Israeli Army Braces for Renewed Reservist Protests, but Has It Learned the Lessons? - Israel News - Haaretz.com
It took the anti-judicial overhaul protest movement some time, but it appears as though this week the protesters at least fully grasped the salami tactic that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has adopted to gradually push through his government’s planned judicial shakeup.
After the failed attempt to fire Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at the end of March, Netanyahu was compelled to beat a tactical retreat under a tsunami of public opposition and freeze the legislative process. Since then, he’s been maneuvering between his apprehensions at a renewed surge of protests, with its economic and security implications, and the need to satisfy at least some of the demands of the overhaul’s supporters in his party and in the government coalition.
Netanyahu now wants to enact the law that will reduce substantially the reasonableness standard in court decisions, and to do it before the end of the Knesset’s summer sitting in another month. The plans were initially greeted with a certain indifference, as witnessed by the dwindling numbers of participants in the Saturday evening demonstrations in Tel Aviv. But now the picture is clear. A large part of the protest movement is reorganizing to curb the planned legislation. Which means the reservists’ organizations are also back in the picture, along with the renewed controversy about the legitimacy of refusal to serve in the reserve army.
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In the past week, the reservists’ WhatsApp groups have been abuzz with activity again. The militant line is being led by an active group from Military Intelligence Special Ops. In the past few days they have been joined by new initiatives on the part of reserve medics, combat troops from the elite Shaldag air force unit and by veteran air crew personnel, who are today serving in the control sections of air force headquarters.
A demonstration by reservists in front of the home of the Justice Minsiter Yariv Levin, on Tuesday.
The measures they are threatening to take differ from one another in timing and in intensity. Some are talking about forgoing IDF service as soon as the legislation is passed on first reading (of three) in the Knesset. Others will apparently prefer to wait for the completion of the legislation to be persuaded that there is no other choice. Next week could be stormy, on the assumption that the bill will in fact be brought for a vote.
Those who haven’t been heard from, in the meantime, are the reserve pilots and navigators, who spearheaded the first wave of the protest in February-March. The episode turned their relations with the top brass of the air force sour, and at the moment the pilots, while holding plenty of consultations among themselves, are choosing to wait. However, if the legislation Netanyahu is planning does pass, there’s a good chance we will see mass announcements by air force crews, a move that will again confront the top brass of the Israel Defense Forces and of the air force with a serious dilemma. As was made clear in the spring, a mass departure of pilots and navigators will seriously affect the air force’s operational capability in a way that should be of concern to the political decision-makers as well.
That was the main reason for Gallant’s public call in March to freeze the judicial overhaul legislation, after which Netanyahu announced that he was firing him. In retrospect, incidentally, the role of the high officials’ families has also become known. According to political correspondents, it was Netanyahu’s son, Yair, who pressured him to fire Gallant. And it was the defense minister’s close family – his wife and children, all of them combat officers in the navy (where Gallant served) – who urged him in March to take action and warn about the damage that was liable to be inflicted on the IDF.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in March.Credit: Defense Minister Spokesperson
Ahead of the next wave of protests, the IDF is trying to update its policy on refusal to serve. The policy that exists was roundly criticized by the political right, and led to a direct attack by Netanyahu on the IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi, in the General Staff Forum. As this column reported in April, the prime minister reprimanded the chief of staff and the generals, claiming that they had allowed a strike to take place in an organization that costs the taxpayer 70 billion shekels (about $19 billion) a year. Under the new approach, the IDF will completely ignore reservists’ letters and petitions. The army will respond only to a specific notification from a reservist who received an order to report for duty and replied that he or she will not show up. Each case will be dealt with on its own merits, substantively and at a disciplinary level. How will it be dealt with? The General Staff is refusing to say.
In other words, the IDF is trying to spare itself a reprisal of the chaos that the petitions in the previous round generated, but doesn’t yet know how it will respond. Halevi’s behavior cost him an assault from the right, but the truth is that he had no other choice. A direct confrontation with the pilots could have caused the air force concrete damage. The solution he adopted – containing the confrontation and ringing the alarm bells at the political decision-makers – was the only reasonable way out in the circumstances. The question is whether this only delayed the end days, and whether Netanyahu’s insistence on passing the reasonableness legislation will rekindle the confrontation, which will once more seep into the ranks of the IDF.
We also need to take into account the fact that the reservists are not alone. If the situation escalates, the story might also affect career soldiers, as well as other security organizations such as the Shin Bet security service and Mossad, and even the motivation to serve in the IDF’s August draft, which will get underway in a few weeks.
IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at the Bahad ceremony on Wednesday.Credit: Eliyahu Hershkovitz
At a ceremony on Wednesday marking the conclusion of an officers’ course in the ground forces held in Bahad (Training Base) 1, the speakers were Netanyahu, Gallant and Halevi. The two ministers declared their opposition to the threats of refusal to serve, saying that his posed a danger to the army’s fitness and arguing that it was not a legitimate form of protest. Netanyahu ignored the violence of the settlers, but Gallant mentioned it. The chief of staff, in contrast, focused on the violence and not on the refusal to serve.
However, on Thursday Halevi did speak about the refusal to serve and said it needs to stop. He made it clear that an officer who ignores an Israeli Jew who throws a Molotov cocktail at the house of a Palestinian is not worthy of being an officer in the IDF, and added that the damage caused by anti-IDF statements does not dissipate even after an apology. Halevi’s two assertions were aimed explicitly at settler violence and at the backing it’s getting from government ministers.