The Israel Defense Forces continues using the Ruger 10/22 rifle to disperse protests even though it has been prohibited by the military advocate general, a hearing at a military court revealed last week. A brigade’s former operations officer told the court he wasn’t even aware of the prohibition.
Last Wednesday, the Judea Military Court convened for the sentencing hearing of protest organizer Abdullah Abu-Rahma from Bil’in, convicted last month of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations. The state submitted an expert opinion by Maj. Igor Moiseev, who served as the Binyamin Brigade’s operations officer for two years.
The opinion details the cost of ammunition fired in Bil’in and Nial’in from August 2008 to December 2009; it notes that the army used Ruger bullets that cost a total of NIS 1.3 million. Moiseev described the Ruger as a nonlethal weapon.
When Abu-Rahma’s attorney Gabi Laski inquired if Moiseev knew that the military advocate general had ruled that Ruger rifles are not to be used to disperse protests because they are potentially lethal, Moiseev said he was not aware of such an instruction. The state objected to the question.
In 2001, the military advocate general at the time, Maj. Gen. (res. ) Menachem Finkelstein, prohibited the use of Ruger bullets as nonlethal ammunition.
Nevertheless, the IDF reverted to using the Ruger against protesters in 2009, killing a teenager in Hebron in February and a protester in Nial’in in June. Human rights group B’Tselem asked the military advocate general to make clear that the weapon was not meant for crowd control.
In July, Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit wrote that “the Ruger is not defined by the IDF as a means for riot control. The rules for using these means in Judea and Samaria are strict and parallel to the rules of engagement for live fire. If the media or organizations were told anything else regarding the definition, this was an error or misunderstanding.”
He wrote that “recently, the rules were stressed once again to the relevant operations officers in Central Command. The command in fact expects to hold a review headed by a senior commander, examining the lessons drawn from using such means in recent months.”
The IDF Spokesman’s Office said in a statement yesterday that rules for firing 0.22 ammunition are part of the general rules of engagement, “and as such are classified and naturally cannot be elaborated on. In general, it can be noted that the rules applying to 0.22 ammunition are strict and are parallel, in general, to rules applying to ordinary live ammunition.
“The operations officer’s testimony was given at a sentencing hearing of someone convicted of incitement and organizing and participating in violent riots in the village of Bil’in. The quote used is partial and does not reflect all comments by the officer on the means used by the IDF to disperse such riots. The IDF takes care to act in accordance with the rules of engagement.”
New report concludes no IDF soldier has been indicted for such deaths over the last four years
[The full report can be accessed here – file opens as pdf]
A new report by the human rights group B’tselem concludes that during the past four years not a single IDF soldier was indicted for killing Palestinian civilians in the territories.
The report claims that between 2006 and2009, 617 Palestinian civilians not involved in combat operations were killed in the territories – a count that does not include those killed during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.
The rights group filed complaints with the IDF in half of the cases, but only 23 cases were deemed justified for investigation by the Military Police. In 42 other cases the Military Advocate General decided not to indict, and in the rest of the cases are still formally under investigation. In none of the cases were charges brought against the soldiers involved.
Prior to the start of the second intifada, the Military Police would investigate every incident in which an innocent Palestinian civilian was killed. However, in 2001 a decision was made to define violent incidents in the territory as “armed conflict,” and subsequently the IDF made do with an operational investigation of the unite involved and did not take the matter further.
B’tselem petitioned the High Court of Justice recently to alter the definition of violent incidents in the territories and set rules that would force the army to investigate cases in which civilians were killed.
The IDF spokesman said in response that “most of the issues and claims raised by the report are pending the petition to the High Court which was filed by the group. The state responded to the petition in detail and it would be appropriate to await the court’s decision.”
A leading civil-rights group has accused Israeli police of systematic discrimination against the Arab residents of East Jerusalem as growing numbers of hardline religious Jews take up residence in Palestinian areas.
A report from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (Acri) found that violent confrontations between Jewish residents and their Palestinian neighbours had risen rapidly, but that Israeli police have largely ignored Palestinian complaints.
