Israeli Procedure Reignites Old Debate

Jerusalem: It was one of the bloodiest episodes in the just-ended conflict in Gaza.

Less than 90 minutes into a temporary truce last Friday that was supposed to have ended the fighting, Hamas fighters emerged from a tunnel and ambushed an Israeli unit, killing two soldiers and snatching a third, prompting the Israeli army to pursue the captors and unleash a barrage of artillery and airstrikes on a heavily populated section of the southern border town of Rafah.

When it was over, 120 Palestinians were dead, along with the captured soldier.

It was one of the rare invocations of the Israeli military's "Hannibal procedure," one of its most dreaded and contentious directives, which allows commanders to call in extra troops and air support to use maximum force to recapture a lost soldier. Its most ominous clause states that the mission is to prevent the captors from getting away with their captives, even at the risk of harming or endangering the lives of the captured Israeli soldiers.

In last Friday's episode in Rafah, it appears unlikely that the Hannibal procedure caused the fatal injury of the missing soldier, 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin, who was later declared killed in action.

Still, its use has reignited debate about the decades-old directive, which was long kept hidden from the general public by military censorship and is rarely discussed in Israel. Captured Israeli soldiers are a valuable and highly sought prize for Hamas, which held one such soldier, Gilad Shalit, for five years. It ultimately traded him for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them convicted of deadly attacks against Israelis.

But there is increasing reluctance to continue the practice of trading so many prisoners for captive soldiers, with critics arguing that each lopsided deal only encourages future abductions. Military service is compulsory for almost all young Israelis, making the return of captured soldiers an even more emotionally and politically weighted issue.

The deaths of 1,800 people in Gaza, including many women and children, as well as the overwhelming physical destruction, have exposed Israel to sharp international condemnation, with the Rafah assault drawing particular scrutiny.

Brig. Gen. Michael Edelstein, the commander of the Gaza division, said Thursday in a telephone briefing that most of the casualties in Rafah had occurred in the first hours after Hamas fighters "tried to kidnap our officer and bring him into civilian places." But he said that the forces had targeted "terror sites," not civilians.

The Hannibal edict was drawn up by three senior officers in Israel's northern command in the 1980s after two Israeli soldiers were captured by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"We understood that when it comes to kidnapping, there should be a very clear order so that ordinary soldiers on the ground should not have to hesitate and make their own assumptions," said Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli general, former national security adviser, and one of the authors of the directive as a colonel in the northern command from 1986 to 1989.

The name Hannibal, recalling the Carthaginian military commander who poisoned himself rather than fall into the hands of the Romans, suggests a shocking act of self-sacrifice. But Amidror says it was chosen randomly and has no real significance.

"Morally, it's a big question: What can you do or not do to prevent a kidnapping?" Amidror said. "The order was that you have to do all you can, including risking - not killing - the soldier."

If a captive soldier is known to be in a certain vehicle, Amidror said, it is permissible to fire a tank shell toward the engine of the car. "You for sure risk the life of the soldier, but you don't intend to kill him," he said.

Asked whether it was morally acceptable to risk a soldier's life in this way, Amidror said: "You know, war is very controversial. Soldiers have to know there are many risks in the battlefield, and this is one of them."

But for some Israelis, the practice is unacceptable.

"The procedure is morally flawed," said Emanuel Gross of Haifa University, an expert in military law and a former military judge. "We have no right to risk the life of a soldier only to avoid the payment for his return from captivity."

Instead, Gross said, Israel ought to stand more firmly against the inflated demands of the captors.

Still, officials and experts said they could not recall a case in which the Hannibal procedure was activated and a captive soldier was hurt.

When three Israeli soldiers were snatched by Hezbollah along the Lebanese border in 2000, attack helicopters were dispatched with orders to shoot at any vehicle trying to leave a nearby Lebanese village, according to Ronen Bergman, an Israeli journalist specializing in security affairs who has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, who documented the case in his book "By Any Means Necessary: Israel's Covert War for Its POWs and MIAs."

But from the radio talk and testimonies of pilots, Bergman said in an interview, the order "was not followed, at least not strictly."

"I think the helicopter pilots were very cautious," he said.

Amidror said he had been appointed by the chief of staff to investigate what happened in 2000. "In this case, there was no problem to resolve, because nobody was there to take any action to stop the kidnapping," he said, adding that the helicopters came in too late and "didn't identify any relevant target."

After an investigation, the Israeli authorities pronounced the three soldiers dead in 2001. Their remains were returned to Israel in 2004 as part of a prisoner exchange.

Some of the details of what happened in Rafah remain murky. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, still could not say, a week later, whether the Hamas fighters had included a suicide bomber, or whether Goldin, 23, had been killed in the initial attack.

"We know he was at least wounded," Lerner said, based on the evidence later found at and near the scene.

The Hamas attackers dragged Goldin with them back into the tunnel. A few minutes later, a fellow soldier who has been identified only by his first name, as Lt. Eitan, secured permission from a senior commander to enter the tunnel in pursuit with two other soldiers.

They were too late. There was no contact or engagement between the soldiers who entered the tunnel and the captors, Lerner said. But he said some evidence found in the tunnel later helped the military determine that Goldin could not have survived the initial attack. He was declared killed in action by late Saturday night.

Reached by telephone on Thursday, one of Goldin's relatives said the family was not ready to answer questions about his death.