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January 7, 2005/Tevet 26 5765, Vol. 57, No. 19
Prospect of army refusal looms
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - As the scheduled start of Israel's Gaza withdrawal approaches, settler leaders are raising the specter of mass refusal by religious soldiers to carry out orders and are warning of disastrous consequences for the Israeli army and society as a whole.
But high-ranking Israel Defense Forces officers say settler leaders are exaggerating in an attempt to scare the government and to encourage soldiers to refuse to evacuate settlers from their homes.
On Jan. 4, the anticipated evacuation drama was played out in microcosm as soldiers and police dismantled the two mobile homes that made up the unauthorized West Bank outpost of Shalhevet Yitzhar: There were scenes of violent settler resistance, a call by a soldier to disobey orders and wide-scale arrests.
The refusal controversy has sparked a national debate, at the heart of which is the issue of state sovereignty versus rabbinical authority. The debate raises worrying questions: If there is widespread civil disobedience and refusal to carry out army orders, will Israeli society be dangerously divided? Could such a rift scuttle the withdrawal plan?
There have been cases of left-wingers advocating refusal to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip or to carry out missions in populated areas, but those calls for disobedience never approached critical mass. On Jan. 2, however, settler leaders called a meeting with the IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, to warn of an impending crisis.
The settler leaders said that they themselves are against soldiers refusing to obey orders, but after rulings by settler rabbis excoriating Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's withdrawal plan and expressly forbidding soldiers to participate, thousands of religious soldiers probably would choose to obey their rabbis rather than their army commanders.
"The writing is on the wall," one settler leader was quoted as saying. "The rabbis have spoken, and there is nothing we can do about it."
They said Sharon has only himself to blame for the situation because he failed to build a wide national consensus for his plan. The fact that his policy lacks legitimacy in settler eyes only encourages refusal, and they want the army to help stop the erosion, the settler leaders said.
During a visit to a West Bank army base on Jan. 5, Sharon warned Israeli settlers not to attack troops who evacuate them. "Do not dare raise a hand against soldiers," Sharon said. "If you want to lay into someone, lay into me. Lay off the Israel Defense Force."
The prime minister said he had ordered the Justice Ministry to toughen laws against those who incite to political violence.
It wasn't clear just what the settlers expected the army to do. In an earlier meeting with the IDF high command, Ya'alon made it plain that the army takes the refusal threat very seriously, but has no intention of buckling in the face of pressure.
On the contrary, Ya'alon said the army's main challenge for 2005 is to make sure that the withdrawal plan is carried out to the letter.
"As tough as it might be, we will have to be very firm, because failure to implement the decisions of the political echelon will put us as a nation and a society at risk," Ya'alon said.
An inkling of what may lie in store came Jan. 3 at Shalhevet Yitzhar. Even that small outpost proved a handful to dismantle, and it went down only after an angry, three-hour skirmish.
Moreover, though one soldier did call on the others to disobey orders, there was no mass refusal at Shalhevet Yitzhar. How will the army and police cope when large, bona fide settlements are uprooted - and if significant numbers of soldiers refuse to take part?
In the public debate, most speakers have come out strongly against refusal to obey orders. Indeed, some of the most outspoken critics are from the same national religious camp as the potential dissenters.
National religious Jews who make up most of the settler population, serve in the army and take strong right-wing positions face the most acute dilemma: On the one hand, they see settling the Land of Israel as a necessary step toward the coming of the Messiah, and they accept rabbinical rulings; on the other, they're loyal to the State of Israel and its institutions.
While the settlers tend to emphasize the primacy of rabbinical injunctions, other movement leaders and intellectuals elevate the authority of the state. For example, ex-general Yaacov Amidror, the first religious Jew to serve on the IDF general staff and one of the national religious movement's most articulate spokesmen against disengagement, makes a clear distinction between refusal by men in uniform - which he says is always illegitimate - and civil disobedience, which he condones.
In a democracy, Amidror says, it's totally unacceptable for army personnel to refuse to do the bidding of the government, to which they and the army are subordinate. Mass refusal, Amidror says, will pose a greater threat to the state than withdrawal - which, he believes, is itself a huge strategic blunder.
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