The Fire Next Time - Ha'aretz (Hebrew contains stronger language)

Note: The first four paragraphs below are not included in the English version of Ha'aretz. The two sections underlined are my emphases, not those of the author. Amir Oren is a highly respected Israeli military correspondent, and this is not the first time this story has been reported in Israel. This is, however, the first time that there has been highly credible confirmation of it (to my knowledge).¹



The Fire Next Time
Ha'aretz (Friday Supplement), 26 March 2004.

Hebrew only:

Brigadier-General Aviv Kochavi is one of the prominent officers under the General Staff - commander of an army division, natural candidate for the next head of the Judea and Samaria division (the present commander, Gadi Izenkot, is the frontrunner candidate for Northern Command HQ), as well as the top (military) echelons ... he described the bitter disappointment of Shaul Mofaz when hearing about IDF operations that had ended without Palestinian casualties.

Former Chief of Staff Mofaz, it turns out, expressed in the midst of operation "Defensive Shield" dissatisfaction about the fact that Qalqilya had surrendered to his forces without battle. He considered taking the town merely a partial execution of the task - if not lured into fighting infrantry and armor, (the enemy) would fade away into the population and he knew as soon as the IDF left, terror would be resumed.

On the eve of the entry of the paratroopers battalion into the Casbah of Nablus, Kochavi was ordered to kill, not just to occupy. This time the mission was accomplished completely, and after hard days of continuous fighting, when the spokesman of the armed (Palestinians) asked to surrender to the IDF, Kochavi consulted his superior, Brigadier General Gershon Yitzhak, decided to reject the offer, and continued fighting. Only when an additional request came, two hour later, he agreed and accepted the surrender.

...

It is shocking to discover that Mofaz's legally-dubious order in May 2002 at Givat Hatahmoshet (Ammunition Hill, near Nablus) was not an unusual slip of the tongue, but reflected a consistent approach. Mofaz guided battalion officers in the West Bank to make sure that any clash with wanted persons and terror groups would end with corpses - 7, according to one version, or 10, according to another - lying around.

...

English/Hebrew:

The chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon, is outspokenly striving for a frontal clash with the terrorist organizations. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Ya'alon, who spoke this week at a conference on low-intensity warfare in Tel Aviv, argues that in the confrontation between the army and terrorism, which operates from within a civilian environment, terrorism has the advantage, because the army can use only a small part of its strength against it.

To offset this advantage, the army has to take the initiative - "the offensive approach is still the best defense" - because only in those stages of the campaign "in which the army utilizes its capabilities with tremendous strength, which are of no value most of the time, is it able to realize its military superiority .... When needed, and especially after serious terrorist attacks, the character of the campaign can be changed for an allotted period, from a low-intensity confrontation in which the terrorists have a certain advantage, into a high-intensity confrontation, in which it is easier for a regular army force to bring its strength into play" - although this, too, is no guarantee of a decisive victory.

The most cogent Israeli example, Ya'alon says, is Operation Defense Shield. The meaning is clear and requires no deciphering of codes, because it has already been given expression by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who in May 2002 prevented the army from providing the Gaza Strip with a version of the same operation. What was then presented as half a job takes on an added thrust ahead of the withdrawal from Gaza and its transfer to the Palestinian Authority. The implication of this conception is that before the withdrawal, the Israel Defense Forces should enter in large numbers, lure Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the other organizations into a clash with the IDF, kill them in their masses, and only then pull out.

...

(cont.)

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/408897.html
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?itemNo=408809&contrassID=2&subContrassID=4&sbSubContrassID=0 (Hebrew)

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1. See Uri Blau, "IDF Operation Orders: Objective: Maximum Killing", Kol Ha'ir (a liberal Jerusalem paper published by Shocken, which publishes Ha'aretz), 22 March 2002.

You have this big-ass old army, you have to do something with it, right?
Of course this blows the trying to minimize casualties argument
out of the water, too, but they just sort of slide over that.

In the article (before the "corpses" part) that to minimise civilian casualties, the IDF tried to strike in a "selective, not collective" manner.

Begs the obvious question, really, about what constitutes "terror" and who is a "wanted person", doesn't it?

It isn't specified whether or not being "wanted" is a crime deserving of execution, nor does it say whether an armed Palestinian policeman ("terrorist") defending his town is also deserving of the same punishment.