WNAM REPORT: Britain accused Israel of allowing its troops to run “out of control” during a huge military operation in the occupied West Bank two decades ago, UK government archives showed Tuesday.
The newly-released files highlight Western concern over the Palestinian death toll during Operation Defensive Shield launched by then-Israeli premier Ariel Sharon in March 2002.
The comments are similar to concerns expressed by some Western allies over Israel’s current military operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Britain’s ambassador to Israel at the time warned Sharon’s foreign policy adviser that the incursion by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was a “major strategic mistake” which was undermining support for Israel among its allies.
“If some of the reports we were receiving were credible, the IDF’s behaviour was more worthy of the Russian army than that of a supposedly civilised country,” Sherard Cowper-Coles told the adviser, according to his report of the meeting.
“I was not suggesting that such behaviour was a matter of policy. But there was no doubt that individual soldiers were out of control and committing acts which were outraging international opinion,” the diplomat added.
The operation came amid the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which occurred between 2000 and 2005.
Sharon launched the operation in the West Bank after a wave of suicide attacks claimed dozens of Israeli lives.
The Israeli military surrounded the compound of then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah.
Troops cut off phone lines and power supplies, while intense street-to-street fighting raged for eight days further north in the Jenin refugee camp.
The offensive was at the time the largest military operation in the Palestinian territories since Israel captured them in 1967.
Then-US president George W. Bush complained in private call with UK prime minister Tony Blair that the hardline policies of Sharon were turning Arafat into a martyr similar to 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, the files show.
“While Arafat had effectively been marginalising himself, Sharon had succeeded in making a martyr of him — building him up to the point where he was becoming the new bin Laden,” Bush complained, according to a note of the call by the then-UK leader’s office.
“The US had tried to persuade Sharon privately, but he just would not listen. The bottom line was that Sharon was undermining the US’s ability to pursue the war on terrorism. That was not the action of a good ally,” the note added.
Operation Defensive Shield lasted just over a month and resulted in the deaths of about 500 Palestinians, according to estimates by the United Nations.
Israel’s current war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, including 44 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 39,006 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.
