Why Israel’s military chief took his time in calling for restraint over killings of Palestinians

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Haaretz’s editorial on Wednesday called on Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi to fire the head of Central Command, Maj. Gen. Tomer Yadai. The background: multiple incidents in which Palestinian civilians have been killed in the West Bank. More than 40 Palestinians have been killed there since the beginning of the year.

Since the end of July, four West Bank residents have been killed by soldiers’ weapons fire, including an 11-year-old boy. A few weeks earlier, Israel Harel, a Haaretz columnist, took Yadai to task from the opposite perspective. Harel was outraged by the professional opinion submitted by Yadai to the effect that the settlement outpost of Evyatar, south of Nablus, which was established without approval, is endangering the security of the area.

LISTEN: Israeli settlers call the shots as Palestinian fatalities mount

Yadai actually wrapped up his stint as head of Central Command on Wednesday – but not because anyone in the General Staff was attentive to the thinking of the newspaper’s editors. The move was planned in advance, and in October he will be appointed, at Kochavi’s request, as chief of the Ground Forces Command. A major challenge awaits him there in maintaining the relevance of the ground forces in an era in which Israel prefers to manage its wars remotely and from the air.

The increase in the number of Palestinians killed this year – almost twice as many as in every other recent year – is due to a combination of circumstances, not all of which were within the exclusive responsibility of the head of Central Command. Last year, there was a lengthy and almost total disconnect between Israel and the Palestinian Authority’s security units, caused by the crisis over Israel’s decision to withhold a portion of the taxes that it collects on the Palestinians’ behalf. Israel took the step in response to the Palestinian Authority’s financial support for terrorists and their families. And later, the Palestinian Authority considerably curbed its activity against Hamas in the West Bank following President Mahmoud Abbas’ announcement that Palestinian parliamentary elections would be held.

When Abbas reconsidered and decided in April to cancel the election, his about-face accelerated Hamas’ decision to exploit the tension on the Temple Mount and fire rockets at Jerusalem from Gaza, a move that triggered May’s war between Israel and Hamas. At that stage, violent incidents also flared up within Israel itself.

The police enlisted help from all of the Border Police units in the West Bank to help quell the unrest in Israeli cities with mixed Jewish and Arab populations. They were replaced in the West Bank by ten battalions of regular and reserve soldiers. The soldiers, who went through training of the most expedited kind, found themselves trying to put out fires throughout the West Bank. Their inexperience, coupled with the intensity of the clashes, apparently contributed to the considerable use of live ammunition.

That’s the background behind the deaths of 29 Palestinians in the West Bank during May’s Gaza war. The great majority were killed in the course of violent incidents – soldiers who faced mass demonstrations or who shot at terrorists (in some cases, women) who had opened fire on the soldiers, tried to stab them or deliberately crashed their cars into checkpoints and army patrols.

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In addition, there was the failure represented by the founding of Evyatar on the eve of the war. The army and the police delayed evacuating the outpost, and the settlers took advantage of the fact that the forces were tied up quelling the other incidents and hurriedly constructed dozens of homes at the outpost.

The outpost, which was ultimately temporarily cleared of its residents (although the buildings are still standing), became a focal point of violent demonstrations, and Palestinians were killed there by soldiers’ gunfire on nearly a weekly basis. The Palestinian Authority supported the demonstrations financially and organizationally, as part of its effort to compete with Hamas.

Killing of an 11-year-old

In addition, there were the incidents of the past several weeks. The most serious of them occurred in the village of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron. Infantry soldiers from the Kfir brigade opened fire at a car whose driver had tried to evade them; the driver’s 11-year-old son was killed. As every soldier who has served in the territories knows, the rules of engagement (which, as it’s always said, were written in blood) prohibit shooting at a moving vehicle unless there is certainty that it poses a danger to soldiers’ lives – precisely because things can go awry.

Palestinian protestors clash with Israeli forces at the funeral of a 20-year-old Palestinian, in the village of Beit Ummar, late last month.HAZEM BADER / AFP

In this case, as in more than 20 other fatal incidents in recent months, a Military Police investigation of the incident was opened. Based on past experience, it’s unlikely that the soldiers will be put on trial. Nevertheless, a senior officer told Haaretz that the allegation that commanders are insensitive to what happened is also groundless.

“That incident made my stomach turn,” the officer said. “When a Palestinian child is killed by soldiers’ fire, I have a sleepless night. It’s a tragic story, not a political statement. The worst incident that could possibly happen occurred there – and the tragedy is also that of the soldier who opened fire.”

