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PDF FormatThe clashes between UN soldiers and local residents became increasingly bitter. On September 9, when a company of UN military engineers came under sniper fire, one Pakistani soldier was killed and five others were injured. In response, American helicopter gunships fired mortars and rockets at the crowd that had gathered at the site, which included women and children. An American pilot involved in the incident noted in his log that the helicopters “were shooting into crowds where they were taking fire” and “killed as many as 100.” The same pilot complained that the Somalis “are strange, or maybe smart depending on how you look at it. They will use women as cover and concealment for when they shoot at us to make it harder to see who is doing the shooting, if we can see them at all. Then they call us killers of women and children when we shoot the very same people who are shooting at us and we kill some of the people that they are using for cover.”48
Despite the gruesome consequences of the incident, the UN gave its forces unqualified support, and its spokesmen defended the decision to open fire on the crowd by explaining that armed fighters were hiding in it.49 Major David Stockwell of the U.S. Army, the senior UN spokesman in Somalia, explained to the media that “everyone on the ground in the vicinity was a combatant, because they meant to do us harm.”50
The fighting in Somalia reached its climax in an incident that occurred in Mogadishu in October 1993. An American force sent to arrest two of Aidid’s collaborators was surrounded and became embroiled in an intensive gun battle. Many civilians found themselves in the line of fire; some of them were used by Aidid’s men as human shields. In his analysis of the incident, Lieutenant-Colonel Norman Cooling related that on one occasion, an armed Somali fired at U.S. Army Rangers from between a woman’s legs, with four children crouching on top of him. The soldiers were forced to decide whether to fire into the crowd or to allow the attackers to pick off their comrades. They decided, “logically,” on the first alternative.51 Other civilians wounded in the same incident were apparently misidentified as combatants, or were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many of them were caught in the heavy UN fire as forces tried to prevent National Front fighters from closing in on the encircled troops. Colonel Lawrence Casper, who participated in the fighting, described the way soldiers used nearly every weapon they had: “Everything, from 5.56 mm. to the Malaysians’ 12.7 mm. heavy machine guns, was firing in all directions…. On the night of October 3, we employed everything at our disposal with the exception of mortars.” Casper had no qualms about the UN soldiers’ behavior. “There was no doubt in my mind that we employed the appropriate level of force given the circumstances,” he said.52 This “appropriate level of force” necessitated, as things got worse, the firing of 63 anti-tank missiles and 75,000 helicopter shells.53 The incident cost the lives of 20 UN soldiers and no fewer than 312 Somalis—the majority of whom were not, apparently, involved in the fighting.54
The American force made no apologies for its behavior in Mogadishu; instead, blame for civilian casualties was placed on Aidid. In a statement quoted by The New York Times on October 14, 1993, the U.S. Central Command insisted that “the nature and degree of the force used by U.S. and UN forces did not exceed what was necessary to counter this escalating fire and was consistent with the right of self-defense under international law.” According to the statement, the Somalis “are not subject to military discipline and they do not comply with international law. It is they who initiated the firefight and who bear ultimate responsibility for this tragic loss of life.” Robert Oakley, then U.S. ambassador in Mogadishu, expressed America’s determination to protect the lives of its soldiers by every means possible in an ultimatum he delivered to Aidid’s clan when clan members captured an American pilot:
So what we’ll decide is we have to rescue him, and whether we have the right place or the wrong place, there’s going to be a fight with your people. The minute the guns start again, all restraint on the U.S. side goes.… This whole part of the city will be destroyed—men, women, children, camels, cats, dogs, goats, donkeys, everything…. That would really be tragic for all of us, but that’s what will happen.55
The ultimatum worked, and Aidid’s men let the pilot go.56
The UN’s entanglement in a long and arduous campaign in Mogadishu is a striking example of the chaos that is so often the hallmark of urban combat. Although the force was stationed in Somalia to advance humanitarian objectives and facilitate peacemaking efforts, the violence on the ground led it to use every means at its disposal in the name of self-defense—against both real and imaginary threats. Not surprisingly, the result was catastrophic for the very civilians the UN forces had been sent to protect.
The three campaigns I have examined in this section are merely prominent examples of an oft-repeated phenomenon in the recent history of warfare. The 1980 Battle of Khorramshahr during the Iran-Iraq War and the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama—to cite two more—follow a similar pattern.57 While battles waged in urban areas may be won by either side, the greatest losses are inevitably suffered by the civilian population.
IV
The lessons of Chechnya, Kosovo, and Somalia were not lost on Israel’s political and military leaders when, at the beginning of 2002, they prepared for the possibility of a military operation in the heart of Palestinian Authority territory. Indeed, there was a real fear that the densely populated, heavily armed West Bank towns and refugee camps would become a slaughterhouse for both Israelis and Palestinians.
This fear, however, proved almost totally unfounded. True, IDF operations in the Arab cities of the West Bank were not always free of tactical errors, and some non-combatants died in incidents that probably could have been avoided. Yet the Arab civilian population of the West Bank was spared the fate of the Chechens, the Serbs, and the Somalis. This fact can largely be attributed to the tactics employed by the IDF in battle, and to the Israeli policy of minimizing civilian casualties even if it meant putting Israeli forces at greater risk.
Until April 2000, Israel had not engaged in fighting on this scale since the war in Lebanon in the early 1980s. During the Intifada, from 1987 to 1992, Israeli security forces confronted widespread hostile activity, but clashes with Palestinian gunmen were extremely rare. Militant groups in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip were not sufficiently organized or armed to pose a significant threat.
This situation changed dramatically with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as part of the 1993 Oslo accords. Almost immediately, arms and explosives began pouring into the area, some approved as necessary equipment for the Palestinian police, others in flagrant violation of the accords.58 The violent clashes of September 1996 cost the lives of fourteen soldiers, and alerted IDF officials to the real possibility of a wide-ranging conflict with the Palestinian Authority—one that became a brutal reality when the PA launched a war of terror in September 2000.
During the subsequent year and a half, hundreds of Israelis were killed in terror attacks, and the IDF responded with assaults on the extensive terror infrastructure in PA territory. There was escalation on both sides: The Palestinians moved from stones and Molotov cocktails to light and medium anti-tank weapons, anti-tank mines, mortars, rockets, and suicide bombers in crowded civilian centers. The IDF responded with the increased use of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and helicopter gunships, and, on rare occasion, with fighter planes armed with precision-guided munitions. As the Palestinians stepped up their assault, the IDF began carrying out operations in PA territory, including residential areas where terror groups had set up their headquarters, explosives laboratories, and arms caches.
By far the toughest challenge, however, was the densely populated refugee camps, considered an almost impossible nut to crack. Experts estimated that any operation in the camps would mean hundreds of casualties for both sides. These dark predictions resurfaced time and again in intelligence reports, war simulations, and newspaper articles.59 Indeed, the IDF’s first incursions into the Jenin and Nablus refugee camps, beginning in late February of 2002, did little to dispel the fears. Ze’ev Schiff, military analyst with Ha’aretz, pointed out that fighting in the camps would be a “move which the IDF has refrained from taking up till now,” and recounted the many misgivings that had prevented this kind of operation in the past: “While the General Security Service was proclaiming that the ‘snake’s head’ of Palestinian terror can be found in these camps, and calling for a ruthless military operation, IDF officials were worried that such an operation would lead to heavy losses among both the local population and IDF soldiers….”60
