One can only conjecture, but the room for interpretation is limited. Is Israel looking to spark a Third Intifada and shift the conversation away from John Kerry's current initiative? Always a possibility.
However, the following sentence in the Christian Science Monitor article mentioning the report merits pause and reflection:
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) criticized the report as ignoring the difficult circumstances ["operational challenges"] Israeli soldiers face as they interact with a Palestinian population angry at the occupation.
As alluded to in the Mar. 5 blog post—reversing the terms in the headlines sounding strange—the status quo assumes a kind of normality. What should evoke alarm passes as acceptable, as ordinary.
Similarly, on Mar. 10, the New York Times ran a piece entitled "Israel watches warily as Hezbollah gains battle skills in Syria." It discusses Israel's current concerns about the Lebanese guerrilla organization, which emerged in the 1980s due to Israel's operations in and occupation of South Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. Naturally, this sort of background isn't included. Accompanying the article is a photo of Israeli soldiers training in the Golan Heights, a portion of Syria Israel has occupied since 1967. Focusing exclusively on what the Israelis "have to deal with," as an Israeli military analyst phrased it in the article, excludes crucial context explaining why such factors exist in the first place.
This brings to mind another lesser-made point: that states with aggressive, militaristic foreign policies also mistreat their service personnel. Israel is a case in point. (The United States is another, and a far worse example.) In the first article above, the Monitor featured quotes by a researcher from Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organization dedicated to exposing its country's policies and the harsh realities in the occupied territories, and what their inhabitants "have to deal with." Their website is worth a visit.
