TEL AVIV -- On a chilly Tuesday evening in February 2002, four Palestinian
gunmen stormed an Israeli military outpost west of the West Bank city of
Ramallah, shot dead six soldiers at close range and escaped into the darkness in
one of the most audacious and deadly attacks of the 17-month Palestinian
uprising.
Eight hours later, as daylight was peeking through the night sky above a
Palestinian police checkpoint nine miles away, Israeli soldiers took their
revenge. They opened fire without warning on a group of policemen, shooting one
who fell nearby, while another took refuge in a tin hut and others fled.
Some of the soldiers hurled grenades into the hut, which burst into flames.
Others, led by Staff Sgt. Shahar Levi, focused on the downed policeman.
"He was injured, he didn't die immediately, so we continued shooting him, me
and all the others -- hundreds of bullets," Levi recalled in an interview.
When it was over, one of Levi's men checked the body. "I turned him over,"
said the soldier, who unlike Levi was unwilling to allow his name to be
published. "He was like a 50-year-old guy with a mustache, a chubby little guy.
Didn't have a gun."
In the bloodstained chronicle of the Palestinian uprising that began in
September 2000, that night marked a turning point. Two elite Israeli army units,
retaliating for the surprise attack on the six soldiers, swooped down on four
Palestinian checkpoints and killed nine policemen -- the first time the Israeli
army had openly targeted Palestinian police, who until then had generally not
been deemed combatants. An additional nine Palestinians died overnight in other
attacks.
The violence of that night was soon overshadowed by more intense conflict.
Palestinian suicide bombers escalated their attacks on Israeli civilians, and
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the army to reoccupy major cities in the
West Bank.
Now, some of the Israelis who participated in the ambush of the policemen
have come forward to describe in detail what happened and to denounce it as a
crime. The soldiers say that the Palestinians they killed had no role in the
attack on the soldiers, but were chosen because they were readily available
targets, and that the Palestinian officers were mowed down without being given a
chance to surrender.
"Some of them could have been terrorists and some of them could not -- we
didn't care, actually," Levi said. "I felt that I wanted to kill. It smelled
like revenge, and it's not what an army in a democratic society should do. It
didn't smell good."
The spokesman's office of the Israeli army, in response to questions, issued
a statement saying Palestinian policemen were targeted that night because they
had "facilitated the passage and actively assisted the terrorists who passed
through these checkpoints to carry out murderous attacks against Israeli
civilians and soldiers." The army, it said, had been instructed by Israel's
civilian leaders "to change the mode of operation and adjust it to the harsh
reality on the ground."
Because the killings were carried out according to orders, added a military
official who spoke on condition of anonymity, no investigation was ever
conducted.
It is rare for soldiers from elite units to discuss military operations,
especially those that involved killing. But two ex-soldiers have given
statements to Breaking the Silence, an organization of army veterans opposed to
the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and several spoke
anonymously to the Maariv newspaper, which published a report on the incident
June 3.
Since then, the army has not disputed any of the details in the soldiers'
accounts. One opposition member of parliament has called for an investigation,
as has an editorial in the Haaretz newspaper. Otherwise, public reaction has
been minimal.
Three of the soldiers have now spoken in separate interviews to The
Washington Post: Levi and two others who were not willing to disclose their
names because they said they were ashamed of what they did and feared they could
be harassed for coming forward. This account of what happened that night is
based upon their detailed descriptions, supplemented by other interviews and
newspaper articles from the time.
All three former soldiers -- two combat engineers and a paratrooper -- are
college students in their mid-twenties who look back at their time on active
duty with a deep sense of regret and anger. They say they are speaking out to
expose what they believe was an unjustified killing operation. One says he is so
sickened by what happened that he informed his girlfriend only last weekend and
has yet to tell his parents.
"Personally, I feel bad that I didn't speak out that night," said the
paratrooper.
"I don't know if I could have stopped it," he added, "but at least I could
have tried."
'Sexy Operations'
Shahar Levi is a thin, dark-haired psychology student with an easy smile and
intense brown eyes. Sitting in a sidewalk cafe last weekend, he recalled that
winning the competition to be accepted into the army's elite Yael unit was the
Israeli equivalent of getting into Harvard or Yale, only with an extra layer of
patriotic meaning.
