Last update - 00:00 20/09/2006
During war, troops needed permission to enter communities
By Eli Ashkenazi, Haaretz Correspondent
A order issued by the Israel Defense Forces during the war in Lebanon banned communities on the northern border from granting entry to troops without the prior permission of the military.
This order also applied to Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, next to whose grounds 12 soldiers were killed in an August 6 Katyusha strike on an open area.
The document handed out by the brigade responsible for security along the eastern sector of the northern border said that local communities "must check with the war room that the troops are admitted in coordination with and with the permission of the operational branch of the brigade."
The communities may grant enterance to troops once they coordiante details with IDF.
The order contradicts the accusations against Kibbutz Kfar Giladi made by the victims' families at a memorial service for the 12 reservists, who said that the kibbutz had denied the soldiers entry before the rocket fell.
Relatives of those killed claimed that residents would not let the soldiers into the kibbutz due to fears that the soldiers would cause damage to property.
Benjamin Ben David, whose son Daniel died in the rocket strike, said at the memorial service that, "the blood of our sons calls out from the earth to the kibbutz." But the document indicates that the refusal to allow the troops into the kibbutz stemmed from the army, not from community itself.
The kibbutz also stated that, "the kibbutz gates were not closed to anyone and during the war hundreds of soldiers were on the kibbutz, including a medical company, special units and artillery troops, who came to refresh themselves at the kibbutz hotel."
According to kibbutz member Uri Eshkoli, many units were present at Kfar Giladi, and the community did not ask to be reimbursed despite the great expense.
The kibbutz also said that even had the soldiers been granted entry, they would have been no more protected than they were in the open area. "If they had come in, they would have been sleeping on the grass."
The kibbutz also had no solution to the issue of the ammunitions trucks belonging to the reservist unit.