Israeli authorities “practise selective law enforcement and fail to provide even the most minimal protection to Palestinian locals,” Acri claimed. “Law-enforcement authorities have become complicit in violating Palestinian rights; in many cases, they do not enforce the law or do so only in a discriminatory manner.” Palestinians claim that they are often arrested as suspects when they make complaints against Israelis, that their children are arrested in circumstances that flout Israeli law on the treatment of minors, and that widespread surveillance cameras violate their privacy.
The Israeli police rejected the allegations. A spokesman claimed that many of the incidents contained in the report were blown “out of proportion.” Most disturbances, he said, are initiated by Palestinians throwing stones at Jewish residents.
Large numbers of religious Jews, ideologically committed to an undivided Jerusalem, have moved into Arab-dominated East Jerusalem in recent months, provoking clashes with local residents. Palestinians fear that Israel is seeking to prevent East Jerusalem – illegally annexed by Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967 – from becoming the capital of a future Palestinian state. Stoking the tensions, according to Acri, are the armed private security contractors employed to protect the Jewish residents in East Jerusalem.
Even Palestinian chilldren attacked by settlers are often arrested as supects
Ahmad Qarae’en, a Palestinian resident of Silwan, described how he was shot in the thigh during an argument with an off duty soldier visiting Jewish settlers. Mr Qarae’en was questioned as a suspect and the man who shot him was released after 24 hours without charge.
In a second case, Jamalat Mughrabi, who was evicted from her home by Jewish settlers, claims she was punched repeatedly by a Jewish man. When she arrived at the police station, she found that she was the suspect, and was taken into custody. At a hearing the following day, investigators allegedly refused to show video footage proving her innocence, and she was charged and fined.
Ronit Sela, a spokesman for Acri, said it had yet to receive an official police response. She said: “We’re just calling on the police to do their job.” Meanwhile, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday a new and creative approach was required to reach a peace deal.
“We will have to learn the lessons of 17 years of experience from negotiations and to think creatively,” he said Mr Netanyahu. “We’ll have to think of new solutions to old problems.”
When I was a boy I was still allowed to travel in Israel. I went to the beach and swam in the sea, something that most Palestinian children living in the West Bank today can only dream of. Israel has been restricting movement more and more over the years. We Palestinians were banned from traveling to Israel, the land where many of our parents were born. And now I find I cannot leave the West Bank. I was stopped from leaving the country on 4 August when I tried to cross the Allenby Bridge and reach Jordan in order to fly to Europe.
Abdallah Abu Rahmah being arrested by Israeli soldiers at demonstration in Bilin in 2005. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
And just as Israel has gradually increased restrictions of where we can go, the boundaries of what is permissible to do as a Palestinian have narrowed markedly. We have reached a point where peaceful protest is unacceptable to the Israeli state and military legislation has been constructed to criminalize and throw in jail anyone who dares to publicly voice dissent.
Abdallah Abu Rahmah, coordinator of the Bilin Popular Committee and my best friend, is one such man. He made the international news after the EU’s foreign policy chief issued a statement condemning his conviction in an Israeli military court on 24 August. He was convicted of “incitement” — an intentionally vague charge that criminalizes freedom of speech — and of organizing “illegal” demonstrations. Direct negotiation between Israel and Palestinians may be restarting, but on the ground, Israel’s military occupation continues: oppression as usual.
Abdallah, a school teacher and father of three, has been imprisoned at the Ofer military prison since 10 December 2009 — International Human Rights Day, no less. Israeli soldiers raided his occupied West Bank home in the middle of the night, and dragged him from his bed in front of his wife, Majida, and their three children, Luma (7), Lian (5) and eight-month-old baby Laith.
The protests that Abdallah was convicted of organizing began on 16 December 2004, the day Israeli military bulldozers first came to uproot olive trees on our village’s lands and plant a wall in their stead. Since that day we have held hundreds of demonstrations in which Israelis and internationals joined Palestinians to say no to Israeli apartheid and yes to partnership and peace based on justice. In Bilin we believe that creativity and hope are our most effective tools to break the shackles of occupation and realize our rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and guaranteed to us by international law.
In July 2004, months before the construction of Israel’s barrier on Bilin’s lands began, the International Court of Justice in the Hague ruled that the wall Israel is constructing in the occupied Palestinian territory is illegal and must be dismantled. The ruling also reiterated that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are also illegal under international law.
