Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon on Tuesday welcomed the legal backing offered by Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to the Israel Defense Forces' abduction prevention measures. Weinstein weighed in on the military's Hannibal Protocol -- designed to thwart the capture of Israelis by enemy agents and to allow commanders in the field to take whatever action is necessary to foil such abductions -- following an inquiry by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, requesting clarification on the implementation of the countermeasures therein. In his response to ACRI's inquiry, Weinstein ruled that while the directives associated with the Hannibal Protocol were in line with Israeli and international legal criteria, they do not suggest, directly or indirectly, that preventing a soldier's abduction entails using deadly force on the victim. "This is in importance legal clarification," Ya'alon said. "The evolution of the Hannibal Protocol includes more than legal consideration, it includes moral, ethical and operational ones as well. If something illegal happens during a military operation, if someone, heaven forbid, looted, raped, or opened fire in violation of orders, then it would warrant a criminal investigation. Otherwise, these investigations should be left to military commanders. "To have the legal system trample over operational considerations would undermine [the soldiers'] fighting spirit. On the other hand, the legal system must be able to review incidents that have real criminal aspects, but it has to focus on them, not on issues that have no criminal aspects," Ya'alon said. ACRI attorney Tamar Feldman commented on Weinstein's findings, saying, "Even if the written protocol does not violate any laws, there seems to be a significant gap between the directives and the orders the commanders and soldiers are given in the field."
