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While the tougher tactics have eased frustrations within the ranks, some officers are worried that their troops' skills and discipline are being undermined. "There is a professional problem," says Nimrod, 34, commander of a Golani battalion. "I'm not doing what I'm trained to do. I'm not training soldiers to do what we should be doing." Like his men, Nimrod feels the stress of trying to obey his superiors. "As part of an explicit policy, I explicitly order my men to beat people, to beat them hard," he says. "I accept it because if we don't beat them, we will have to shoot them. But I myself can't beat them. For the first time in my life I give an order, and then I turn my back so I won't see it done." What the army is doing in the territories, says the officer, a fighter in the unaccustomed role of occupier, "is against everything I believe in." That is a dilemma the entire nation must face.