More haste, less speed
| Shlomo Gazit | November, 27 2001 |
(November 27) - The news on the radio last Thursday morning began, justifiably, with the story of the five Palestinian children, all members of the same family, who were killed in an explosion in Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip. The announcement explained that "the tragedy occurred when the group of children played with an unexploded shell from an IDF tank."
After a very short time we heard the Palestinian version of the incident: "IDF forces planted a booby-trap that was planned to hit Palestinians who regularly fire mortar shells from the place. The booby-trap was activated by remote control when the children were passing by." In reply to questions, the IDF spokesman refused to deny or confirm this version and merely stated: "Firing did not take place in the area. The IDF is checking the incident."
I don't know the truth about this event, and it is possible that by the time this article appears the results of the IDF enquiry will be published (assuming that it will be possible to perform a check with a reasonable level of reliability without the cooperation of the Palestinian Authority). However, even if it is established beyond doubt that the tragedy occurred while the children were playing with an unexploded round, it will be impossible to prevent long term damage.
The damage in this case is not confined to the specific tragedy of the deaths of five innocent children in Khan Yunis. The damage refers to the reliability of IDF reports.
Someone reported the first version to Kol Israel, according to which the children were killed by the explosion of a dud IDF tank shell. I assume that the intention was good - to claim that this was merely a tragic accident for which the IDF was not responsible and thus pre-empt the report that would come from Palestinian sources. However, within a few hours a contradictory Palestinian version was published and the IDF spokesman was not ready to substantiate the initial explanation of the incident. We now don't know who and what to believe.
In the past there was absolute trust in the IDF. This trust was given first and foremost by the Israeli people, who accepted unreservedly every announcement of the IDF spokesman. A nation that has been undergoing a continuous military confrontation for more than 50 years must receive precise, full and reliable reports even if they are not pleasant to hear. This trust is the most important element of national morale, an essential condition for the average Israeli to serve in the IDF and for parents to give their children with full confidence to the military commanders. Unfortun-ately, the tragedy in Khan Yunis is not an exceptional case - we are in the middle of a continuous process that has been intensifying gradually since the period of the first intifada, or perhaps even earlier, of erosion of the reliability of reports issued by the military establishment.
The second form of damage was caused to the Arab-Palestinian attitude to Israeli reports. Even Arab public opinion distinguished in the past between the IDF announcements and the imaginative stories originating from their own sources. Those who really wanted to know what had happened used to rely on the Israeli reports alone.
This is no longer the situation. I am afraid that the average Arab places greater trust in the reports coming from his side or, at best, there is a lack of faith in the reports coming from both sides. Therefore, there are far more important ramifications that what is involved in a specific incident. This lack of trust refers to Israel in general, to all elements of the bilateral conflict, and particularly to Israel's diplomatic stance.
The third form of damage, of course, is to the media campaign to influence world public opinion. I don't think that neutral public opinion accepts the Palestinian version as being more reliable. It is enough that they don't accept the Israeli announcements without reservation.
There are apparently two explanations of what happened in this and other similar cases - the first was the strong desire to pre-empt the report that would come from Palestinian sources. In media war, paramount importance is attached to presenting the first version on the screen, but this only works if this version is reliable.
The second explanation, of which we have considerable experience, is the difficulty in obtaining full, accurate and reliable reporting from the field. In virtually no case was the initial report of the incident accurate, even if no attempt was made to blur or conceal unpleasant facts. It is very difficult to give full confidence to the initial report and it is necessary to wait until a thorough investigation has been made.
We encounter inaccuracies in almost every terrorist attack against Israelis. We have been following, for almost a year, the stories of the log in the Or Commission of Inquiry, and it is naturally impossible to give full trust to the initial version from Khan Yunis. However, the conclusion to be drawn is clear - it would be better for Israel and the IDF if their version were first, only if this does not harm its reliability.
IDF officers, remember: more haste, less speed!
IDF booby trap caused deaths of 5 Gaza schoolboys
| By Arieh O'Sullivan and Margot Dudkevitch | November, 25 2001 |
TEL AVIV (November 25) - IDF forces laid the bomb that accidentally killed five Palestinian schoolboys in Khan Yunis on Thursday, the army announced last night.