"In a society like Israel, if you are serving in a special unit, you are
considered to be the salt of the earth," he said. "And if you serve in a special
unit, in your résumé you have to take part in a few special missions -- what we
called sexy operations."
Early in the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, sexy operations were hard to
come by. Levi and his men participated in demolishing houses of suspected
terrorists or arresting men wanted by the authorities -- tedious and often
unrewarding work. They had started out on such a mission on the night of Feb.
19, 2002, when their bus was diverted to a nearby base.
There they learned that six Israeli soldiers had been gunned down and another
wounded two hours earlier at a checkpoint outside the West Bank village of Ein
Arik. The soldiers, who had arrived at the checkpoint just a few hours earlier,
never had a chance. Palestinian gunmen had positioned themselves just a few
yards away and opened fire without warning, cutting down five of the soldiers
immediately. Then they entered a nearby building where two soldiers were
sleeping, killed one and wounded the other, and escaped.
It was the latest in a series of attacks that had killed 14 soldiers, an
Israeli policeman and three civilians over a 10-day period.
Levi's commanding officer emerged from a briefing to tell him and his men
that they were going to retaliate. Levi said the purpose of the mission was
clear, although he did not remember the word "revenge" being used. Another
soldier in his unit said it was.
"He told us six soldiers got killed in a terror attack and we're going to
take the life of six Palestinian officers," said the other soldier, speaking on
condition of anonymity.
In the murky war between Israel and the Palestinians, the role of the
Palestinian police was often complex and ambiguous. One of nine different
security forces reporting to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the police had
been set up, armed and trained following the 1993 Oslo peace accords to help
Arafat's Palestinian Authority keep law and order in the West Bank and Gaza and
assert control over rival militant groups. Members of the force wore green
military uniforms and many carried automatic weapons.
In the days before the intifada, police officers carried out joint patrols
with Israeli soldiers, shared intelligence and coordinated through district
offices. But when the violence began, some policemen opened fire on Israelis or
moonlighted as gunmen. Israeli officials repeatedly charged that the police were
either failing in their duty to stop terrorist attacks or in some cases aiding
the attacks. "In general, Israelis viewed the Palestinian police as complicit in
terror," said Michael Oren, an Israeli military historian and analyst.
Mahmoud Aloul, the Palestinian governor of the Nablus district where some of
the police outposts targeted in February 2002 were located, recalled that his
men were caught by surprise. "The targets they chose are security positions that
were established in agreement with Israel," he said. "They were not positions of
war."
Aloul insisted that the policemen who were killed had nothing to do with Ein
Arik or any other attack on Israelis. Three of the four police checkpoints hit
that night were at least 20 miles from Ein Arik. The Palestinian gunmen
responsible for the attack have never been identified, and the army has never
asserted that any of the policemen were directly involved.
The soldiers say that until the Ein Arik attack they were instructed to treat
the police as noncombatants. "Every time we had an operation near a police post
we were told, 'Don't shoot a policeman,' " said the paratrooper. "They weren't
friends, but they weren't enemies. Sometimes even before an operation, one of
the officers would go to the DCO [District Coordinating Office] and ask them to
inform the police. They just changed the rules completely that night."
At the time, however, the soldiers recalled, they were delighted with their
new orders. "We were all very excited," said the engineer who would not allow
his name to be used. "For all of us it was the first sexy mission. You put a
cross on your gun if you kill a terrorist, and none of us had a cross."
There were no maps of the target, just one fuzzy photograph. The army officer
drew up a plan of attack on pieces of cardboard. Within minutes the soldiers set
off.
There were two separate operations against police posts that night. The Yael
team was dispatched to a checkpoint outside the village of Deir Sudan, located
in a narrow valley north of Ramallah. Five snipers set up a position on a
hillside while the other men came down the hill and set up behind a stone wall.
The checkpoint was shut down for the night -- the policemen were asleep in a
nearby house -- and the soldiers sat for at least three hours. Then just before
dawn, a half-dozen men began emerging, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes,
some carrying weapons while others were unarmed.
