Dissent against military action is not new to Israel: Military historians note that public discontent with Israel's two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon and its slowly mounting casualty toll helped pressure the government to withdraw its forces in May 2000 -- over the objection of the military leadership.
Opinion polls continue to rate the Israel Defense Forces as the country's most respected institution, though public confidence levels have eroded slightly since the military's incursion into West Bank cities in the spring of 2002. The Israeli news media, including the military's official weekly newspaper, have become more willing to scrutinize an institution once considered sacrosanct.
Troops from the 202nd Paratrooper Battalion are briefed before a raid aimed at detaining a suspected Palestinian militant in the West Bank city of Nablus.
(Ilan Mizrahi For The Washington Post)
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Many analysts say they see a growing willingness among today's soldiers and officers to not only speak out against the tactics employed in the Palestinian territories, but also to refuse to serve. That, the analysts say, signals an unprecedented challenge to the armed forces and the government.
Israel maintains mandatory military conscription and reserve duty in which eligible men, and some unmarried women, serve about one month each year, usually until age 41, though requirements vary substantially depending on the individual's military specialty. The military is what Michael Oren, a military historian, calls a "neighborhood army," which most Israeli boys and girls grew up knowing they would join. Active-duty and reserve soldiers maintain a fierce dedication to the military, and believe they have an obligation to protect their homeland, as well as the lives of families and friends.
But in dusty camps, at blistering desert roadblocks and, perhaps most frequently, when soldiers go home and take off their uniforms, introspection often blurs the clear outlines of duty.
"You're in a situation where you need to be blind," said Hakkak, the Israeli sergeant, tugging nervously at unruly strands of his brown hair as he discussed his role in the conflict. "You do things as a machine, it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. The things you've done affect you in a very serious way."
Nearly 900 Israelis have been killed during the conflict -- more than 250 of them soldiers. Almost 2,500 Palestinians have been killed. It is difficult to determine how many of those casualties were civilians, with estimates by Palestinian human rights groups and Israeli research groups ranging as high as 85 percent and as low as 48 percent. No verifiable independent count exists, and the Israeli military provides no statistics on Palestinian civilian deaths.
Nearly a year after leaving active duty, Hakkak, who like many soldiers later found work as a security guard, said he was still haunted by his West Bank tour.
"In my dreams I see myself killing people I didn't kill," he said.
An Army's Mystique
Cpl. Mati Milstein was sweaty and bored -- extremely bored, as he recalled. He was halfway through an eight-hour shift at a Gaza Strip checkpoint near a Jewish settlement when he spotted a car approaching. A Palestinian man and his young son were inside.
Milstein, his coffee-colored eyes set in a face that seemed all sharp angles, trained his M-16 rifle on the father and ordered him out of the car. He remembered that the "young son watched in horror."
The soldier peered inside the trunk. The father and his boy were probably returning from the beach and were no security threat, Milstein told himself.
"But I wasn't finished," Milstein later wrote in a Jewish newsletter. "At gunpoint, I ordered the father to open the hood and show me the engine, open the glove compartment, lift up the front seats, crawl into the back and show me whatever was stuck between the rear seats, open his shopping bags, empty his pockets."
Then, with the man's identity card in his pocket, Milstein ambled over to his shaded and fortified checkpost and gossiped with a colleague, keeping his M-16 trained on the father and son, who remained standing under the wilting sun.
