Even Israeli ex-soldiers know ending the occupation is the only path to peace

Recent words from Israeli ex-soldiers show that even they understand that ending Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine is the only path to peace for all people in the region.

Israeli “occupation is not the solution — it’s the problem”

Breaking the Silence is an Israeli organisation of former soldiers which “aims to bring an end to the occupation” by exposing “the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories”. Their testimonies give important context about how Israeli control in Palestine creates an endless cycle of violence. And in response to Israel’s plan to enter and control Gaza Strip, likely forcing local people to move, the group has stressed:

It’s not about hostages or security, it’s about land

It added:

Military occupation is not the solution — it’s the problem. Security can never be gained through oppression and control.

And it emphasised that this is the same tactic Israeli occupation forces have employed in Palestine “for decades“:

As former soldiers who served in the occupied territories, we’ve seen firsthand what military control over a civilian population looks like. This isn’t a new strategy — it’s the same playbook Israel has used in the West Bank for decades. We already know it’s not about security.

This is nothing to do with Hamas or 7 October 2023. It’s about giving Palestinian people a stark choice:

Occupation isn’t a tactical decision — it’s a political choice meant to violently suppress any path to Palestinian self-determination: forcing millions of Gazans to choose either permanent displacement, life under a foreign military dictatorship, or death. It’s deeply immoral.

“I realised it was an 11-year-old kid”

Nadav Weiman is currently the executive director of Breaking the Silence. And he has previously spoken about serving “between 2005 to 2008 in a special forces unit”, describing the “straw widow” strategy of “taking a private Palestinian family’s house and turning it into a military post”.

In one video discussing this tactic, he explains that he participated in a raid on a house in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank in 2006. And after ‘grabbing someone from their bed’, he realised “it was an 11-year-old kid”:

@sahatenglish“Straw Widow” — a sniper’s confession. Former Israeli sniper Nadav Weiman reveals the brutal reality behind a military tactic used to occupy Palestinian homes in the West Bank. “I dragged families from their beds, including children. I stormed hundreds of homes… and told myself this was for security.” Weiman reveals how Israeli soldiers routinely seize Palestinian homes, turning them into sniper bases — terrorizing families under the pretext of ‘security’.♬ original sound – Sahat English

From these experiences that he had, he realised:

The occupation is not for security. It’s for control, right? We want to control Palestinians because we want to build settlements, because we want to take their land.

He told Democracy Now! about the warped logic he had while he was in the occupation army:

And I told myself, “Ah, yeah, they hate me because I’m Jewish,” right? And then, when I finished my army service and started thinking as a civilian, I understand that they hated me because I was an occupying soldier.

Weiman is not a radical. He simply sees that there can be no peace for people in Palestine or Israel as long as this continues. As he asserted:

I believe that pro-Palestine or pro-Israel is the same thing, because, for me, pro-Israel is anti-occupation and pro-peace.

Featured image via screengrab