- JERUSALEM - There were only
two bullets, meant to wound, not kill, and each found its mark, just as
the Israeli soldier had intended. The protester fell from a single shot
to each leg.
-
- These weren't bullets fired in haste; neither were they
fired by a renegade. The soldier followed orders and acted as he had been
trained to break up unruly protests: Shoot the instigator in the legs and
hope the others disperse.
-
- Israeli troops fire on protesters against the apartheid
wall
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- Only this time, the man shot and wounded was not a Palestinian.
He was a 21-year-old Israeli named Gil Naamati, a combat soldier honorably
discharged a month ago who was protesting Israel's new fence designed to
separate Palestinians from Israelis.
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- The story of Naamati's shooting Friday grew yesterday
into a fierce debate about the army's tactics, its use of deadly force
against unarmed protesters and whether more than three years of fighting
Palestinians has corrupted an Israeli military that calls itself the most
moral army in the world.
-
- The commander of the soldiers who opened fire only fueled
the argument that raged in Israel's press yesterday by telling a local
reporter: "The troops didn't know they were Israelis" - raising
the issue of a perceived double standard on how the army deals with the
Palestinians and its own citizens.
-
- The incident Friday occurs amid an outcry from hundreds
of army reservists, including dozens from elite combat units, who are refusing
to serve their compulsory duty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to protest
what they say is pervasive mistreatment of Palestinians.
-
- Noam Hoffstater, a spokesman for the Israeli human rights
group B'tselem, said the shooting offered an opportunity "to demonstrate
our army's open-fire regulations in the occupied territories in a way the
Israeli public might understand and listen to."
-
- "When Palestinians tell their stories, a lot of
Israelis find them very hard to believe," Hoffstater added. "There
is a huge gap between how we see ourselves and what we do in the West Bank
and Gaza. But when it happens to an Israeli, we must face the reality.
We can't defend ourselves."
-
- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Cabinet discussed the incident
yesterday, and Israel's parliament scheduled a debate for today. The attorney
general is contemplating a criminal investigation, and three military offices
have launched inquiries. The army chief of staff visited Naamati at his
hospital bed.
-
- Rules under which Israeli soldiers can fire their M-16
rifles vary depending on the situation and area. Strips of land bordering
fences surrounding the Gaza Strip and Jewish settlements are typically
labeled closed military zones, and soldiers have wide discretion.
-
- Army commanders have issued special orders on the new
security fence, which will traverse more than 480 miles from the northern
to the southern West Bank. Approaching the fence can be considered a security
violation, and soldiers are allowed to shoot.
-
- On Friday, about 300 protesters from two groups - the
International Solidarity Movement and Anarchists Against the Wall - gathered
at a gate on the Palestinian side of the fence near the West Bank city
of Qalqilya. They faced Israeli soldiers on the other side.
-
- The protesters were unarmed, but some climbed and shook
the fence, while others began to cut the wire mesh. There were reports
that some protesters wore masks and threw rocks at soldiers in the elite
Golani Brigade.
-
- Israeli news reports said soldiers asked repeatedly for
permission to shoot at protesters' legs and were denied. Finally, the order
was given. Soldiers opened fire, first into the air, and then at Naamati,
who was designated a lead agitator. An American protester also was wounded.
-
- Naamati had just completed three years of army service
in the artillery corps and had staffed military checkpoints that brought
him face to face with Palestinians in the West Bank. He had told his father
that he felt sorry for the Palestinians and tried to persuade fellow soldiers
to go easy.
-
- "I'm very angry with the soldiers who shot me,"
Naamati told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot from his bed in the Rabin
Medical Center in Tel Aviv. "When we stood beside the fence, I yelled
to the soldiers, 'Don't shoot us. Don't shoot us. We're Israelis.' But
they continued to fire."
-
- Uri Naamati, 53, said in a telephone interview yesterday
that, unlike his son, he supports the fence, but he also supports his son's
right to protest.
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- "What happened is very serious," he said. "Somehow,
the Israel Defense Forces fired live ammunition at Jewish protesters."
-
- But the elder Naamati, who served as a tank commander
in Israel's 1973 war against Egypt and Syria, does not agree with those
who are using the shooting of his son to argue that the Israeli army treats
Palestinians unjustly.
-
- He said a distinction should be made between Palestinian
and Israeli protesters, because the Palestinians are on the other side
of a war, while soldiers should know that Israelis would not endanger fellow
citizens.
-
- "You should fire only in self-defense in these situations,
and Jewish protesters don't pose a threat," said Uri Naamati, head
of a regional council of communities in the Negev desert. He said that
his son is recovering, but one bullet did serious nerve damage that will
require lengthy rehabilitation.
-
- Lt. General Moshe Yaalon, the army chief of staff, blamed
the demonstrators for "masquerading as Arabs." He said they "mingled
with Palestinians and entered the Palestinian side illegally," and
that some wore Arab headdresses and waved Palestinian flags.
-
- The Israeli right, including several members of parliament,
called for the protesters to be prosecuted, while those on the left demanded
that the army investigate the shooting. An editorial in Yediot Ahronot
said: "If a Palestinian had been shot, it probably would not have
got even one line in the newspaper."
-
- A well-known novelist, David Grossman, wrote in the same
paper that the shooting "needs to serve as a warning signal about
the place we have reached, the political and social climate that allows
for such a thing to occur. Maybe we will begin to wake up and understand
to what depths the occupation, the internal hatred, the violence that erupts
from within our midst even against ourselves has taken us."
-
- Ephraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for
Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, said open-fire regulations must be loose
near the fence or the protective barrier would be rendered useless. He
pointed out that soldiers patrolling the West Bank fence are under orders
to wound violators, while in Gaza, the area around the fence is designated
"a kill zone."
-
- Inbar said the strong reaction to the shooting reflects
Israel's "sensitivity to the lives of their own people." Had
the victim been Palestinian, he said, the Israeli left "would have
made some outcry, but it would have been far less appealing. It's clearly
different when one of your own gets shot."
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