"This is very significant," said Yagil Levy, author of a recently published book on changing trends in the Israeli military. "For the first time in Israeli history, you're talking about hundreds of officers. They are very prominent officers who served in the IDF in very prominent jobs."
Fear of the Unknown
"My biggest fear is that we get numb," Nadav, a 26-year-old captain, said recently at a shabby Israeli base just outside of Nablus, about 28 miles north of Jerusalem. He sat at a dusty, plastic-covered table in his office, chain-smoking Marlboro Lights and contemplating the impact of this war on his army. Like all officers in the Israeli military, he began service as an enlisted soldier.
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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Nadav, a compactly built man who took a break to travel the world after his mandatory service and returned to active duty last year, described a trip to Ethiopia. On the first day, he was overwhelmed by the poverty. After a few days, he said, "I didn't see it as much," adding, "I'm afraid that will happen to us. We will start doing things, like taking over a house, and blowing up a door will look natural -- that we'll do stuff and not think about the person, even if he's killed."
Nadav commands a company of about 105 soldiers in the 202nd Paratrooper Battalion. His troops are native Israelis as well as immigrants from across the globe -- 20 from Russia and other former Soviet republics, 10 from Ethiopia, others from Argentina, Britain and, until recently, two from the United States. The unit's members call themselves "the Rattlesnakes."
He refers to them as "my children." He worries about the strain the conflict has put on the unit and his men. Before last year's West Bank incursions, troops usually spent four months in the field and four months training at a rear base. This year, Nadav's men were allotted one month of training and reorganization after 11 months of combat operations.
One night this year at the beginning of a shift, the Rattlesnakes collected in front of an elaborately detailed, computer-projected aerial photograph of Nablus, an ancient city known to most of the men in the room by its Hebrew name of Shechem and revered by Jews as the spot where Abraham received the promise of a land of Israel.
The night's mission was a raid intended to nab a suspected Palestinian militant.
"We know very little," cautioned the deputy commander who gave the briefing. "Name, what he looks like. . . . We don't know where he is. These are the suspected places" -- three houses where intelligence reports indicated the suspect could be spending the night.
Each squad was to leave its armored jeeps or truck at a specific location; each man had a precise rooftop, tree line or alley at which to position himself; each was responsible for knowing the location of his colleagues to reduce the chances of casualties caused by friendly fire.
Soldiers say few operations prey on their psyches more than searches for suspected militants. Sometimes the troops blast through doors with explosives, fearful of the potential danger of armed fighters on the other side. All too frequently, they find Palestinian families cowering in their own houses.
"One time we went into a house . . . really, really aggressively," said a 22-year-old first sergeant, Gabriel, whose copper-colored hair sprouted from beneath a maroon skullcap emblazoned with the emblem of the paratroops. "The people were really scared. The people were shaking. Not just the women -- the father, all of them were shaking." It was the wrong house.
"I really, really, really felt bad," said Gabriel, who said he watched Walt Disney movies to relax on his weekends at home. "If it's a terrorist, you don't feel as bad. I really felt bad. I couldn't stop apologizing. There was nothing I could do. I'm a simple soldier."
Noam, the 20-year-old first sergeant, spent his youth in Israel, moved to England with his family and returned nearly three years ago to serve in the armed forces. In those three years, he said, he has lost count of how many Palestinian homes he has raided.
"You feel sorry for the family," said the lanky soldier with short black hair. "They have done nothing wrong. . . . You think of what it would be like if someone came to your family."
"A person not in the army might think you should get out of the occupied territories," said Noam, watching two Rattlesnakes play a heated game of table tennis as they waited for the night's mission to begin. "But by being here, you know you stopped a potential murderer. That's the only satisfaction."
His soft voice drifted off: "Even that's not too much satisfaction. It's a war. No one likes this."
