How Israel uses humiliation as a weapon of occupation

Published: 5 August 2022

Last updated: 5 March 2024

New military testimony highlights the use of bureaucratic power over Palestinians.

When Joel Carmel went for his military service in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), he didn’t expect it to mean sitting at a computer processing permits, typing in Palestinian ID numbers all day.

“Before I went to the army, I considered myself a centrist, politically speaking. I knew broadly about the occupation and the combat side of things. But it was so boring, so bureaucratic … It wears you down,” the 29-year-old said.

“You don’t have time or energy to think of Palestinians as people. They are just numbers on a computer, and you click ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on their travel permit applications.”

The sprawling system of military government created by Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is a world many Israelis are learning about for the first time, after the publication of testimonies from veterans exposing the “permit regime” that rules over Palestinian people and land.

While the 55-year-old occupation is perhaps the most well-documented conflict in modern history, less understood is the breadth and depth of the bureaucratic power wielded by Israeli military bodies.

The Israeli defence ministry unit known as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) is largely concerned with issuing and processing paperwork: approving medical and work permits to enter Israel or travel abroad, controlling the flow of imports and exports, infrastructure planning and allocation of natural resources.

Testimonies from military conscripts who served in COGAT offices during the past decade have for the first time been collected by Breaking the Silence. The verified accounts of several dozen interviewees – including Carmel, who now works for the organisation – have been gathered in a new, freely available booklet titled Military Rule.

Another aspect of bureaucratic control under the Civil administration is the regular shutdown of the Palestinian police service to enable Israeli military activity.

When the army announces it is about to raid a Palestinian locality, all Palestinian police must go into their offices at once. In the civil administration’s internal slang, this task is known as “folding up SHOPIM,” with SHOPIM standing for the Hebrew acronym for “Palestinian policemen.” The phone warning and “folding up” are a routine both sides make sure to uphold, because “nobody wants one side to shoot at the other,” as a former soldier in the unit told Haaretz.

The soldiers on duty didn’t tell their Palestinian colleagues that there were “policemen folding,” rather that there was “activity” going on. In the lingo of the Palestinian security forces, the disappearance of policemen from the streets due to an impending raid is called “zero-zero.” A Palestinian security source was unfamiliar with the term “SHOPIM folding” and said it was humiliating.

But reality – in which Palestinian policemen scurry to hide in their strongholds shortly before Israeli soldiers break into a family home, pointing rifles at freshly-awoken women and children – is more humiliating. Mortally humiliating is banning Palestinian security from defending their people not only from soldiers, but also from Israeli civilians attacking them in their fields and orchards, at home and when out grazing their herds.

The opposite of folding up is also humiliating: when the Palestinian side needs to ask Israeli approval for their policemen to go from a given city to a nearby village that happens to be in Area B, or because the road between them crosses Area C. “They don’t make a peep without us telling them. … Even if there are no settlers in between, [even if] they go without uniforms, without weapons, they’re just going to investigate a car crash – they still need to coordinate it with the brigade,” says one of the testimonies in the booklet.

Vanguard in Humiliating Palestinians (Haaretz)

Israel limits civilian traffic around Gaza in fear of Palestinian reprisals (Middle East Eye)

Photo: IDF Operations Sergeant at the computer (IDF)