Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Amos Harel, Experts: Extreme rightists will use violence if settlements are evacuated - Haaretz, December 20, 2007

Extreme right-wing activists are expected to use severe violence to disrupt any move to evacuate outposts or settlements, even the destruction of a few homes, according to an evaluation recently presented to the government by the security establishment and law enforcement officials in the territories.

The evaluation states that the violence during any attempt at evacuation would be more serious than that seen during the evacuation of Amona two years ago.

However security officials do not at this stage foresee an increased threat to the lives of senior politicians, because the extreme right does not appear to believe the Annapolis process will succeed and therefore the settlements are not in danger.
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After the evacuation of Amona two years ago, the ideological foundations and plans of actions were reformulated against future evacuations. In a booklet distributed at one of the extreme-right rallies, the message was that violence might deter the government from additional evacuations.

“The war must be brought to the field of the enemy,” the booklet said. “In this matter and in this situation [evacuation], the IDF is the enemy.”

The security establishment believes that any attempt to evacuate settlements will result in violence against the security forces, large-scale disturbances, and endangerment of human life. The experts also see widespread refusal of orders in the IDF.

Spreading his wings - Haaretz, December 8, 2007

…a Channel 1 reporter asked: “Brigadier General Spector, are you a ‘refusenik’?”

Though he did not initially grasp its full significance, the question itself was enough to make him queasy. He asked the reporter to repeat it. “At the time I was not proficient enough … I was not effective enough at responding, I hadn’t yet completely organized things in my head. I admit that what bothered me most then was not the moral aspect of the IAF, but its combat level. I asked myself why it was necessary to kill 15 children in order to liquidate one terrorist.”

And what about the moral angle?

Spector: “With regard to the moral aspect, I thought at first that there had been a mistake - that maybe the pilots and their commanders didn’t know there were civilians there, even though it’s not so logical to expect that in a densely populated area like Gaza, Shehadeh, of all people, would be in civilian-free surroundings,” Spector notes, referring to the July 2002 operation in which the IAF bombed the apartment building in which Salah Shehadeh, the head of the Hamas military wing in Gaza, resided with his family.