Tony Blair’s government accused Israeli forces of acting “more like the Russian army than like a civilised country” during their major military incursion into the occupied West Bank, newly released official documents show.
These tensions, eerily similar to Western concerns about Israel’s current military operation in the Gaza Strip, are revealed in documents released by the National Archives.
The documents show outrage among Western allies over the rising Palestinian death toll when the Israel Defense Forces surrounded the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2002.
After a series of suicide bombings killed scores of Israelis, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon launched Operation Defensive Shield in late March 2002 and called up 20,000 reservists.
IDF tanks surrounded Arafat’s compound in Ramallah, cutting telephone and electricity lines, while fierce street fighting raged for eight days in the vast Jenin refugee camp.
In a tense meeting with Sharon’s foreign policy adviser, Danny Ayalon, British Ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles warned that the attack was a “serious strategic error” and was undermining support for Israel among its allies.
“If some of the reports we are receiving are credible, the actions of the IDF were more like those of the Russian military than that of a so-called civilized country,” Cowper-Coles told her advisers, according to the report of the meeting.
“I am not saying that such actions are a matter of policy, but there is no doubt that individual soldiers lost control and committed acts that outraged international opinion.”
As an example, he gives the case of Israeli forces broadcasting pornographic videos on Palestinian television, knowing that this would be deeply offensive to devout Muslims. “Ayalon offers no real answers on this issue, only assertions of ignorance and Arab lies,” Cowper-Coles writes.
George Bush, who was waging his own “war on terror” after the September 11 attacks the previous year, was similarly unhappy with Israel’s actions, venting his frustrations to Blair in a private phone call.
“While Arafat had effectively alienated himself, Sharon had succeeded in making a martyr out of him, even going so far as to groom him into the next Bin Laden,” the president complained, according to a 10-point memo from a transcript of the call.
“Israel was trying to fight a 21st century war with 20th century technology. Sending tanks into an alley was just a PR disaster. The US tried to convince Sharon privately, but he wouldn’t listen. In the end, Sharon was undermining America’s ability to wage the war on terror. That’s not the behaviour of a good ally.”
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A British officer who observed IDF operations in the Occupied Territories before Operation Defensive Shield said that despite the IDF’s reputation as “competent and effective”, the reality was quite different: “A second-rate, undisciplined, bossy and arrogant force” was his scathing verdict.
“They routinely use excessive force, firing at the legs or car tyres of stone throwers, and there is a constant stream of ambulances taking young people with fatal head and body wounds to hospital.”
Other documents released by the National Archives revealed Downing Street officials wanted to buy a permanent prime ministerial battle bus to support Blair on his domestic visits.
Campaign buses, hired on a temporary basis by political parties, have long been a feature of general elections, but in February 2000, officials from the 10th Election Commission suggested they might make this a permanent arrangement, according to the files.
