Memoir excerpt on early Intifada response and Israeli military decisions

Chapter Fourteen It began with an accident. On Tuesday, December 8, 1987, an Israeli tank transporter crashed into a minibus carrying Palestinians from the Jabalya refugee camp near the main crossing from Gaza into Israel. Four passengers were killed. By the time of the funerals the next day, a rumor had spread, no less incendiary for being absurd, that the crash had been deliberate — retaliation for the fatal stabbing of an Israeli man a few days earlier. Crowds of Palestinians leaving the burials began shouting “Death to Israel!” They hurled rocks and bottles at Israeli security patrols, and blocked streets with burning tires. By the next day, the violence started spreading to the West Bank, and then to parts of east Jerusalem. The headline-writers moved from the word “disturbances” to “unrest” and finally to the Palesitnians’ own name for the most serious outbreak of violence since 1967: the “intifada”. The uprising. At least for the first week or two, we assumed its ferocity and scale would subside. Our immediate aim was to contain it, and limit the human cost on both sides. Yet when Dan and I began visiting units on the front line of this new conflict, we realized that if it kept escalating, we’d have to find new tools and strategies to bring it under control. We were in charge of an army trained to equip and fight enemy soldiers. Now, we were asking teenage recruits to operate as riot police against stone-throwing mobs. Before long, it wasn’t just stones, or even bottles. In one incident in Gaza, a young soldier was surrounded by a crowd of Palestinians and stabbed. He opened fire, wounding two of the attackers. Yitzhik Mordechai, now the head of the southern command, told reporters that his troops were under “strict orders to open fire only if their lives are under threat.” That was true. But I couldn’t help wondering how long the other part of his statement would hold: that we remained “in control of the situation.” We did fee/ in control for the first few days. Defense Minister Rabin was away in Washington on an official visit. When his office asked us whether he should fly back, we said there was no need. But on his return, we quickly agreed that, as a first priority, we needed to find an alternative to live ammunition in quelling the attacks. Otherwise, we’d be left with two equally bad options: either simply stand aside, in order to avoid killing or injuring demonstrators; or intervene with the inevitable casualties. But one of our most important early discussions was about the broader aspects of the violence. The meeting, held 226 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028074