, and are doing now.
Today, hundreds of religious soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces have signed declarations stating that they will refuse to serve if called up to dismantle Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank. They argue that forcibly removing Jews from their homes in the Holy Land is unjust and violates their religious beliefs.
I can sympathize with both these groups of conscientious objectors. Like the former, I oppose the occupation. Like the latter, I am an Orthodox Jew who believes that God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people. Like the soldiers on the left, I know that military service in the territories can involve difficult moral choices and actions that cause great suffering to Palestinian civilians. Like the soldiers on the right, I know that evicting the settlers from their homes will be horribly traumatic.
But both sides are wrong. They ought to serve despite their profound objections to the policies they will be called on to enforce. In 1988, after much agonizing, I reported for duty. That was the right thing to do then and it's the right thing to do now.
During the two weeks I spent in the village near Hebron, and in subsequent stints of duty in the West Bank, I found myself treating Palestinians with an outward contempt that contradicted every instinct my upbringing had instilled in me. I broke into homes after midnight and held women and children under guard in one room while my comrades searched the house for terrorists or explosives. I rounded up passers-by and organized them into labor details to remove improvised roadblocks. I screamed at old men and bullied teenagers.
A handful of my buddies in my unit seemed to enjoy maltreating the villagers, but most of them, including those who favored continued Israeli rule in the West Bank, were as disturbed as I was.
Beyond the village lay an Israeli settlement. The only road connecting the settlement with the rest of the world ran through the Palestinian village. One of our jobs as the garrison in the village was to keep the road safe for Israelis. A majority of my buddies saw nothing wrong with Israel having built a Jewish town in the middle of the West Bank. And the settlers made a good impression on all of us. They were friendly, idealistic and brave.
Despite our presence, settlers were still occasionally attacked by villagers. Some of the settlers urged us to treat the Palestinians more harshly than our orders allowed. We gave them the same reply that we gave to the occasional Palestinian who asked us why we were harassing him. We had orders, and we obeyed them, not the villagers and not the settlers.
We obeyed them because only that discipline could hold our diverse company together. Some of my fellow commanders believed the orders were not stringent enough. I believed they were overly harsh. If each of us acted according to his opinion, the result would be anarchy. Violence would surge and people would die.
Future peace depended on present order. If I were to refuse to serve in the West Bank when my government was carrying out a policy I thought was wrong, I'd set a precedent. Other soldiers could then claim a right to refuse to take part in dismantling the settlements if a future Israeli government decided to do so.
In a democracy, an army cannot be a parliament. It is composed of individual citizens, but its citizen-soldiers must act as a collective to carry out the decisions of the public's elected representatives.
This does not mean that soldiers should give up their opinions and beliefs when they enlist. There are times when a soldier receives an order so clearly evil or illegal that he must refuse to obey it. In fact, Israeli law requires soldiers to disobey such orders - for example an order to murder unarmed civilians. But such cases are rare. Breaking into Palestinian houses in search of terrorists frightens the family that lives there, but it is not on the same moral plane as murder. Handing over a piece of the biblical land of Israel to another people is wrenching for every devout Jew, but this, too, can hardly be equated with murder. Soldiers who oppose the occupation, or the disengagement, have the right and the duty to fight for change - but only when they are out of uniform.
Later this summer Israel will, for the first time, evacuate established Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This will not create peace. It is only one step in a long process. I am no longer a reservist, so I will not face the difficult task of evicting Israeli families from their homes. To those soldiers who say they will refuse orders to evacuate the settlements, I say: think again. Remember that soldiers who believed the settlements were wrong reported for duty year after year to protect them and to enforce the occupation. We proved we were loyal Israelis and responsible soldiers. Now it's your turn.
Haim Watzman is the author of the forthcoming "Company C: An American's Life as a Citizen-Soldier in Israel."
