11 December 2009
By
Jonathan Cook
in Nazareth
The fatal shooting by
Israeli soldiers of an Israeli man earlier this week
as he tried to scale a fence into the
Gaza Strip
was reportedly part of a drastic procedure the army
was supposed to have phased out several years ago.
The
Israeli media
reported that Yakir Ben-Melech, 34, had bled to death
after he was shot under the "Hannibal procedure",
designed to prevent Israelis from being taken captive
alive by enemy forces.
One critic,
Uri Avnery, a
former Israeli legislator and leader of
Gush Shalom,
a small radical peace group, defined the procedure as
meaning: “Liberate the soldier by killing him”.
The controversial
directive, which was once one of the army’s best-kept
secrets, was drafted more than 20 years ago after the
Israeli government had come under domestic pressure to
release hundreds of enemy prisoners for the return of
three captured soldiers.
Israel is currently
involved in just such negotiations over
Gilad Shalit,
a soldier who has been held prisoner in
Gaza by Hamas
for more than three years. According to reports, he
may be freed in the near future in a deal expected to
see several hundred Palestinians released from Israeli
prisons.
Israel was supposed to have
stopped the Hannibal procedure after it withdrew its
occupying army from south Lebanon in May 2000.
However, there is strong
evidence that it has continued to be used,
particularly during the events that triggered Israel’s
attack on
Lebanon
in the summer of 2006 and again last year during
Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Ben-Melech, a patient at a
mental health clinic in nearby
Ashkelon,
tried to enter Gaza in the early hours of Monday in
what his family believe was a bid to save Sgt Shalit.
The army says guards fired several warning shots as he
ran towards Gaza before shooting him in the leg.
Several Israeli military
correspondents, apparently briefed by the army,
reported that the Hannibal procedure had been invoked
in Ben-Melech’s case.
The use of the procedure
was also confirmed by Zvika Fogel, a former deputy
head of the army’s Southern Command, an area including
Gaza. He told the Reshet B radio station: “The
Hannibal procedure is definitely the right procedure.
We cannot afford now some soulmate next to Gilad
Shalit.”
However, in an apparent
sign of continuing sensitivities on the issue,
English-language editions of Israeli newspapers did
not mention the procedure.
The Jerusalem Post,
Israel’s only major newspaper produced in English,
excised a reference to the procedure included in an
early report on its website, and the army’s spokesman
avoided answering questions about whether the
procedure had been used in Ben-Melech’s shooting.
Later explanations from the
army focused instead on the threat Ben-Melech
supposedly posed. One official told Ynet, Israel’s
largest news website: “The [border] guards had no way
of knowing who he was and feared that his attempted
infiltration was part of a larger-scale
terror attack.”
Ben-Melech’s sister-in-law,
Ilanit, responded that the army’s account made no
sense. “He ran in the direction of Gaza, not the
soldiers, so why did they shoot him?”
The Hannibal procedure only
came to light accidentally in 2003 after a slip-up by
the country’s military censor allowed a reference to
remain in a report published by the daily
Haaretz.
In a follow-up article, the
newspaper revealed that the directive had been
formulated in 1986 in the wake of a deal in which
Israel had released more than 1,100 Palestinians for
three Israelis.
Gabi Ashkenazi,
the current chief of staff, was among those who
drafted the procedure.
The order, described as the
most controversial in the Israeli army’s history, was
that “a
dead soldier
is better than a captive soldier”, according to
Haaretz. The directive reportedly created a furore in
the army at the time, with some commanders and rabbis
considering it immoral, though no mention of it was
made public for many years.
It was last used officially
in
October 2000,
five months after Israeli forces withdrew from south
Lebanon, when Hizbollah captured
three soldiers
along the border.
Attack helicopters
fired on a vehicle in which it was believed the
soldiers were being held.
The soldiers’ bodies were
returned by Hizbollah, along with a captured Israeli
businessman, four years later in a deal that included
the release of 400 Palestinians and 35 Arab
nationals.
The procedure, according to
Haaretz, was revoked in 2002, although several
soldiers told the paper that they had been told to
follow it despite its official annulment.
There have been a number of
indications, in addition to the shooting of Ben-Melech,
that the procedure is still in force.
It appears to have been
invoked after
Hizbollah
captured two Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border
in summer 2006, an incident that triggered a
month-long attack by Israel on Lebanon.
Eitan Baron wrote in a blog
that his brother Yaniv, a 19-year-old tank driver, had
been sent in hot pursuit of the Hizbollah team holding
the two soldiers on a Hannibal procedure mission.
Yaniv Baron and four other
crew members died when the tank ran over a mine and
was then fired on by Hizbollah in what was widely
assumed to be an ambush.
According to Mr Baron,
Yaniv’s
battalion commander
told the family after his death that the procedure had
been invoked. “They [the tank crew] were familiar with
the procedure, and without giving it a second thought,
started driving,” Mr Baron wrote.
Further revelations about
the procedure emerged last January, during Operation
Cast Lead, when the Israeli media reported that
Israeli soldiers being sent into Gaza had been told to
avoid capture at all costs.
Channel 10, a television
station, quoted an officer from Battalion 501 of the
Golani Brigade
saying: “No troop member from the 501 battalion is to
be kidnapped at any cost, nor in any situation, even
if this means blowing up a grenade in his possession,
killing himself and those trying to kidnap him.”
An officer from the Givati
Brigades was also quoted, citing the Hannibal
procedure, adding: “We will not have two
Gilad Shalits
at any price.”
During Operation Cast Lead,
Hamas claimed that it had captured soldiers on two
occasions but that the Israeli army had killed the
Hamas fighters and soldiers in aerial attacks. Three
Israeli soldiers were reported to have died in
friendly-fire incidents.
A number of Palestinians,
including children, have been shot by the Israeli army
after getting close to the perimeter fence that
surrounds Gaza. Last year Israel announced that it
would shoot any Palestinian who entered a zone
extending several hundred meters inside the fence.
Jonathan Cook is a
writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel.
His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of
Civilisations:
Iraq,
Iran
and the Plan to Remake the
Middle East”
(Pluto
Press) and
“Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human
Despair” (Zed Books). His website is
www.jkcook.net.
©
EsinIslam.Com
Add Comments