Multiplying Care: Israeli Rules of Engagement and the Embodiment of Jewish Sovereignty

By Revital Madar

Introduction

It was almost midnight when Lea Schiff heard noises outside the caravan where she was spending the night with her husband, Arie. Already asleep, she woke him up. He grabbed the gun he kept under his pillow and went outside. CCTV footage shows him leaving the caravan and walking toward his car, which was parked just in front of the caravan. Another car, with one door open, was parked nearby. Arie then stands next to his car, pointing the gun towards the passenger window. When the vehicle starts moving, he fires. As it continues to drive away, he fires again from behind, killing Mohammed al-Atrash, who was sitting in the driver’s seat.

Police officers who arrived at the scene following a call from Schiff, informing them he had killed a person attempting to steal his car, arrested and began investigating him for murder. It did not take long for a public outcry to erupt over the decision to arrest and investigate Schiff for murder and finally charge him with reckless homicide. Rage was expressed by Israeli politicians and citizens who considered his decision to shoot al-Atrash justified ‒ whether because al-Atrash was allegedly trying to steal his car or because Schiff had to defend his home and consequently enjoyed a self-defence protection. A crowdfunding campaign entitled “We are all Arie Schiff” raised 1 million NIS, approximately 250,000 Euros, in three months.

The media, politicians, and the public framed Schiff’s killing of al-Atrash as the outcome of the overall lawlessness in the south of Israel, or ‘lack of governmentality’, in the language of Israeli right-wing parties. This framework assumes that had there not been high crime rates in the south of Israel, Schiff would not have been so quick to use his gun and shoot a person who allegedly tried to steal his car. However, framing the shooting, the reactions to it, as well as the trial and the verdict around lack of enforcement disregards several crucial contextual factors. First, it does not consider how the identities of Arie Schiff, an Israeli-Jewish citizen, and Mohammed al-Atrash, a Bedouin citizen of Israel, impact the events that unfolded within their wider political context. Second, it overlooks the centrality of security ‒ as one of sovereignty’s key features toward discerning the right to employ violence. Lastly, it selectively invokes the logic of Israeli Rules of Engagement (ROE) to justify the political framing of the events and the roles of those involved.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, ROE became a prime tool in controlling the volume of force employed by armies (Hosang 2020). As such, they represent, amongst others, a state technology used to limit the sovereign’s right to kill, as well as an expression of care for citizen rights. An examination of the case at hand demonstrates how too much care is afforded to Jewish citizens, while no care is afforded to Palestinian lives, through the selective interpretation of ROE and the horizontal and vertical expansion of Jewish sovereignty.

I argue that Schiff’s killing of al-Atrash is one in a chain of events that demonstrate how the right to use force has been extended to all Israeli-Jews over time ‒ whether they were security agents or not; and whether or not they were involved in a state security event. As I will show, the extension of the right to use force to all Israeli-Jews occurred both vertically, through the trickling down of military and security norms to the civil sphere, and horizontally, with attempts to expand the Israeli version of the “castle defence”, known as the “Dromi Law” to vehicles. In the following sections, I discuss the contexts missing from existing discourse and how the protections offered by Israeli-Jewish sovereignty regarding the use of force towards Palestinians are de facto extended to all Israeli-Jews in territories under Israeli control. This dual movement aligns with Weitzman’s (2007) findings that Israel’s assertion of control over the lives of Palestinians is both vertical and horizontal. Yet, what is added here is the elucidation of how Israel’s assertion of control translates into a mechanism of too much care for Israeli-Jews through the embodiment of sovereignty in Israeli-Jews.