The snipers fired first but failed to hit any of the policemen. Then Levi and
his men emerged from behind the wall and opened fire. The policemen, caught by
surprise, never fired back. Most managed to flee, but two were killed.
One of Levi's men hit a policeman a few yards away. "He said, 'Wow, I hit
him.' " Levi recalled. "He was happy like a kid."
His fellow combat engineer recalled a similar feeling of elation.
"This is what we dreamed of, being the sexiest warrior," he said.
It was over within minutes. The soldiers were bused back to a nearby Jewish
settlement, where they were fed and congratulated by residents and by their
commanders. They were also mildly reprimanded for not checking the remains of
the hut to see how many dead Palestinians were inside.
Meanwhile, to the north, a special paratroop unit launched a similar
operation against three checkpoints outside the Balata refugee camp. The
soldiers were supposed to open fire on all three outposts simultaneously, but at
one checkpoint the men opened fire prematurely after an unsuspecting policeman
ventured too close to their position.
"He was 10 meters away and he was for sure dead," recalled the paratrooper
who would not allow his name to be used. "He never shot."
The soldiers rushed the checkpoint, hurling grenades over a wall, then
stormed a small house where the policemen had been sleeping and opened fire. The
paratrooper said at least five policemen were killed, and possibly six. Another
policeman was killed at the second checkpoint, while the third turned out to be
deserted. Wounded policemen were dispatched with additional shots to the body or
head, the paratrooper said, to ensure that they were dead.
Afterward, the paratroops' officers played a videotape of the attack that had
been recorded at an observation post. "Everybody could recognize themselves,"
the paratrooper said. "They were very pleased."
Moral Conflicts
That morning both sides counted their dead and pronounced their judgment.
Several armed Palestinian groups asserted responsibility for the attack on Ein
Arik. Marwan Barghouti, a senior West Bank leader, noting that army checkpoints
were places where Palestinians were often humiliated by soldiers, hailed the
attack as "a response to the acts of slaughter that the Israelis do and an
expression of Palestinians' frustration over the occupation."
As Israel buried its six dead soldiers, Brig. Gen. Gershon Yitzhak, commander
of the West Bank, said the targeting of the policemen was a justifiable act of
war. "This shall not be a one-sided war," he told reporters at a briefing. "We
will react toward anyone in any place necessary. The purpose of the operation
was to strike at anyone who is in any way involved in the dispatch of
terrorists."
Israeli analysts said the army had acted swiftly to restore the morale of its
soldiers, badly shaken by the Ein Arik attack, and to reestablish a sense of
deterrence. "As a commander, you want to immediately calm any feeling of panic
and restore a sense of confidence in your people," said Hirsh Goodman, senior
research associate with the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv.
"There is also a dimension of revenge -- no one might say it, but everyone would
understand it."
But the war continued to escalate. Two weeks later a lone Palestinian sniper
mowed down seven soldiers and three Jewish settlers and escaped.
For three of the soldiers involved in the attacks on the police, the elation
did not last long. The combat engineer said he was so upset he spoke to his
father about it the next day. "I knew I did something very bad," he recalled.
"My dad tried to convince me to go tell someone. I didn't want to do it. I
thought the patriotic thing was not to tell."
It was only after they left the army that all three men began to voice their
misgivings. Even so, they say their loyalty to other members of their unit --
most of whom still believe the operation was proper and justified -- prevented
them from speaking out.
"It took me two years until I got enough distance from the military time,"
the engineer said. "It's like we know we did something bad, but the idea of
going out and telling it seems like a bad thing because you're going to hurt the
unit."
Avichay Sharon, a former army sergeant who is spokesman for Breaking the
Silence, said the pattern was a familiar one. "When you're inside the system,
you are kind of blind," he said. "The moral conflicts and dilemmas are a part of
your life, and if you stop and think about them, you might not get up the next
morning. Even after you leave the army, it takes a long time to look in the
mirror and say, 'Well, I was a monster for three years.' "
"It's true these guys are the exception" in speaking out, he added. "It's not
just that you're criticizing the system -- you're also criticizing yourself.
It's one of the hardest things you can do as a human being."
Special correspondent Samuel Sockol contributed to this report.
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