Hannibal Directive

IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz in a training exercise where the forces practiced a soldier abduction scenario. Addressing the IDF's operations forum, Ganz stated that the directive does not allow for a soldier to be killed in order to prevent his abduction.

The Hannibal Directive (Hebrew: נוהל חניבעל) or “Hannibal Procedure” is a secret directive of the Israel Defense Forces with the purpose of preventing Israeli soldiers being captured by enemy forces in the course of combat. Israel has with few exceptions adhered to the principle of not negotiating with what it considers terrorists and this especially in hostage situations. This policy led to some notable successes, such as Operation Entebbe but also to painful loss of human life, as in the Maalot Massacre. In cases where Israeli soldiers were captured and no military solution was found, Israel was forced to negotiate with terrorists about an exchange of prisoners. On several occasions this led to a highly controversial release of hundreds or even thousands of sentenced or suspected terrorists in Israeli captivity.

The order, drawn up in 1986 by a group of top Israeli officers, states that at the time of a kidnapping the main mission becomes forcing the release of the abducted soldiers from their kidnappers, even if that means injury to Israeli soldiers.

The order allows commanders to take whatever action is necessary, including endangering the life of an abducted soldier, to foil the abduction, however it does not allow for a soldier to be killed in order to prevent his abduction, according to the IDF chief of staff, Benny Gantz.

The directive

The background to the formulation of the directive was the capture of two Israeli soldiers during a Hezbollah ambush in Israel in June 1986. Both soldiers presumably died during the attack and their bodies were returned to Israel in an exchange with Hezbollah in 1996. The authors of the order were the three top officers of the IDF Northern Command, Major General Yossi Peled, the command's operations officer, Colonel Gabi Ashkenazi, and it's intelligence officer, Colonel Yaakov Amidror.

In a rare interview by one of the authors of the directive, Yossi Peled (later a cabinet minister) denied that it implied a blanket order to kill Israeli soldiers rather than let them be captured by enemy forces. The order only allowed the army to risk the life of a captured soldier, not to take it. "I wouldn't drop a one-ton bomb on the vehicle, but I would hit it with a tank shell”, Peled was quoted saying. He added that he personally "would rather be shot than fall into Hezbollah captivity."

The purpose of the Hannibal directive is to prevent the abduction of Israeli soldiers by enemy forces even if thereby risking their life. Israeli soldiers are ordered to stop an abduction by force and to use any means available to this end. The controversial logic behind the order seems to be that a dead soldier is preferable to a captive. The Israeli daily Haaretz published the following formulation in 2003:

"During an abduction, the major mission is to rescue our soldiers from the abductors even at the price of harming or wounding our soldiers. Light-arms fire is to be used in order to bring the abductors to the ground or to stop them. If the vehicle or the abductors do not stop, single-shot (sniper) fire should be aimed at them, deliberately, in order to hit the abductors, even if this means hitting our soldiers. In any event, everything will be done to stop the vehicle and not allow it to escape."

The order is considered top secret and its existence has often been denied by Israeli military authorities. The exact wording of the directive is not known and it has apparently been updated several times over the years.

For years the directive’s existence has seldom been mentioned in Israeli media and military censors generally did not allow it becoming public knowledge. Sometimes the directive has been referred to in passing or described in purely general terms. Journalist Anshel Pfeffer, for example, described the order in The Jerusalem Post in 2006 as the “rumored standard procedure” in the eventuality of a kidnap attempt, where “soldiers are told, though never officially” the content of this order.

The Hannibal directive was described in some detail in an article published in 2003 by Haaretz journalist Sara Leibovich-Dar, where she interviewed several high-ranking officers including the authors of the order.

Amos Harel of Haaretz wrote in November 2011 that the Hannibal directive was suspended for a time “due to opposition from the public and reservist soldiers” and only revised and reinstated after the abduction of Gilad Shalit in June 2006. The order now states that IDF commanders may take whatever action is necessary, even at the risk of endangering the life of an abducted soldier, to foil the abduction, but it does not allow them to kill an abducted Israeli soldier. Harel writes however that a kind of "Oral Law" has developed inside IDF which is supported by many commanders, even at brigade and division level, that goes further than the official order, including the use of tank shells or air strikes. "A dangerous, unofficial interpretation of the protocol has been created," a senior officer told Haaretz. "Intentionally targeting a vehicle in order to kill the abductee is a completely illegal command. The army's senior command must make this clear to officers."

Before the Gaza War in 2009, Lt. Col. Shuki Ribak, the commander of the Golani Brigade's 51st battalion instructed his soldiers to avoid kidnapping at any cost and even made clear that he expected his soldiers to commit suicide rather than being abducted. "[A] soldier should detonate his hand grenade and blow himself up [together] with the person trying to abduct him."

