Because, says the army, defending its restraint, the enemy gunmen crouch when they fire. About two weeks into the Al-Aqsa Intifada, as the death toll mounted, Israeli military experts started scouring arsenals the world over for less lethal means of containing the violence. Officers made dozens of visits to armies and police forces on five continents, but turned up just one device they thought might help.
Military officials refuse to disclose what that device was or where it was developed.
All they ll say is that the country in question refused to sell it to Israel. Clearly the implications of the rapidly rising casualty toll worried the army from the outset of the violence. Senior officers acknowledge that, apart from humanitarian aspects, they were aware that the daily fatalities would radicalize positions on the Palestinian side, making future accommodation more difficult, and that Israel would lose the international public opinion battle. But while now, three months into the intifada in which some 300 Palestinians, and 40 Israelis, have been killed there are a handful of senior officers privately arguing that the army could have exercised more restraint, the overwhelming belief in the military is that it has been acting as responsibly, and intelligently, as possible. The critics do not directly target Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, but they argue that his firm approach to the intifada his guiding insistence that soldiers not be sitting ducks and that civilians not be left unprotected has sometimes been too freely interpreted by young soldiers and by brigade commanders seeking quick results.