"Force, might, and beatings" was the stated policy of Israeli Minister of Defence Yitzhak Rabin to suppress the Palestinian First Intifada in early 1988.
After the first weeks of rioting coalesced into a popular uprising and the Israeli government became increasingly concerned over the Palestinian casualties at the hands of live ammunition, in early January 1988 Rabin adopted a policy of beatings with the aim of restoring order and re-establishing the authority of the Israeli Civil Administration, while minimising Palestinian deaths. The policy was quickly met with a widespread international backlash, particularly due to media reports of Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers beating unarmed protestors. Domestic concerns over the policy also grew in Israel, both over the legality of the policy and the effects it had on Israeli soldiers, and the Israeli government formally retreated from the policy by the end of February 1988. The policy has been referred to by some commentators as the "break-their-bones" policy due to unproven allegations from Palestinians and some Israeli soldiers that Rabin personally ordered soldiers to break the bones of Palestinian protestors.Farag, Joseph. Politics and Palestinian Literature in Exile: Gender, Aesthetics and Resistance in the Short Story. I.B.Tauris, 2016.
Background
Yitzhak Rabin was an Israeli soldier and politician. During the 1940s, he joined the Palmach paramilitary, participating in World War II and the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine. He then participated in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, where he served as deputy commander of Operation Dani, personally signing the order for the Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle. He also served as Chief of Staff of the Israel Defence Forces during the Six-Day War, following which Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 1973, he was elected to the Knesset as a member of the Israeli Labor Party, quickly becoming party leader and Prime Minister in 1974. In 1977, Likud won the Israeli elections for the first time, and Rabin lost the Labor leadership to Shimon Peres. He would return to government, however in 1984, being named Minister of Defence as part of a grand coalition between Likud and Labor. As Minister of Defence, he oversaw the implementation of an "iron fist" policy in the occupied Palestinian territories, significantly increasing measures to repress Palestinian nationalism.
History Outbreak of the First Intifada On 9 December 1987, an Israeli truck driver collided with and killed four Palestinians in the Jabalia refugee camp. The incident sparked the largest wave of Palestinian unrest since the Israeli occupation began in 1967: the First Intifada. During the early stages, the Intifada was largely characterised by a non-violent campaign, with actions including labour strikes, tax strikes, boycotts of Israeli goods, boycotts of Israeli institutions, demonstrations, the establishment of underground classrooms and cooperatives, raisings of the banned Palestinian flag, and civil disobedience. The actions were led by the led by a decentralised leadership composed of the grassroots organisations of the PLO, such as labour unions, student councils, and women's committees, who organised themselves into the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU), mainly outside of the direct control of the PLO leadership, who were mostly in exile or imprisoned (or had been killed by Israeli forces over the preceding years).
The outbreak of the Intifada caught the Israeli government by surprise, with the government finding itself unprepared to deal with a popular uprising.Reiter, Yitzhak. National Minority, Regional Majority : Palestinian Arabs Versus Jews in Israel, Syracuse University Press, 2009. Page 112. During the first days of the unrest, Rabin was on an official visit to the United States to negotiate a military pact that would grant Israel many of the same rights regarding American military contracts as NATO members and the purchase of additional F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jets for the Israeli military to replace the cancelled IAI Lavi programme. Failing to recognise that the unrest was transforming into a popular uprising, Rabin refused to cut short the trip. At the end of his trip, before returning to Israel, Rabin told the media when questioned over the unrest that he was "sorry about the loss of life of anyone," but that the Israeli government "will use what ever is needed" to prevent violent demonstrations and reiterated the government's policy of refusing to recognise the PLO.
As the Israeli government struggled to formulate a consistent response to the uprising as grew through December 1987, it defaulted to its usual measures of suppressing Palestinian nationalism. This was the Iron Fist policy, including imposing widespread lockdowns on Palestinian cities, shutting down Palestinian schools and universities, mass arrests, and demolitions of Palestinian houses. Between the outbreak of the Intifada and 15 January 1988, 38 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire.
Officially stated policy Over the days of 4 to 5 January 1988, the Israeli government settled on a more consistent policy for suppressing the Intifada, including significantly increasing the number of soldiers patrolling the territories, more actively confronting demonstrations, and using beatings to disperse those protests instead of live ammunition, without announcing the policy. Several days later, Rabin stated after visiting the Gaza Strip that the Israeli government was "still in the process of making all efforts to make sure that tranquility will be restored. We'll achieve it, but it's not going to be achieved by one or two days," warning that "I hope the people of the Gaza Strip will realize that the longer the disturbances will be continued, the greater will be their suffering."
