Last update - 00:00 15/04/2005
The long goodbye
By Amir Oren
In 1967, the Israel Defense Forces needed three divisions - one regular and two reserve - to conquer Sinai and Gaza. In 2005, the IDF will need three divisions - two regular and one reserve - to evacuate Gaza alone. And that isn't all: For the first time in its history, the Israel Police will also deploy two divisional frameworks - to assist in the evacuation.
Even with this number of troops, the state will be too weak to simultaneously evacuate the four settlements in the northern West Bank. For these - and to block the dozens of outposts that may well spring up in response - another regular IDF division will be allocated. But another police division is needed, too, and it will only be moved north after the evacuation of the settlers from Gaza is completed.
There has never before been such a close connection between the IDF and the police - the same police force whose leaders proclaimed four and a half years ago that they had better not be turned into an IDF-2. The conflict with the Palestinians broke down the barriers between the IDF and the Shin Bet security services. Due to the lessons of the events of October 2000, and the use of the police SWAT units for combat in the territories, the buffer between the Shin Bet and the police was also breached.
Now the disengagement is toppling the walls between the IDF and the police. In the heat of the battle to bring the settlers back inside the Green Line - heading eastward in the south and westward in the north - it will be difficult, especially from behind, to distinguish between the two commanders dressed in blue, with similar insignia and officers' caps: Lieutenant General Dan Halutz and Police Commissioner Moshe Karadi.
The way things are currently shaping up, the evacuation of Gaza will commence on July 25. Three alternative dates have been set for its conclusion, depending on how easily any resistance is overcome. The earliest, and seemingly least realistic, is August 12 (August 14 was not considered, since this is when the Tisha b'Av fast day falls). The next option is September 1, the start of the school year (many of the settlers are complaining that they still don't know where their children will be attending school in the coming year). The bleakest target date is October 2, the day before the start of Rosh Hashanah.
If the evacuation of Gaza does not conclude before then, the operation will be suspended for a month during the High Holidays and then resume in November, when one of the police divisions, under the command of Brigadier General Aharon Franco, will be transferred to the northern West Bank. In Gaza, in the two command centers for the evacuation - the northern one at Zikkim (next to the military division commanded by Brigadier General Uzi Moskowitz) and the southern one in Ein Hashelosha (alongside the military division commanded by Brigadier General Gershon Hacohen), Franco and Brigadier General Hagai Dotan, commander of the Police Academy in Shfaram, will command the police divisions that control brigades comprised of battalions.
The personnel will be a combination of Border Police officers and regular police. The swearing-in of 120 police cadets as officers will be accelerated so that they may be dispersed among the forces. These deputy inspectors are, on average, 10 years older and more experienced than the newly minted second lieutenants in the IDF. In the police as a whole, one out of every seven personnel has officer's ranking, if you include among the 4,000 the half who work in administration. In Gaza, the proportion of officers will be even higher.
A closure order issued by Major General Dan Harel, the head of Southern Command, will seal off the area south of the oil pipeline road near Ashkelon, but the police will not be ordered to arrest the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, who will seek to defy and perhaps violate the order. A higher "arrest threshold" will be set - it will take more than illegal presence in a closed area, hindering a police officer in the fulfillment of his duty (by passive resistance to the evacuation) and insulting a public servant. Only physical violence against someone in uniform will cause someone to be brought to trial - in the courtrooms that will be set up at the Dekel facility in Be'er Sheva and at Ma'asiyahu.
At the request of Maj. Gen. Dudi Cohen, head of the Investigations and Intelligence Branch, the national units under his command that investigate fraud, international crime and financial wrongdoing, will be exempt from participating in the violent stage of the evacuation. Instead, his personnel will have to process arrests, fingerprint suspects and quickly prepare indictments.
Commander Benny Sagiv, who heads the branch's intelligence gathering division, has been appointed to command the dozens (52 at first, and eventually more than 70) intelligence coordinators in the key stations and units throughout the country, who have temporarily put other assignments aside and are currently - thus far, with little success - busy warning about plans to disrupt the evacuation. On Sunday, this unit put out its first bulletin, with limited distribution, which warned repeatedly of "information about plans by right-wing activists to disrupt highway traffic ..."
The main problem anticipated by the police is having to cope with possibly hundreds of disturbances of the peace across the country. The regional and national units designated to deal with this, many on motorcycles to be able to get around blocked roads, may not be sufficient. The IDF has promised to make helicopters available to transfer a response force of 400 police from one location to another, in the Gaza sector or in the center of the country. This could turn out to be an exhausting game of cat-and-mouse.
Two days from now, senior members of the general staff and the forces participating in the evacuation will convene for a brainstorming session to examine potential scenarios and responses. The session is being prepared by Brigadier General Meir Amir. As the evacuation nears, another exercise will be held, and it is being prepared by a team of instructors from the National Security College.
