KK-Forum,
og en fra Ha'aretz søndag
http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?mador=4&datee=1/14/01&id=1
06663
Knut Rognes
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Sunday, January 14, 2001
The soldier was 'tired'
By Gideon Levy
Take note what is happening in the Israel Defense Forces: While the Chief
of Staff is incredibly busy with heaping criticism on Clinton's proposals,
with warning against leaving the Jordan Valley and with verbally attacking
the Palestinian Authority and its leader - his attention to what is
happening to his own soldiers is continually slipping. You won't hear a
word about this from Mofaz himself, nor from his generals.The message
conveyed by the IDF's top brass to the ranks is sometimes even more drastic
than it was during the previous Intifada: The policy is to ease the
instructions on opening fire, together with a wink of understanding and
silence, and above all, the number of investigations and courts martial is
disgracefully tiny. If we are to judge according to the number of recent
investigations and the IDF's response to them, it can be said that in fact
soldiers are allowed to shoot in the territories at anything that moves, so
long as the moving target is a Palestinian. (Only preferably not at a
journalist: on one occasion, the Chief of Staff ordered that an officer and
soldier be court martialed - after a photographer from AP was shot and
wounded.)
At least, in the previous Intifada, the IDF's declared policy was that
every case of a Palestinian being killed was to be investigated by the
Military Police. This policy no longer exists. Despite the fact the some
300 Palestinians have been killed, 81 of them minors, and two women and a
child just at the end of last week - according to the military spokesman,
the Military Police has only opened five investigations on soldiers'
illegal use of firearms. The significance of this is that soldiers can now
shoot at innocent Palestinians and there will be no investigation, let
alone a trial.
The conclusions drawn by the soldiers are clear and the results are seen in
the field. They are bad for the IDF and, of course, bad for the
Palestinians and bad for Israel.
Last Sunday I was in a Palestinian car traveling in the fields between Beit
Furik and Beit Dajan, near Nablus. I witnessed the fear of the Palestinian
passengers, whom the army blockades in their villages by means of concrete
blocks and mounds of earth, so that their sick, their workers and their
school pupils are forced to be ferried out on dirt roads and through the
mud. I couldn't understand why those in the car were so frightened. After
all, they were traveling home. Fifteen minutes after I passed along these
roads - that made me think of the "Burma Road" that broke a way through to
besieged Jerusalem during the War of Independence - Fatma Abu Jish was shot
to death at the same spot. She was 42-years-old and had just come off her
shift as a clerk in the Nablus hospital. She was with her sister and
brother-in-law in their old Fiat car, on the way home to Beit Dajan.
Abu Jish was the sole support for her large family and she was traveling on
a dirt road. How else could she get home? The soldier shot her from a
distance, and the bullet penetrated her heart. He said he was aiming at the
wheels. But why on earth did he open fire at the car anyway? Because he
knew it is allowed. Because he knew that no unpleasant punishment was in
store for him. Because he knew that Palestinian lives have no value.
Whoever has allowed shooting day after day at the tires of Palestinian
cars, whose wretched drivers have to traverse dirt roads, or has ignored
the fact that this phenomenon exists, should not be amazed that a soldier
at the Beit Dajan roadblock should shoot with such unbearable lightness at
Fatma Abu Jish.
Evidence is being kept in the office of the B'Tselem human rights
organization from a soldier in the reserves who describes the phenomenon of
shooting at tires as a routine activity. This evidence only reinforces the
testimonies of many Palestinians that the tires of their cars were
punctured ("including the spare tire," they emphasized beside the besieged
village of Beit Furik).
Other evidence by this reserve soldier, about soldiers of the Orchid
Company of the Military Police shooting at the head of a Palestinian man
riding his donkey near to the settlement of Beit Hagai, makes one shudder.
"I'm positive that this shooting was intended to injure," the soldier
testified (the B'Tselem office has his name). As far as is known, the IDF
has not investigated the incident.
The woman passenger in the car and the man riding the donkey have not been
the only needless victims of soldiers. In Hebron, Jedalla al-Jabari, 50,
was shot in the legs and left bleeding for a long time on the road, until
pictures of the atrocity were published worldwide; Mohammed Ata, 19, was
shot at the Halhul roadblock when his wrists were already handcuffed; Arig
al-Jabari, 20, was shot to death on the roof of her home in Hebron; Abed
al-Azia, 58, was killed inside his home in the Abu Snina neighborhood of
the same city; the child Omar Faroun Khaled, 10, was shot last week at the
Ayosh Junction. All these, and others, were victims of soldiers for whom
shooting is all too easy and of commanders for whom court martialing the
soldiers is too difficult.
In the IDF they usually find excuses for the light trigger finger, citing
reasons such as the soldiers' "burn-out" and "tiredness." What's the
connection? Why should a soldier's tiredness find expression in easy
shooting? Israel cannot make an outcry all over the globe about the terror
harming its citizens, while its soldiers are killing innocent Palestinians
and do not have to justify their actions. Until every single soldier hears
from his commanders that the life of a Palestinian is just as precious as
his own, and until the IDF does not court martial those who shoot
needlessly - this ghastly phenomenon will continue.
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