On 19 January 1988, Rabin publicly confirmed that the Israeli government's policy was to beat Palestinian protestors, as part of a speech announcing a new range of measures to suppress the Palestinian uprising, including granting Israeli emergency powers over East Jerusalem, despite the Israeli government having annexed the city and considering it part of Israel proper, and banning food shipments into refugee camps in the occupied Palestinian territories until Palestinian shopkeepers stop holding commercial strikes.Al-Haq. Punishing a Nation: Human Rights Violations During the Palestinian Uprising, December 1987-December 1988. South End Press, 1990. Pages 13-19. In his speech, Rabin stated that "the first priority is to use force, might, beatings." Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir told a meeting of Likud's Herut faction several days later that the Israeli government's goal was to "put the fear of death into the Arabs of the territories." The Jerusalem Post quoted a senior Israeli military official as saying that the policy was aimed towards "striking fear of the army" into Palestinian protestors, and another told Haaretz that the policy's aim was to make Palestinians "scared of the army, and so that one day we could get most of the units out of the territory, when people will remember and know for the future."
Both men and women were targeted by beatings, particularly those living in refugee camps (which were frequently closed off to journalists). Many of the beatings took place at night. Jennifer Leaning of Physicians for Human Rights described "a systematic pattern of limb injury that is clearly organized to cause fractures that will not result in mortality... a pattern that is controlled, a systematic pattern over a wide geographical area. It's as if they've been instructed. The injuries could be far worse." According to Joseph Farag of the University of Minnesota, "so severe, frequent, and regular was the beating of Palestinians that the Israeli military replaced its soldiers' wooden truncheons, which had a habit of breaking and splintering, with more resilient plastic and fiberglass ones in March of 1988." Many Palestinians who had been beaten did not seek formal medical treatment afterwards, out of fear that their medical records would be used to arrest them again, leading to an outbreak of wound infections across the Palestinian territories.
By late January, however, faced with a growing domestic and international backlash against the policy, as well as with growing concerns within the Israeli military about the psychological effects of the policy on its soldiers and about the legality of the policy, some members of the Israeli government began to moderate some of its public statements on the use of beatings, while other officials denied that beatings were taking place. On 26 January, Rabin stated that "there shouldn’t be blows for the sake of blows," but claimed that the policy had helped the IDF regain its deterrent power and that reports of peaceful Palestinians being beaten were exceptions. Minister of Police Haim Bar-Lev claimed that "is no beating," describing the policy as "an unfortunate term." Central Command head Major General Amram Mitzna stated that reports of beatings were "a lot of stories which are just stories," saying that "we the Israelis, the Jews, have a very sensitive conscience."
By 22 February, at least 59 Palestinians had been killed as a result of the Israeli crackdown on the Intifada, with thousands having been beaten and suffering bone fractures. That day, a letter sent by Attorney General of Israel Yosef Harish to the government was made public, in which Harish warned that orders to use force to punish or humiliate protestors would be illegal and that the growing number of reports of beatings raised suspicions that they were not exceptions. Chief of the General Staff Dan Shomron issued a new order to Israeli soldiers saying that the use of force was permissible to break up a riot, to overcome resistance to an arrest, and while pursuing suspects, but not as a means of punishment or after the objective had been attained. The Israeli military further ordered that all soldiers serving under Central Command should sign statements confirming that they had read and understood the order on the use of force.
Continued beatings throughout the First Intifada According to Palestinian human rights organisations Al-Haq, "although official sanctioning of the beatings policy was withdrawn in February, in practice the beatings did not stop... The main differences are that seems to be that the policy is less systemic - i.e. there is less emphasis on breaking limbs - and certainly less visible to the international community, partly as a result of restrictions on the media, and partly because the main targets are remote villages and refugee camps, especially in the Gaza Strip."
Israeli newspaper Maariv reported in early March 1988 that the Israeli military had decided to only prosecute the most excessive cases of soldiers violating the order on the use of force. George D. Moffett III of The Christian Science Monitor wrote in February 1989 that "no soldier convicted for the use of excessive force, including fatal force, has received a sentence of more than 18 months. By comparison, Palestinians found guilty of throwing stones often are jailed for two years or more." In its 1989 end-of-year report, Human Rights Watch noted that "as of October 10, 1989, indictments had been returned in only 13 cases of deaths by shooting or beating since the start of the intifada. The stiffest sentence given so far in these cases was two years' imprisonment. As the country report stated, 'regulations were not rigorously enforced; punishments were usually lenient; and there were many cases of unjustified killing which did not result in disciplinary actions or prosecutions.'"