An ideological basis for the evacuation was set out in a document from the general staff about four months ago, shortly after the death of Yasser Arafat, as a draft due to be updated in April. The strategic purpose, said the general staff (even though this sort of thing really comes under the authority of the political echelon), will be to "fully pursue the strategic opportunity to promote an extended security calm on the basis of instituting order (hasdara) and to encourage the growth of a legitimate, responsible and effective Palestinian leadership. At the same time, to carry out the disengagement process. All this, with the support of the United States and the backing of the international community."
In this wording, it is possible to discern the disagreement between Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon and other generals such as Harel, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Ya'alon and Harel see achieving security calm on the basis of hasdara (not an agreement or reciprocity, but distinct from unilateralism), encouraging a leadership of the type of Mahmoud Abbas and Mohammed Dahlan (on the condition that it acts effectively), and only then, does it come time for "the disengagement process."
The objective that Ya'alon defined for Harel and for Central Command chief Yair Naveh was "removal of the Israeli presence from the Gaza Strip and from the designated area in northern Samaria and deployment outside that territory, preventing Palestinian terror from disrupting the process, reducing the intensity of the confrontation and the tensions with opponents of the evacuation, preserving the dignity of the evacuees and avoidance of injuries, in order to establish ongoing calm and security stability throughout the process."
The IDF's basic assumption is that "most of the residents will not evacuate willingly so we must prepare for a forced evacuation." Also: The evacuation will likely not be carried out in coordination with the Palestinians, even though "it would be preferable to coordinate with the Palestinian security apparatuses in order to lessen the possibility of terror attacks in the course of the evacuation process, and to have security apparatuses in place in accordance with a pre-approved plan."
Additional objectives are: "the elimination of terror so as to prevent it from disrupting the evacuation; weakening the terror networks and significantly reducing the scope of terror attacks by means of deterrence and restraint systems; creating conditions that will produce `rules of the game' that are comfortable for us in the `reality of the day after'; reducing the friction with the Palestinian population and hardships caused to the Palestinians' day-to-day life; strengthening the standing of the PA leadership and its security apparatuses, so that it will be the strong, influential and dominant force in Gaza, the one with whom you `do business.'" In other words, a coordinated evacuation, with or without an explicit agreement, and to jointly fight terror until, during and after the evacuation.
Internally, the objectives for Israel include meeting the timetable, avoiding civilian casualties as a result of terror, "not reaching a situation of violent conflict (the use of weapons) between settlers and soldiers, or of shooting by settlers at Palestinians," and preventing Israeli civilians from returning to the evacuated areas. These are practical definitions, but the IDF also has ambitions regarding Israeli society: "the preservation of the IDF in the Israeli consensus as `the people's army,' emphasizing the message that the IDF is carrying out the decision of the political echelon and executing the evacuation mission with maximum sensitivity; carrying out the entire process in such a way as to prevent a rift in the nation on the day after the evacuation." The IDF is also talking about "avoiding the creation of a national rift with extensive implications for the future."
On the face of it, this is a welcome innovation: Had the IDF been so sensitive to the need for broad national agreement - assuming that everyone knows just what this "national entity" is (Is it Israeli? Jewish? Does it include the Arab citizens of Israel? The Jews of the Diaspora? The non-Jews who serve in the IDF and the police?) - at the time the settlements were established and the war of choice in Lebanon was launched, it could have prevented disasters. Actually, this is a slippery slope into the abyss. Who will determine how broad the necessary consensus must be - 75 percent, 50 percent, less - and who ever authorized the army to intervene in a political issue such as this?
If the IDF brass had more civic courage, it would demand that the government use all the legal tools at its disposal. The Justice Ministry has lately been good at coming up with new legislation against terror. The wording would appear to be perfectly suited to apply to anyone seeking to subvert the evacuation by the use of violence: "An act of terror - any violation that is committed for the purpose of influencing a political, ideological or religious matter, with the aim of arousing fear or compelling a government official to carry out or refrain from carrying out an action, all while inflicting substantial harm on a person's physical being or on his free will or causing serious damage to property or infrastructure."
This is "the most modern definition of terror," say the jurists, and it accords with a decision in October 2004 by the National Security Council "that does not attach any weight to the perpetrator's motives." In answer to the question of why Attorney General Menachem Mazuz is not using this legislation against those trying to sabotage the evacuation, his spokesman said: "The question is theoretical for now, because no terror organization whose objective is to thwart the disengagement has declared itself." Similarly skillful evasion was demonstrated by the IDF's Judge Advocate General and the police command.
In and around the IDF, the assessments are mixed as to how well the security forces will overcome the opponents of the evacuation, who will turn the struggle into political leverage aimed at changing the government's decisions. But there is no disagreement about what can be expected after the summer: The prediction is that by next January to March, after Palestinian terror has increased and become more sophisticated, the IDF will return to Gaza - this time without the police.