IMRA - Clear Red Lines with Unambiguous Consequences For Controllable September

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
08 September '11

“Those authorized to perform guard duty in Judea and Samaria are permitted to open fire against unarmed demonstrators who are threatening to infiltrate a settlement, if such an infiltration, under the circumstances, presents in the guard’s opinion an immediate and real life threatening danger,”
Eyal Elad - Attorney-General’s Office for Judea and Samaria 21 August 2011
(As reported in The Jerusalem Post 9 September 2011)

“There is concern at the IDF, and especially from the Military Advocate General, that any such instructions will be interpreted as rules of engagement by the settlers."
Chaim Levinson Haaretz Published 30.08.11

Let’s be clear about this.

If a group of ostensibly unarmed Palestinians marches into a Jewish community in Judea and Samaria there is absolutely positively no way of knowing either what they are carrying on their persons or what they will even do with their bare hands.

And it doesn’t matter if they are accompanied by cameras from ABC, CBS, SKY, BBC, CNN and twenty other services.

The very moment that the group approaches a community and passes over the predetermined defense lines they constitute – by virtue of their very presence – “an immediate and real life threatening danger.”

And the very best way to avoid this happening in the first place is to strip away any possible ambiguity about this policy.

Those defense lines should be clearly marked with the Palestinians warned in advance about the existence of the lines and how to identify them.

That’s not to say that security forces should not be deployed beyond those lines in order to prevent Palestinians from even coming close to the lines. Just that in the event that for some reason a group of Palestinians find that they are able to cross the line that they should be aware that doing so would endanger their own lives.

Eyal Elad may have meant well, but his instructions are written more in a way to provide income for defense attorneys as they argue in the calm of quiet air conditioned court rooms as to whether the Palestinian mob descending on a Jewish community was indeed “an immediate and real life threatening danger.”

We have a long history in the IDF of zones being declared sterile zones in which literally anyone who enters it risks being dispatched to Paradise - no questions asked.

The very same policy should apply in the event of Palestinian marches and invaders crossing the security line of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. Anything less ambiguous will only invite trouble.

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