ISRAELI REPERTOIRES IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Israel's reliance on ethnic policing in Palestine rather than more despotic repertoires was a function of institutional context. The next chapter looks at Israeli tactics in Lebanon, which were more destructive than anything used in Palestine during the late 1980s; here, I juxtapose Israel's 1988 policing efforts in the West Bank and Gaza with its earlier repertoires of violence in the same area, when Palestine was not configured as
To take an example from the 1947–49 war, Jewish soldiers conquering the West Bank village of Ad Dawayima killed some 80 to 100 persons, including women and children, according to Israeli sources cited by historian Benny Morris, slaying children "by breaking their heads with sticks." Surviving villagers were forced into their homes, which troopers then dynamited around them. According to an Israeli trooper who claimed he was an eyewitness, one of the soldiers "boasted that he had raped a woman and then shot her," while another woman, "with a newborn baby in her arms, was employed to clean the courtyard where the soldiers ate," and was later killed, along with her child.[4] In another instance, again according to sources cited by Morris, Jewish troops killed hundreds of civilian curfew violators in the Palestinian town of Lydda, and then shot dead "dozens of unarmed detainees in the mosque and church compounds in the center of town."[5] Following that, soldiers forced all Palestinian residents from the town. According to Morris, "All the Israelis who witnessed the events agreed that the [Lydda] exodus, under a hot July sun, was an extended episode of suffering for the refugees," during which hundreds died and many were "stripped of their possessions" by Jewish troopers.[6] Elsewhere, Israeli forces displaced Palestinians by "advancing while shooting" into villages and urban neighborhoods, "shelling" and "firing in all directions" in residential areas.[7] Because these areas were not configured as ghettos within Israel when hostilities began, Israeli forces were free to engage in ethnic cleansing, much like their Serbian counterparts did in Bosnia decades later.
During the 1950s, Israeli forces adopted a shoot-to-kill policy along its borders with the West Bank and Gaza to stop Palestinian infiltration. Although some of the slain infiltrators were guerrillas, others were refugees seeking to return home.[8] In the country's southern border regions, according to a senior Israeli officer, every "stranger" caught within eight kilometers on either side of the boundary was to be shot on sight; along Israel's eastern border with the West Bank, soldiers were ordered to shoot anyone without a special pass.[9] Israel's reprisal policy against West Bank villages in the 1950s and 1960s is also of interest. The policy was adopted as a response to Palestinian guerrilla attacks, and by striking heavily at both Arab combatants and civilians, Israel hoped to persuade the guerrillas to accept their 1947–49 loss. The reprisals were at times ferocious, far outstripping anything contemplated by Israel when the West Bank was configured years later as a ghetto.
In 1953, for example, following a deadly Palestinian raid in central Israel, the Israeli Central Command ordered its commandos to "attack and temporarily … occupy" the West Bank village of Qibya (which had little connection to the prior Palestinian attack) and two other locations, and to "carry out destruction and maximum killing, in order to drive out the inhabitants of the village from their homes."[10] In Qibya, soldiers blew up forty-five buildings and killed sixty villagers, mostly women and children. According to a contemporary report by Time magazine, Israeli troopers in Qibya "shot every man, woman and child they could find, and then turned their fire on the cattle. After that, they dynamited forty-two houses, a school and a mosque. The cries of the dying could be heard amidst the explosions."[11] Israeli forces "moved from house to house, blowing in doors, throwing grenades through the windows, and ‘cleaning out’ the rooms with light weapons fire. Inhabitants who tried to flee their homes were gunned down in the alleyways."[12] In 1966, Israel topped the Qibya events with a raid on the West Bank village of Samu', destroying 118 homes and killing twenty-one Jordanian soldiers.[13]
These incidents are of interest here only because of the stark contrast they pose to Israel's later repertoires of violence in the same area. When the West Bank was external, Israeli forces used despotic tactics, including ethnic cleansing. Once it was transformed into a ghetto, however, Israel's methods changed.