Contextual Amnesia

Arie Schiff shot Mohammed al-Atrash on November 28, 2020. This event did not occur in a vacuum and must be contextualized within wider socio-political events. Approximately five years earlier, in October 2015, there was a sharp increase in violent events between Palestinians and Jews in Israel that was called “the individuals intifada” or “the knives intifada.” From an Israeli-Jewish perspective this escalation was marked by dozens of assaults against Israeli citizens and security forces. Most events included stabbing, with either knives or other objects, or vehicular assaults. Two months into this escalation of violence, 71 of the Palestinians allegedly attempting to stab or run over Israeli citizens and security forces were shot to death by either Israeli state security agents or civilians (B’Tselem 2015a). The arms taken by those Palestinians were often simple kitchen knives, and in one case a pair of scissors. These were nonetheless met with severe and often fatal responses. Time and again these attacks ended with the killing of the Palestinian, by either security forces or Israeli-Jewish civilians.

Israeli politicians endorsed and supported this over-killing and daily extra-judicial killing. Violence was often caught on camera after the act, with photos of Palestinians lying wounded or dead on the ground spreading through Israeli media channels (Gisha 2015). In an interview on October 11, 2015, then Member of the Knesset, Yair Lapid, stated that “[a]nyone who pulls out a knife, screwdriver, or whatever it may be, the instruction should be to shoot to kill. Not to hesitate. The state provides full legal backing. Even at the start of an attack – shooting to kill is correct” (Haaretz 2015). Minister of Strategic Affairs and of Internal Security at the time, Gilad Arden, declared that “every terrorist should know that he will not survive the attack he is about to commit” (quoted in Or Ner 2016). It was also Arden that decided to lift the restrictions on carrying weapons for security guards, allowing them to take the firearms home. According to him, “Skilled security personnel carrying weapons when leaving their workplace serve as a force multiplier and assist security forces in protecting the public” (Cohen 2015).

Similar sentiments were expressed following Schiff’s arrest by the Jewish-Israeli public, and by Israeli-Jewish politicians. Four days after Schiff killed al-Atrash, Amir Ohana, Israel’s Public Security Minister at the time, expressed his support of Schiff, claiming he was a model citizen, and telling him “The indictment against you should never have been filed, and since it was filed – it should be dismissed” (Curiel 2021). In an interview he gave, Ohana argued that “if Arie Schiff had confronted them (the thieves) without a weapon, he would not be alive today, and there have been such cases in the past. He could have chosen not to confront them, but that wouldn’t have been the right way. Thieves need to be deterred, and citizens should be able to act in their own defence” (Now 14 News 2021). Ohana was not the only politician who expressed support of Schiff. So did, among others, Ayelet Shaked, a member of Israeli Knesset (Shaked 2021), and Naftali Bennet, Israel’s prime minister at the time. In a Facebook post he noted his sense of relief by the light sentence Schiff received (N12 2021).

Similarities between the reactions to the 2015–2016 escalation of violence and to Schiff’s killing of Al-Atrash are staggering. Parallels suggest that these expressions of ‘state care’, in the form of support and legal backing, for both security forces and civilians whose confrontation with a Palestinian resulted in the killing of the latter, both include the same approval to use force.

The Embodied and Spatial extension of Jewish Sovereignty

As noted in the introduction, two events crucial to contextualizing Schiff’s killing of al-Atrash and his light sentence are the 2015–2016 daily extrajudicial killings of Palestinians by Israeli security forces and civilians, and the 2008 “Dromi law.” Schiff’s light sentence was justified, among other arguments, because he acted in proximity to amendment 98 of the Israeli penal code, the “castle defence.”

The castle defence amendment grants broad protection from criminal liability to a person defending their home and property from burglary. The amendment was introduced in 2008 following the arrest of Shai Dromi, an Israeli-Jewish farmer, who killed Khaled al-Atrash and injured Ayoub al-Hawashleh, two Bedouin Israeli citizens who broke into his property. Dromi was acquitted of the charges of manslaughter and aggravated intentional sabotage and was accused of illegal carrying of a weapon. He was sentenced to five months of community service in a plea deal.

