When I was a student at Brown, I was constantly challenged by my classmates, encouraged to secure my beliefs and passions, pushed to make sure I pursued a life that was meaningful and fought for justice. Everyone at Brown had a cause that motivated him or her. For me, that cause was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As I became engrossed in the discussion, I determined I wanted to devote my life to defending the security of both Israelis and Palestinians while furthering the cause of human rights. This realization led me to a path that, for some, might seem counterintuitive: I am currently a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces.
Contrary to the stereotypical depiction of the IDF — or of any army — as an aggressor, I serve in a very different kind of army, specifically in the Coordination and Liaison Administration for Gaza. Our unit connects the army to various bodies within Gaza, including international organizations such as the Red Cross and United Nations Agencies, the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health and Palestinian media, as well as various Palestinian officials. The mission of our unit is to provide a liaison between the army and the civilian population in Gaza in order to ensure routine daily life for local Palestinians.
Our unit works solely for civilian needs in Gaza on a daily basis: We send Israeli electrical teams to make sure power lines entering Gaza function, we coordinate the transfer of Palestinians requiring medical care from Gaza to Israeli hospitals for treatment and we transport exports from Gaza throughout the world through Israeli borders and ports to boost the Palestinian economy. My fellow soldiers work on a daily basis with our Palestinian counterparts in the Gaza Strip with common goals of entering as many supplies and people as possible through Israeli crossings. The truth is that the crossings are in fact underused — the Palestinians do not demand the number of imports of goods the Israeli crossings are built for.
This unit’s mission is focused on humanity, on ensuring that even while maintaining necessary security precautions, we can look out for the interests of the Palestinian population in Gaza. Our work strives to maintain the peace — when there is an outbreak of violence, we liaise between officials to minimize casualties. On a daily basis, we connect the military forces to our Palestinian representatives in order to keep the peace on a hostile border.
During Operation Pillar of Defense, we worked tirelessly to monitor the entrance of humanitarian aid as well as to identify sensitive locations such as hospitals, schools and mosques in order to minimize civilian casualties. We invested the army’s resources and money and risked our lives by serving in an area showered with rockets, all in order to preserve what we could of routine life for Palestinian civilians.
As I worked from a bomb shelter, talking on the phone with the Red Cross and the UN on one phone with the relevant IDF bodies on another, I represented the cooperation that is not seen or reported. The IDF uses many resources to train soldiers like me, soldiers that embody the IDF’s ethical code to value all human life and to address the many humanitarian needs of civilian populations trapped in a location of violence. While the world watched the operation as a continuation of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli air strikes, it did not see our endless conversations with Palestinian and international workers of the Red Cross as we tried to take lists of necessary medical supplies and protect the movement of ambulances. The world did not see UN officials sleeping in our base, working personally with soldiers during each minute of the operation. The world did not see our base’s officers who were ready to enter Gaza in the case of a ground operation with ground forces to monitor the army’s actions and ensure the IDF worked in accordance with civilian needs.
I fear some of my fellow Brunonians have a preconceived image of what Israel and its army are and fail to acknowledge soldiers like me who advance efforts for coexistence and cooperation in a very challenging region. I am afraid conversations on College Hill and beyond ignore my army and my Israel and instead hide behind loaded names and phrases. I ask my fellow Brunonians to listen to my experiences, listen to my reality and what I live every day.
I hope students at my alma mater reject easy stereotypes and understand that their drives to seek justice and fight for human rights are the very drives that lead me to proudly wear the IDF uniform.
Corporal Evan Pelz ’11 is in the Israel Defense Forces and can be reached at evan.pelz@gmail.com.
ADVERTISEMENT
