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Gaza pull out nears tensions security risk { October 21 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/international/middleeast/21israel.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/international/middleeast/21israel.html
October 21, 2004
As Gaza Pullout Vote Nears, Tension Among Israelis Rises
By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM, Oct. 20 - The Israeli security service has increased its protection of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon even in the corridors of Parliament, as he jokes that there is not a bulletproof vest large enough to fit him. The defense minister and the army chief of staff have delivered scathing denunciations of rabbis who urge soldiers to follow their conscience and disobey orders. A legislator has collapsed complaining about the political pressure on him as protesters vow to circle the Parliament building with settlers' children and a slow-moving cordon of automobiles.
As Israel prepares for a vote on Tuesday on Mr. Sharon's plan to remove all 8,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, the tension in this normally voluble country is ratcheting toward high. A new opinion poll says a third of Israelis believe that the chances of a political assassination in the coming year have increased.
Mr. Sharon is widely expected to win the evacuation vote, the crucial first of a series, with at least 67 votes of the 120-member Parliament. But the debate remains raw and wrenching.
Opponents have developed a sense of urgency, even desperation. Some, including a quarter of Mr. Sharon's own Likud members of Parliament, simply oppose the removal of Israeli settlements anywhere in what they consider their historic homeland. Others say Mr. Sharon is committing a sacrilege, by forcing Jews to leave land they believe God gave them.
Another group worries that to give up Gaza without exacting any negotiated price from the Palestinians is tactically foolish and a capitulation to terrorism. Still others are seeking political advantage against a stubborn and weakened prime minister.
Perhaps the sharpest sign of the anguish caused by the withdrawal debate has been the response of military leaders to rabbis who have called for soldiers to disobey orders to evacuate settlers.
Both the defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, and the army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, gave wrenching speeches at a memorial service on Tuesday night demanding that the country consolidate around the armed forces as the unifying symbol of the nation. They demanded that rabbis not force religious soldiers to face the moral dilemma of whether to obey their religious authorities or their duly elected democratic ones.
Among those religious authorities is the former chief Ashkenazic rabbi of Israel, Avraham Shapira, the spiritual leader of the religious Zionist movement, who ruled that soldiers were forbidden "to expel Jews from their homes" and ordered them to disobey orders to do so. "This is an offense," he said.
On Friday, his call was supported by about 60 rabbis and heads of yeshivas who called upon soldiers "to refuse to take part in uprooting settlements and settlement outposts in the Land of Israel." Another group of 56 rabbis recently endorsed a similar 1994 religious ruling by Rabbi Shlomo Goren, who had also been a chief rabbi and a chief army chaplain.
A senior military officer said Wednesday that it was vital to try to put a sharp needle into a rapidly expanding balloon.
"We're a Jewish state, and we need to put it very clearly, so soldiers understand they must obey the democratic leadership of the state," he said. "We can't allow commanders and soldiers, whether from the right or the left, to decide which missions to implement."
General Yaalon, the top military officer and a respected figure who worked his way up through the ranks, said in his speech that the "war against Palestinian terrorism is intricate," especially when Israel is divided over how to resolve it, and requires a unified army that "must be kept out of the political dispute."
The phenomenon of refusal, or disobedience, he said, "is dangerous to us as an army, as a society and as a state." So "calls for disobedience by political and spiritual leaders forces soldiers and commanders to face difficult dilemmas" that can undermine the army, he said.
Mr. Mofaz, the defense minister and General Yaalon's predecessor as chief of staff, said the army unites this disparate nation. "Bed by bed, sharing a tent, sharing a tank, an A.P.C., a jet or a ship, we can find soldiers from Peace Now and Gush Emunim," he said, referring respectively to a leftist group and one that backs settlers. "This is our greatness and the source of our strength."
In Wednesday's issue of the newspaper Hatzofeh, which supports the settler movement, some 60 rabbis signed an advertisement in support of Rabbi Shapira, in the name of a group called Jews Do Not Expel Jews.
The council of Yesha rabbis, which represents settlers, also declared its support for Mr. Shapira and called on soldiers to refuse to evacuate fellow Jews.
Of course, many rabbis, even some within the settler movement, disagree. They include Rabbi Shlomo Aviner of the Beit El settlement near the Palestinian city of Ramallah, who has been trying to create a party to the right of the National Religious Party. While warning of the strain and rupture of evacuation, he has told his followers to obey orders.
And Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun, leader of a yeshiva in southern Israel, said, "The appeal from Rabbi Shapira endangers the future of the state of Israel."
The senior military officer said the problem was much more acute in the army, which has young conscripts, than in the police, who will do most of the physical removal of settlers who do not leave voluntarily (they and the other settlers will get up to $200,000 tax free in any case). The police, he said, are older and professional; those with qualms can quit.
For the army, disengagement will be a relative term, he said, adding, "Without a responsible, effective Palestinian leadership in Gaza - and we will have to wait for that - the army must be there to ensure that Gaza does not become a haven for terrorism and a launching pad for Katyusha rockets against Israel."
While troop strength could be reduced at least 30 percent in Gaza with the settlers gone, he said, "we must ensure that the impact of disengagement - and especially the evacuation of settlers - won't be seen as running away from terrorism or evacuation under fire."
Israel must ensure that Gaza does not become the headquarters for militant organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, now centered in Damascus and Beirut, he said. If Gaza becomes "Hamasistan or Al Qaedistan," he said, the army would have to act, and would do so with increased legitimacy after disengagement.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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