Schiff was not at home. He was sleeping in a caravan. However, the court recognised the caravan as Schiff’s dwelling place. Whether or not a caravan can be deemed a dwelling place, the closed-circuit television videos show that al-Atrash and the other men did not attempt to break into the caravan, which is the basic condition required to apply “castle defence” protection. However, the court considered that Schiff’s assumption they might break in sufficed to position his killing of al-Atrash in proximity to the “castle defence” protection.

The spatial implication of the court’s decision means that after the “Dromi Law” delegated the sovereign right to kill to every person whose house or property was burglarised, this protection was further expanded to include even temporary dwelling spaces. In connection with the statements of politicians in 2015–2016 – that expanded the sovereign right to kill to every Jewish body – the court’s decision supplied an additional spatial extension of Israeli sovereignty. This sovereignty, now instilled in Israeli-Jews, follows their bodies and movement in territories under Israeli control as they now, literally, embody Israeli sovereign power.

Traveling Rules of Engagement and the identities of those engaged

Israeli Rules of Engagement (ROE) were very much present in the court’s ruling at Schiff’s criminal trial, even if they were not explicit. Rather than referring to them directly, their logic was echoed in the court’s decision. As I showed elsewhere (Madar 2024), this logic includes the presentation of the victim as a threat and that of the defendant as a victim. It also entails chopping up the event into micro-sequences and, consequently, compartmentalising the victim’s death. It allows the event to be experienced only from the perpetrator’s perspective, whose positive character is emphasised by the court to justify the light charge and consequent sentence. Lastly, by addressing the victim by reiterating a negative term like a burglar in this case, and a terrorist in other cases, the court enhances the perception of the victim as the perpetrator.

The de-victimization of al-Atrash occurs in the opening sentence of the court ruling when the court writes that “it sentenced the defendant, charged with reckless manslaughter after he admitted shooting to death a person who tried to steal his car…” (The State of Israel v. Arie H. Schiff, 2021, 1). It is only on page three that the court mentions the victim’s name, referred to as the deceased from that moment on. The court’s decision to name al-Atrash as the deceased clarifies that this case is not discussed within the realm of state security, rather a criminal one. In trials of soldiers accused of manslaughter and murder of Palestinians, the victims are addressed as terrorists. During the trial of Elor Azaria, the prosecution was criticised when addressing the victim as the deceased, and it refrained from doing so afterwards (Ben-Naftali 2018; Madar 2024).

Even though al-Atrash’s actions were not political and, in that sense, are not within the realm of state security, the court explains the defendant’s decision to act as he did as originating in previous, similar, security-related cases in the South of Israel. The decision to situate Schiff’s killing within a broader context, considered an infringement of people’s sense of security, is taken from the realm of trials dealing with security issues.

A third component of the logic of ROE the court employed was praising Schiff’s character on the one hand and presenting al-Atrash as a dangerous criminal. The court dedicated two pages to Schiff’s character out of a 14-page-long decision. Schiff is presented and treated throughout the trial as a state security agent. Between the account of his military service and his volunteer work in the police, Schiff gains, through the court’s verdict, the status of a state security agent who abided by Israeli ROE because he shouted “stop” before shooting. Al-Atrash is thus accused of not obeying Schiff’s calls as if Schiff had authority over him. Another way the court’s decision contributes to the presentation of Schiff as a state security agent is the comparison between Schiff’s and the police officer’s fear of al-Atrash. Here, Schiff’s acclaimed sense of threat is approved as objective and accurate based on the decision to delay the medical treatment of al-Atrash for long minutes, out of fear that he was armed.