Controversy within the army

The order has been highly controversial inside IDF. The Haaretz article mentions several instances where IDF soldiers or officers have refused or told to refuse to comply with the directive on legal or moral grounds.

Dr. Avner Shiftan, an army physician with the rank of major, came across the Hannibal directive while on reserve duty in South Lebanon in 1999. In army briefings he “became aware of a procedure ordering soldiers to kill any IDF soldier if he should be taken captive by Hezbollah. This procedure struck me as being illegal and not consistent with the moral code of the IDF. I understood that it was not a local procedure but originated in the General Staff, and had the feeling that a direct approach to the army authorities would be of no avail, but would end in a cover-up." He contacted Asa Kasher, the Israeli philosopher noted for his authorship of Israel Defense Forces' Code of Conduct, who "found it difficult to believe that such an order exists," since this "is wrong ethically, legally and morally". He doubted that "there is anyone in the army" believing that `better a dead soldier than an abducted soldier'.

On this point however Asa Kasher was apparently wrong. In 1999 the IDF Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz said in an interview with Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth: "In certain senses, with all the pain that saying this entails, an abducted soldier, in contrast to a soldier who has been killed, is a national problem." Asked whether he was referring to cases like Ron Arad (an Air Force navigator captured in 1986) and Nachshon Wachsman (an abducted soldier killed in 1994 in a failed rescue attempt), he replied "definitely, and not only."

The legality of the order has never formally been examined by the IDF's legal department. According to Prof. Emanuel Gross, from the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa, the legal experts should have been involved. "Orders like that have to go through the filter of the Military Advocate General's Office, and if they were not involved that is very grave," he says. "The reason is that an order that knowingly permits the death of soldiers to be brought about, even if the intentions were different, carries a black flag and is a flagrantly illegal order that undermines the most central values of our social norms.

Incidents where the directive was invoked

The Hannibal Directive was invoked in October 2000 after the Hezbollah capture of three Israeli soldiers in the Israel-occupied Shebaa Farms area. An Israeli border patrol was attacked by a Hezbollah squad with rockets and automatic fire. Three captive Israeli soldiers were brought over the cease-fire line into Lebanon by their captors. When the abduction was discovered the Northern Command ordered a "Hannibal situation". Israeli attack helicopters fired at 26 different suspicious vehicles moving in the area. The number of casualties from these attacks, civilian or Hezbollah, is not known. Neither is it known whether the captives were actually inside any of these vehicles, as was assumed. If they were the chances are that they were killed by Israeli fire. In any case their bodies were returned in an exchange with Hizbollah in November 2003.

In July 2006 two other Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, were captured by Hezbollah in a cross border raid. The Hannibal directive was invoked and a force consisting of tanks and Armored Personnel Carriers were sent across the border to capture a Hezbollah post and block the exit routes out of the town of Ayta ash-Sha’b where the abductors where believed to have escaped to. A Merkava II heavy battle tank however ran over a powerful explosive charge and was totally destroyed, killing its four crewmen and the mission was aborted. The Hannibal directive triggered instant aerial surveillance and airstrikes inside Lebanon to limit Hezbollah's ability to move the soldiers it had seized. "If we had found them, we would have hit them, even if it meant killing the soldiers," a senior Israeli official said.

The Hannibal directive was also invoked during the abduction of Gilad Shalit. The commission of inquiry on the kidnapping headed by Giora Eiland concluded that the abduction could not be prevented because it took more than an hour from the time Shalit’s tank was hit until Hannibal directive was declared. By that time Shalit was already well inside the Gaza strip.

During the war there was a case where the Hannibal directive was invoked. An Israeli soldier was shot and injured by a Hamas fighter during a search of a house in one of the neighborhoods of Gaza. The wounded soldiers’ comrades evacuated the house due to fears that it was booby-trapped. According to testimony by soldiers who took part in the incident the house was then shelled to prevent the wounded soldier from being captured by Hamas. According to the IDF spokesman the soldier was killed by terrorist gun fire.

Reactions

No mother would want her son to be killed rather than be taken prisoner…You prefer to wait until he returns, even if it goes on for very many years.

— Pnina Feldman, mother of Zvi Feldman, missing since the battle of Sultan Yakub in Lebanon, in June 1982

The nightmare we went through for 10 years is indescribable, but despite that, I would not agree to have the buddies of an abducted soldier try to save him even at the price of killing him. As long as there is life there is hope. I am also positive that the soldiers would refuse to obey the order and would not kill an Israeli soldier. What about the effect of the order on the soldiers' morale? A soldier who is taken prisoner has to know that everything will be done to rescue him without killing him.

— Mordechai Fink, father of Yossi Fink, whose abduction in 1986 brought about the formulation of the Hannibal Directive.

See also

• Israel Defense Forces Code of Conduct