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What is the Hannibal Directive?
The directive, also known as the Hannibal Procedure or Hannibal Protocol, is
an Israeli military policy that stipulates the use of maximum force in the event
of a soldier being kidnapped, said Shaul.
“You will open fire without constraints, in order to prevent the abduction,” he
said, adding that the use of force is carried out even at the risk of killing a
captive soldier.
In addition to firing at the abductors, soldiers can fire at junctions, roads,
highways and other pathways opponents may take a kidnapped soldier
through, Shaul said.
The Israeli military has denied the interpretation of the directive that allows
for the killing of their fellow troops, but Israeli soldiers, including Shaul, have
understood it as a licence to do just that, as it is preferred to a scenario in
which a soldier is taken prisoner.
Shaul said that the directive was shared with him and other commanders
orally. “I’ve never seen any written text of the rules of engagement,” he said.
According to Annyssa Bellal, an international lawyer who specialises in armed
conflicts and international law, and senior researcher at the Geneva Graduate
Institute, the directive was never an official policy and was therefore never
published in its entirety.
“From a legal point of view, the directive is very controversial,” Bellal told Al
Jazeera.
The aspect of the directive which risks killing a soldier is controversial under
international law given that states must respect their citizens’ right to life,
which is not a right lost even if they are captured by other states, she
explained.
Where does it get its name?
The origins of the directive’s name are disputed, with some sources saying it
is named after a Carthaginian general who chose to poison himself instead of
falling captive to the Romans in 181 BC.
Israeli military officials, however, have said that a computer randomly
generated the name.
Why was the directive created?
In 1986, Israeli army commanders drew up the doctrine after three soldiers
from the Givati Brigade, an Israeli infantry brigade, were captured by the
armed Lebanese group Hezbollah.
At that time, Israel occupied a southern region of the Levantine country in an
area it created and called a security zone after its invasion of Lebanon in
1982. Hezbollah captured soldiers patrolling this zone, which would remain
under Israeli occupation until 2000.
Members of the brigade saw a vehicle getting away with their captive fellow
soldiers but did not open fire. The directive was created in response to
ensure that never happened again.
The remains of the captured soldiers were returned to Israel 10 years later in
1996, in exchange for Israel returning the bodies of 123 Hezbollah fighters,
according to the Israeli government.
Israel’s hardline stance since then is due to the fact that a soldier’s abduction
is a strategic move for an enemy, Shaul said, giving them negotiating power,
as well as the ability to affect both national morale and public support for a
conflict.
Israeli soldiers prepare for the scenario of ground maneuvers at an
undisclosed location near the border with Gaza
Israeli soldiers prepare for ground manoeuvres at an undisclosed location
near the border with Gaza [Hannibal Hanschke/EPA-EFE]
Why not swap prisoners?
In 2006 Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was seized by Hamas. After five years in
captivity, he was eventually released in exchange for more than 1,000
Palestinian prisoners, the highest number of prisoners Israel released for one
of its soldiers.
The release of Palestinian prisoners themselves was “seen as a humiliation
and damaging the national honour” which put Israel in a state of national
psychosis, said Uri Misgav, an Israeli journalist at Haaretz, in a 2016 Al
Jazeera investigative documentary on the Hannibal Directive.
“That’s why we want to prevent [the capture of soldiers] at all costs, even at
the cost of the death of the soldier,” said Shaul.
Following Shalit’s return, Israel began to arbitrarily arrest more Palestinians,
including minors, in order to expand its assets for any future exchanges,
wrote Eyal Weizman, a British Israeli architect and director of the research
agency Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, in the
November 2023 issue of the London Review of Books.
“All of this reinforces the perception that the life of one of the colonisers is
worth a thousand times more than the lives of the colonised,” Weizman
wrote.
When was the last time it was invoked?
