“Here’s what they did,” says the commander of an Israeli reserve combat company deployed in the northern West Bank. “They dumped on us thousands of rounds of rubber bullets, cases of stun grenades and tear gas and that’s it. That’s the great Israeli army doctrine on how to cope with this Naksa.”
“God help us if [the Palestinians] start staging a non-violent march our way,” the officer told The Media Line, on condition he not be identified.
If there is anything that generates fear in the Israeli army beyond a surprise attack, it is the prospect of facing unarmed demonstrators. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was made to fight wars, and is uncomfortable confronting unarmed civilians.
But that’s just what Palestinians are planning for this Sunday. Grassroots activists working through the social media are calling people to come out and stage a mass assault on Israel’s borders to mark Naksa day, which commemorates what they call the “setback” of the 1967 Six Day War and Israel’s seizure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Non-violent demonstrations alone don’t present a security threat to Israel, nor are they alone likely to bring about a Palestinian state. But they could strike another blow to Israel’s image in the international community, where incidents like the lethal commando raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara a year ago have earned the Jewish state a reputation as being too trigger happy.
The Naksa campaign comes two weeks after at least 13 people were killed and hundreds wounded when demonstrators attempted to breach the fence along the Israeli Golan Heights border with Lebanon and Syria to mark Nakba, or “catastrophe,” the day that commemorates the creation of Israel in 1948.
Pro-Palestinian bloggers and Facebook pages are urging Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as well as those living in neighboring Arab countries to mobilize in a march of unity to “liberate Palestine” and for the descendants of refugees to return to their homes. Many activists are promising this is the staging ground of a new Intifada that will be wholly non-violent.
The IDF insists that it had learned the lessons from the Nakba incident, when thousands of Palestinians living in Syria crossed a minefield, ripped down the border fence and spilled into the Golan Heights. It was the first time unarmed marchers had ever been able to achieve this against Israeli troops.
“Israel has no intention of sitting quietly this time, and this means we will try to show maximum restraint until the moment we feel our lives are threatened,” legislator Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a former defense minister, told Israel radio. “The army is deployed as it should be. To say I see a plug for every leak, no. But I rely on the army.”
IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz said the army “knows it may find itself facing large-scale popular protests” and has learned lessons from this year’s Nakba Day. In contrast to the reserve officer’s views, he says the army has trained and armed itself properly.
"The IDF is preparing for demonstrations in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel's borders by training relevant forces, forming the right modus operandi and readying equipment. These threats warrant an extended budget framework for the security establishment,” Gantz said in a statement.
The IDF Spokesman declines all request to interview officers on non-lethal weapons and declined to allow reporters to examine how the IDF was, or wasn’t, preparing its troops for non-violent protests. While the IDF has trained its forces to flight low intensity conflicts, which are combat situations in a non-battlefield environment, it has been notoriously slow in using “less-than-lethal” weapons and only provides its troops with rudimentary riot-control training.
But, in the Central Command, a senior officer told The Media Line that they had deployed at key sites the “Skunk” and the “Screamer.” The Skunk is a water cannon that sprays protestors with foul-smelling liquid and the Screamer is a high-wattage acoustic weapon that causes human insides to vibrate to the point that the target turns into a quivering, vomiting, diarrheic mess.
“Our tactic is to contain the non-violent demonstrations and disperse them if they erupt and arrest the instigators with the tools we have at our disposal,” says a senior officer.
“We have a few of the Screamers deployed and the Skunks which fire a foul smelling organic sticky spray that is awful and pretty much makes you want to just stop what you’re doing and get away.”
For years, the IDF and security forces around the world have been seeking a politically correct tool that would stop demonstrators without seriously harming them. The IDF likes to point out that there is no silver bullet exists that incapacitates protest-hardened demonstrators.
Some projects on the drawing board include a flashing red light that sends anyone gazing at it into an epileptic fit, or bees that become highly aggressive when sprayed with a pheromone. The army even developed blank round for tanks that brings the idea of a stun grenade to a higher level. None of these have ever been deployed.
The Bethlehem-based Holy Land Trust has been one of the most visible organizations promoting non-violent resistance as a Palestinian weapon. Its founder and executive director Sami Awad acknowledged that Palestinian society has come a long way in shedding the perception that pacifism and non-violence are a sign of weakness in Arab society. Watching the effect of the mass protests of the Arab Spring helped greatly.
Awad says he and his organization were once called traitors and collaborators but that has come full circle and advocacy of non-violence actions has been adopted by both the Fatah and Hamas.
“The Israeli leadership and military see [non-violent resistance] as a nightmare,” Awad told The Media Line. “The Israeli establishment is trying to plant fear in the heart of Israeli society. Just look at the way they presented the marches as an existential threat to Israel.”
Awad worries that non-violent actions will not guarantee that the other side will not use lethal weapons in response. “It’s actually not even a fear, but an expectation,” Awad said.
Palestinian peace activist Hanna Siniora says it took time for the Palestinians to realize this, partly due to what he called the brutal suppression of the Israeli army of the violent second intifada, which broke out in 2000 and saw the large-scale use by Palestinians of suicide bombers and armed attacks.
“Before, Palestinian society wasn’t ready for it, but now the Palestinians are much more aware because of the second intifada and because of its violence ended up doing much more damage than good,” Siniora told the Media Line. “The non-violent demonstrations are bearing fruit. This is a message to the public that it’s the best process.”
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