The IDF had remained silent over the cause of Thursday's deadly explosion except to say no tank had fired a shell in that sector. OC Gaza Strip Brig.-Gen. Yisrael Ziv is participating in the inquiry, but he himself may have been behind the decision to lay the bomb.
It was the first public announcement by the IDF since the deaths of Muhammad al-Astal, 14, his brother Akram, six, and their cousins Omer, 14, Annis, 10, and Ahmed, 10. The five children were walking to the nearby UN elementary school on Thursday morning when one of them apparently kicked the device, triggering the explosion.
The five were buried in Khan Yunis on Friday in a funeral attended by more than 10,000 people.
The bodies, wrapped in Palestinian flags and strapped to stretchers, were carried side-by-side in a procession as gunmen fired in the air. Children carried pictures of their dead classmates. Masked men wrote slogans on the walls of a mosque, threatening Israel with revenge.
Idress al-Astal, father of two of the dead children, said no investigation could bring back his sons. "God will grant me revenge," he said, breaking down in tears.
Military sources said that an IDF special force, acting on instructions from senior commanders, slipped into area A and laid the bomb. The idea was to set a trap in an area from which Palestinian gunmen had been repeatedly attacking Jewish settlements and IDF outposts.
It was a classic anti-guerrilla tactic, but it failed to take into account the possibility that others - such as children on their way to school - would venture into the area with tragic results.
"From the moment of the explosion an operational inquiry started examining the incident," an IDF statement said. "From an initial inquiry by OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Doron Almog, the possibility arises that the children were killed as a result of playing with a bomb which an IDF force had set in a sandbagged position that had been used to shoot at and attack our forces." It noted that the position was not inside any urban area, but in an open field.
"The inquiry is not yet completed, and when it is all the necessary operational lessons will be drawn," the statement said.
"The IDF Spokesman stresses that the action in the open area was intended against terrorists and it expresses its regret for the death of the children," the statement said.
Both Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and the IDF issued official statements expressing regret for the boys' deaths.
While Ben-Eliezer was sorry for the "human tragedy that took the lives of innocents," he stopped short of taking actual responsibility for the explosive device. The defense minister said the explosion was being investigated.
Israel Radio quoted a high-ranking officer as saying the order to investigate the affair was a "grave mistake."
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Police chief in Gaza, Brig. Gen. Abdel Razek Majaida, said the boys appeared to have been killed by a bomb planted by Israeli forces, who had been seen operating in the area the night before the blast.
"Shrapnel we collected from the area shows that the explosion was caused by an explosive device," he said.
"Our investigation continues, but it looks as if the device was booby-trapped and when one of the children kicked it, it exploded."
"We urge an international investigative committee to look into the murder of innocent children and to determine Israel's responsibility," he added.
On Friday Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh called on the army to launch a proper and fair inquiry of the incident, declaring the army's integrity is at stake.
"Someone may have to be punished if he acted improperly or acted with negligence," Sneh told Israel Radio, but added that the context of the tragedy is that "there is a terrorism and guerrilla war being waged against Israel."
Opposition leader Yossi Sarid called on the army to carry out an investigation and submit its findings this week to determine what was the cause and if action needs to be taken if misconduct is found. Speaking on Channel 1, he said: "Someone high up in the army will have to pay with his head. Children killed, whether on our side or theirs, is not something to be ignored."
Minister without Portfolio Dan Meridor took a similar view.
"If we really made a mistake, I hope we'll tell the truth about it," he said. "The truth is better than any excuse."
US State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said of the incident: "The United States deeply regrets the tragic accidental deaths of five Palestinian children... when they came in contact with unexploded ordnance. It was a terrible tragedy."
"We understand that the Israeli army has begun an investigation into the circumstances of these deaths and we expect that investigation will thoroughly determine what happened. This incident... is a strong reminder of why both sides should do all they can to end the violence, reduce tensions, and resume negotiations," he added.
(Janine Zacharia and news agencies contributed to this report.)