Israel however continued constructing the wall and the settlements unabated. The impunity Israel enjoys regarding these violations erodes our people’s faith that international law and human rights are relevant to our lives. Many of us feel that human rights are something the West enjoys speaking of, but are reserved for others. We believe that for things to change there must be a price for Israel’s flouting of international law and that this price can best be drawn through nonviolent means.
Every day, more and more Palestinians choose to oppose injustice and occupation with grassroots unarmed resistance, challenging Israeli hegemony. Threatened by our movement’s growth, Israel has launched a campaign of repression, targeting activists and members of popular committees — the bodies mobilizing protesters — across the West Bank with arrests and violence.
Last March, in another draconian attack on free speech, the lands of Bilin and the neighboring village of Nilin, where regular weekly protests against the theft of their land are also held, were declared a permanent closed military zones for a period of six months.
Between February 2004 and June 2009, twenty unarmed demonstrators have been killed, hundreds imprisoned and thousands injured. The soldiers and settlers who regularly violate international law do so with almost complete impunity. Meanwhile, Palestinian civilians who organize protest are charged with incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations.
In fact, it is only by coincidence that I myself am not imprisoned in Ofer prison together with Abdallah. Like Abdallah, I have been arrested by soldiers who broke into my home at the middle of the night. I too was charged with incitement and organizing demonstrations. Like they did with Abdallah, the military also claimed that I had been throwing stones.
Their mistake was, that unlike in Abdallah’s case, they tried to use not only unlawfully extracted testimonies of minors, but they also provided a falsified picture of me with a stone in my hand. But I was lucky. I was abroad on the date that the picture was taken and could prove that I was not the man in the picture. When the fraud became evident, the judge had no choice but to order my release. Otherwise, like Abdallah and many other Palestinian organizers and activists, I would have been considered dangerous and held at least until the end of my trial, which is still ongoing.
If what Abdallah has done is illegal, then we are all proud offenders. Israel better round us up and throw us to its jails and prisons by the hundreds, as the perverse reality Israel has created on the ground means that we must defy Israeli military law in order to uphold international law and achieve our human rights.
The EU’s statement denouncing Abdallah’s conviction is an important first step. But it must be followed by serious action to ensure that Israel does not use the resumption of negotiations as a smokescreen to hide behind while entrenching the occupation. Until such steps are taken, no one who dares to protest and challenge Israel’s occupation is safe.
Mohammed Khatib is the secretary of the Bilin village council and the coordinator of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee.
More than 150 Israeli academics say they will no longer lecture or work in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
In a letter, they said they supported the recent decision by a group of actors and others not to take part in cultural activity there.
The academics said that acceptance of the settlements caused “critical” damage to Israel’s chances of achieving peace with the Palestinians.
The actors were criticised for refusing to perform at a new cultural centre.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the last thing Israel needed as it resumed direct peace talks was a boycott from within.
In a letter published on Sunday, the academics said they would no longer take part in any kind of cultural activity, or lecture in any kind of academic setting, in settlements built on land occupied following the Middle East war – demarcated by what is commonly known as the “Green Line”.
They explained that they wanted to show support and solidarity for the 53 actors, writers and directors who last week said they would not take part in performances at the new cultural centre built in Ariel.
“We’d like to remind the Israeli public that, like all settlements, Ariel is also in occupied territory,” the academics said.
“If a future peace agreement with the Palestinian authorities puts Ariel within Israel’s borders, then it will be treated like any other Israeli town.”
“Legitimatisation and acceptance of the settler enterprise cause critical damage to Israel’s chances of achieving a peace accord with its Palestinian neighbours.”
Close to 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
A separate letter, signed by a number of well-known Israeli authors and artists, is expected to be published in the coming days.
Yigal Cohen-Orgad, the chancellor of the Ariel University Centre, told Haaretz newspaper on Tuesday that “stupid behaviour seems to attract academic stupidity”.
Several right-wing politicians have criticised the actors, saying they are subsidised by the Israeli state and should have their funds withdrawn if they refuse to work in any settlements.
11 September 2010 | 