On August 1, 2014, during Israel’s 50-day bombardment of the Gaza Strip,
which the Israeli military called Operation Protective Edge, the besieged
enclave’s southern area of Rafah bordering Egypt was pounded after Hamas
fighters captured Israeli officer Lieutenant Hadar Goldin.
Israeli artillery and tanks pounded four neighbourhoods for several hours – at
times firing a shell a minute – while fighter jets simultaneously carried out air
strikes.
The deadly firepower killed at least 135 civilians, with Amnesty International
deeming the day “Black Friday” and accusing Israel of having committed war
crimes.
“In the eyes of the Israeli public and from the eyes of Palestinians in Gaza”,
Israelis had lost the operation with the capture of Goldin, Shaul said.
Exacting brute might, therefore, was a way for Israel to gain an upper hand,
he added.
The Israeli military would later conclude that Goldin succumbed to his
wounds in fighting with Hamas, however, his body was never recovered.
But even back in Israel, the episode caused disquiet – including among the
ranks of the army.
“An army that wants to save a captive doesn’t act like this. An army that
wants to ensure the death of both captive and captors acts like this,” one
soldier wrote to then army general Benny Gantz at that time, according to
Misgav. Gantz is now a member of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s war cabinet.
sraeli soldiers preparing the scenario of a ground maneuvre near the Gaza
border, 19 October 2023. More than 3,500 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis
have been killed according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the
Palestinian Health authority since Hamas militants launched an attack
against Israel from the Gaza Strip on 07 October. I
Israeli soldiers preparing for ground assaults near the Gaza border [Abir
Sultan/EPA-EFE]
When was the directive revoked?
The directive is believed to have been revoked in 2016.
It is unclear what led to its annulment but a report by Israel’s state
comptroller had recommended that the army abolish the directive because
of the criticism Israel received for its use in Rafah, as well as because of its
various interpretations by those in the army, Haaretz reported at the time.
Is the directive still relevant to Israel’s current assault on Gaza?
On October 7, Hamas captured more than 200 Israelis, many of whom are
still in captivity or have been killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza, Hamas has
said. But many of those captured are civilians and not soldiers, to whom the
directive does not apply.
Additionally, the sheer number of captives this time around makes the
directive redundant, according to Shaul.
“Let’s say Hamas has one soldier and let’s say the agreement says to free a
thousand [Palestinian] prisoners. There are 5,000 prisoners in prison. Now,
let’s say Hamas has six and they decide to free 3,000,” said Shaul.
“But now Hamas has 200!” he continued.
So is Israel truly finished with the Hannibal Directive?
Bellal said that, in some way, the directive has already been put into practice
in the war on Gaza.
Israel has largely refused to negotiate with Hamas to release its captives,
instead choosing to employ the use of force against the Gaza Strip which
somewhat “mirrors what the directive was about”, she said.
Israel’s current assault on Gaza already supersedes its previous most deadly
ones in 2008 and 2014. In 2008, 1,385 Palestinians were killed over 22 days,
while in 2014, Israel killed 2,251 Palestinians, according to the United Nations
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Weizman’s observations are similar to Bellal’s.
“With the current indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, the government seems
not only to be bringing unprecedented destruction on the people of Gaza but
to be returning to the principle of preferring dead captives to a deal,” he
wrote.
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Why was the directive shrouded in secrecy?
For nearly two decades, military censorship kept the policy under wraps.
In 2003, however, an Israeli doctor, Avner Shiftan, learned of the procedure
while serving as a reservist in Lebanon, and contacted the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz to air his views. Shiftan pushed for its end and the directive therefore
came to public light – but it did not cause much of a reaction from the Israeli
public.
Shaul said that while the directive has been controversial in the international
arena outside of the military, when he first heard about it as a soldier, the
policy made clear sense.
“I think people saw it as insensitive because the order was to kill soldiers,” he
said.
“But as soldiers, it makes perfect sense. You don’t want to be abducted and
maybe just missing for the rest of your life. Or who knows what [else could]
happen with you?”"
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