As I see it, the target for criticism regarding soldiers who are too quick to shoot should not begin with Yadai but with his superiors: Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Chief of Staff Kochavi. Over the years, the senior command in the Israel Defense Forces has learned that every public statement relating to the conflict with the Palestinians is liable to trip them up with a vocal fringe on the right and to affect their prospects for promotion down the line.

One person who dared take an opposite stance was former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, for whom the case of Elor Azaria, who shot a Palestinian who had already been subdued, was the moral watershed of his term and made him the target of systematic attacks from the right. Kochavi is being extremely leery of making any sort of similar remark. Just recently, following a major delay, he issued a direct call upon the commanders in the West Bank to show restraint in their operations and to avoid needlessly killing civilians.

The settlers and the right wing have built up a considerable store of deterrence, which was further enhanced by the Azaria case. That’s the real background to the conduct of the politicians and the army – from Gantz on down – who in fact should have acted more vigorously and earlier.

Yadai distinguished himself – in the course of his years of service, including as commander of the IDF units in the West Bank and during the 2014 Gaza war and in the wave of lone-wolf knife attacks by Palestinians a year later – as a judicious, responsible and proficient officer. Those who did not want him as head of Central Command will soon get him as commander of the ground forces, and down the line, quite likely, as deputy chief of staff and as a candidate for the top job in the IDF.

Placement of new soldiers

In a place of honor in the office of the head of the IDF Manpower Directorate there is a thick military tome in a yellow binding that was obviously printed on an old typewriter. In described the “kaba” (a Hebrew acronym for “quality group” mode”) that for years defined the IDF’s policy in placing draftees. It was published in June 1989. Just one year later, the current head of the branch, Major General Yaniv Ashur, enlisted in the Golani Brigade.

In March of this year, Haaretz published an interview with Dr. Zeev Lerer. A lieutenant colonel in the reserves and a behavioral studies scholar, Lerer spent years researching how the IDF’s personnel placement methods, particularly the “quality group” system, which was developed in the 1950s, have given rise to systematic ethnic discrimination against Mizrahi soldiers – soldiers whose families immigrated to Israel from elsewhere in the Middle East.

Although most of Lerer’s findings dealt with the first decades after Israel’s establishment, and although the policy has been moderated over time, some of the damage it caused is still apparent today. Ashur, who just took over as head of the Manpower Directorate, sent the Haaretz interview to his comrades in the General Staff.

The things that Lerer said were in keeping with the revolution that Ashur has sought to introduce in the army’s personnel screening system. This month, Chief of Staff Kochavi approved it and the program will now be implemented.

The “quality group” model will be eliminated and replaced by a new screening tool. Instead of the three standard parameters previously in use – an initial psychological and technical ranking, a personal interview and the number of years of study – six parameters will now be used and given varying weight depending on the requirements of the position. The six are: cognitive ability, resilience, managerial aptitude, adaptiveness, talents and skills, and years of study.

To enable the army to apply the parameters, male recruits will also now undergo the suitability testing that up until now was only administered to female recruits. The new program will include changes to the initial psychological and technical exams, with reduced weight accorded to the Hebrew exam. A major effort will also be made to improve access to the testing for prestige army slots for residents of outlying areas of the country.

Behind all of these changes lies a shift in the army’s basic approach. The focus will not only be on the most important purpose of the process – to fill the army’s ranks – but also emphasis on assigning soldiers to positions that suit their specific talents and to some extent their motivation as well.

The goals that the new army manpower chief is seeking to achieve have also been influenced by his experience as a commander. In the Second Lebanon War, Ashur was the commander of Golani’s 51st battalion, which found itself in a fierce battle against Hezbollah fighters in the town of Bin Jbail. The battalion lost eight men in the battle and later received among the highest number of military awards in the IDF’s history.

The officers and combat soldiers who distinguished themselves in battle came from various backgrounds, and very little of the qualities that they demonstrated under fire could have been predicted in advance by the standard classification tests. There were officers who were graduates of elite pre-military academies, a new immigrant officer who was barely got promoted following a borderline score in Hebrew and a regular infantryman whose abilities would never have been identified by any psychological and technical interview.

Although belated, this new approach on the IDF’s part is necessary. In the long term, it needs to be expanded to address another difficulty that the army has been slow to admit to – the frustrating effort to retain the outstanding and most promising officers among its ranks.

All of this is part of a much broader context of massive changes taking place in Israeli society that also gradually affect its attitude toward the army and toward service in combat in particular. In many ways, the army is sitting atop a volcano over which it has limited influence. The intentions are good, but it will take years for them to be put to the real test.