FEATURE-Israeli soldiers show a softer side
Reuters
Date: 08-23-05
By Howard Goller
JERUSALEM, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers, accused of using excessive force with Palestinians, have shown a softer side in their eviction this month of thousands of Jewish settlers from occupied lands.
Weeping settlers have called them Nazis, spat on them and hurled bottles, rocks and chemical irritants, causing injuries. But rather than hit back, the troops have taken it, shed a tear and even hugged their fellow Israelis.
The images are a far cry from the traditional response of security forces to confrontation in a society split by years of violence, where passions flare suddenly like blasts of heat over Middle East sands.
Opinion polls have shown Israelis are deeply divided over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to leave all of Gaza's 21 settlements and four in the West Bank. Some Israelis had feared an outbreak of civil war.
But working with psychologists, Israel's soldiers, police and border guards took a new approach during the evacuation and some wonder whether these new methods could change both Israeli society and the conflict with the Palestinians.
"The people who took part learned to be sensitive and empathetic and I very much hope that it will truly have a positive impact on all of Israeli society," said Major Hagai Braude, army psychologist for the district that includes Gaza.
Soldiers helped settlers pack. They offered glasses of water. A psychologist or social worker served as a consultant for each battalion commander. "Sensitivity" and "firmness" were the operation's bywords.
Israelis will challenge any comparison between the settlers -- in this case Israeli Jews who promised to shun firearms -- and Palestinian militants who carry out suicide bombings and fire on troops during demonstrations.
Nonetheless, Israelis and Palestinians have wondered whether they could learn from the pullout experience.
"I very much hope that a process of discussion and cooperation will bring about a possibility of showing more sensitivity, openness and patience in every contact of the army, with every population," Braude told Reuters.
SAME SENSITIVITY?
Pictures of calm, unarmed Israeli soldiers were beamed across the world during the pullout, but the most interested viewers may have been closer to home.
Palestinians ask why the army cannot show them some of the same sensitivity, given what they view as their own legitimate campaign -- to end nearly four decades of military occupation.
"Palestinians say that had there been a similar treatment ... with them, violence would have been discouraged and non-violence strengthened," Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator with Israel, said.
Erekat said the pullout showed peace was possible, but also raised questions among Palestinians, whose movement between crowded towns and refugee camps has been restricted by Israeli army checkpoints and roadblocks.
Israelis say the checks are vital for security and they have occasionally caught suicide bombers, some of whom have detonated their explosives at the checkpoints, as well as arms smugglers.
Palestinians say they routinely suffer humiliation and harassment, waiting long hours, often in the summer heat or the winter cold, for soldiers to allow them to cross.
"Many Palestinians are asking, 'Why does the Israeli army treat us differently? Even during peaceful demonstrations they use bullets and teargas,'" Erekat told Reuters.
Some Palestinians believe progress towards peace could speed up if Israeli soldiers did not treat them like enemies at checkpoints, where the two peoples meet most regularly.
ARM IN ARM
The evacuations marked Israel's largest non-wartime military operation. More than 50,000 soldiers and police were deployed after months of training for the event.
Israeli army psychologists worked hard so that soldiers, both men and women, would be mentally and physically prepared for what they might face. They practiced for every eventuality in role-playing games. They met the settlers and their leaders.
The preparations appeared to pay off. The pullout took less time than expected and feared serious clashes did not occur.
During the pullout, Israeli troops repeatedly linked arms with settlers and sang and prayed with them before moving them out. They talked and they hugged. When unable to coax the settlers out, the security forces carried them out.
In one instance in Gaza, troops sat on the curb taking a break from evacuations and settlers approached and berated them. The soldiers simply looked straight ahead, their faces blank.
In some of the worst violence, security forces used cranes, bulldozers and water cannon to forcibly remove settlers who barricaded themselves in and hurled rocks, bottles, paint-filled light bulbs and chemical irritants, at times causing injuries.
Security forces encouraged their comrades to identify with the pain those being evacuated were feeling, but the rules of the game called for settlers to shun violence and obey the law.
"We both hugged them and understood their difficulty and also defined for them all the time the limits, what's permissible and what's forbidden," Braude said.
Psychologists said they had to train the soldiers not to think like soldiers. The key was to get them to think of the settlers as brothers, not to demonise them.
"The main change was the state of mind of a mission that is civilian and not a classic military one and that meant getting it into the heads ... of the soldiers and police that we are not speaking of an enemy but Israeli Jewish civilians," Braude said.
"A whole lot of men and women soldiers also cried which showed they were not robots, they took it to heart," he said.
(Additional reporting by Wafa Amr in the West Bank and Cynthia Johnston in the Gaza Strip)
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