Discussion and Conclusion

In recent years, Israeli High Court of Justice hearings on security issues are often opened with a review of relevant historical context. The purpose of such introduction and positioning of the matter in a broader context serves two objectives: (1) enhancing the court’s public legitimacy in decisions that restrain state security agents’ use of force; and (2) justifying the court’s decision to allow specific security measures that the court approved in front of the international community (Lieblich, 2020). In the case of Schiff, the lower court acknowledges the risks faced by Jewish residents of Southern Israel. This context is presented as a collective trauma that can explain Schiff’s decision to shoot al-Atrash. It did not acknowledge the context of the 2015 violence between Jews and Palestinians and increased civilian use of force with impunity. Schiff’s service in the IDF and volunteer work in the police are praised. His decision to shoot al-Atrash is analysed similarly to how military and civil courts treat state security agents, police or soldiers, who are tried for excessive use of force and claim they did not violate Israeli ROE.

Beyond questioning whether ROE live up to their promise or not, and beyond the question of the legality of Israel’s ROE, I argue in this text that their impact transgresses the limits of the military and the legal. Alongside this new approach to the study of ROE, by examining the discourse on the killing of al-Atrash by Schiff, I have shown how this mechanism that originates from the attempt to render wars less harmful, can expand the right to harm. In the Israeli case, expansion of care for Israeli-Jews happens at the expense of Palestinians in particular and non-Jews in general.

This line of analysis is not only another warning or critique of the limits and inherent problems of international humanitarian law. It is a reminder of the Gordian knot of ROE and the fundamental sovereign right to kill, capturing how the logic of ROE can both trickle down from the military sphere to the civil one and be embodied in “model citizens”, thus enabling evermore civilians to enjoy the sovereign’s right to kill.

Five months after the killing of Al-Atrash, violent events unfolded again in May 2021 that came to be known as well as the “Unification Intifada.” During this cycle of escalation between Israel and Hamas, the violence extended beyond Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, or Hamas rockets aimed at Israel. Inside Israel, clashes increased between Palestinians and Jews. Whereas Jews enjoyed the protection of the police and the right to carry arms, Palestinians were left to fend for themselves and requested to shelter in their homes to avoid being attacked by mobs of settlers and right-wing Israeli-Jews (Ziv 2021a). Testimonies of Palestinians and video footage show how, in several cases, Israeli police were either standing by while Palestinians were attacked or assisting the attackers (Ziv 2021b).

On May 13, 2021, a day after Said Moussa, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, was lynched in Bat-Yam, a suburb of Tel Aviv that borders Jaffa, Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israeli prime minister, declared in a press conference that the Israeli Border Police could be reassured that it had the full support of the state; officers should not hesitate to act out of fear of investigative committees (Kan News, 2021). Following the arrest of a Jewish-Israeli man for the murder of 32-year-old Mussa Hassuna, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, Israel’s Public Security Minister at the time, Amir Ohana, conveyed a familiar message of support to all Jewish-Israelis. He claimed that the arrest of the shooter and three of his friends was “a grave mistake and a terrible injustice […]. Law-abiding citizens carrying arms are a multiplying power in the hands of the authorities” (Breiner, 2021). He advised the police, the prosecution, and the court to release them.

The similarity of the reactions is staggering, highlighting the killing of Mohammed al-Atrash by Schiff as a significant event, in a longer chain of violent events. This pattern illustrates how Israeli sovereignty ‒ as the right to kill (Palestinians) ‒ is extended to Jewish-Israeli citizens through the trickling down of military norms and the spatial expansion of ‘castle defence,’ which broadens the concept of Jewish dwelling.

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About the Author

Revital Madar is an interdisciplinary political theorist whose research examines the intersection of law, sovereignty, and violence in liberal democracies. Her work theorizes the ways in which state violence is legalized, normalized, and legitimized against the backdrop of the legal system. She is currently an FNRS research fellow at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, where she pursues a project on Israeli rules of engagement, and is completing her first book, Soldiers on Trial: Palestinian Bodies and Israeli Sovereignty. She has published on topics such as the regulation of bodies, southern criminology, and conflict-related sexual violence, with work appearing in journals including Identities and Conflict and Society.

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Citation: Revital Madar, Multiplying Care: Israeli Rules of Engagement and the Embodiment of Jewish Sovereignty, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 23.06.2026, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/66136

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