Adalah: We will Seek the Establishment of an Independent, Impartial Investigatory Committee with the Participation of International Experts in Response to AG Mazuz’s Decision to Close the October 2000 Killings Cases
None of the police officers or commanders involved in the fatal shootings of Palestinian citizens of Israel in October 2000 will face criminal indictment, the Attorney General of Israel, Menachem Mazuz, announced yesterday, Sunday, 27 January 2008. His announcement officially closes the case against police over the deaths and injuries of Palestinian Arab citizens who demonstrated in towns and villages across Israel in October 2000 against the government’s oppressive policies towards Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The police used snipers, live ammunition and rubber-coated steel bullets to disperse the unarmed demonstrators, which led to the thirteen deaths and to thousands of injuries.
Mazuz argued in his decision that there was a lack of sufficient evidence to issue criminal indictments against the police officers and commanders. He further found that the police who shot the victims faced direct threats to their lives. This situation, he claimed, necessitated the use of operational judgment and negates criminal responsibility. Thus, even if it could be proven that police officers fired the fatal bullets, it nevertheless could be argued that the shootings were justified.
Mazuz’s perception, as revealed in his decision, is that Arab citizens of Israel are enemies of the state, and as a result the police possess wide discretion to open fire on them. Further, according to the Mazuz, the police officers were facing a real and immediate threat to their lives. These perceptions were sharply criticized by the Official Commission of Inquiry (Or Commission) into the October 2000 events, which issued in its final report in September 2003. In the report, the Or Commission recommended that the Israeli police stop relating to the Arab citizens as enemies. In addition, the Or Commission’s clearly concluded that the use of snipers and the use of live ammunition by other police officers was illegal and that the demonstrators posed no immediate and real threat to the lives of police officers. In Adalah’s view, trust cannot be placed in the Attorney General, who continues to relate to Arab citizens as enemies.
In response to the decision, Adalah stated its intention to seek international justice in these cases. “We will not approach the Supreme Court in these cases. We have now exhausted all legal proceedings in Israel. We will seek the involvement of the United Nations and other international foraâ€, stated Attorney Hassan Jabareen, the General Director of Adalah, at a press conference held yesterday, the 27 January 2008, following the Attorney General’s decision. The press conference was held jointly by the High-Follow up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, the Committee of the Victims’ Families and Adalah.
At the press conference, Mr. Shawqi Khatib, the Chairman of the High-Follow up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel stated, “This is a black day for justice and human rights and for the hopes of equality and respect between the peoples. Mazuz, with his deafness, has legitimized the killing and the result is that Arab blood flows freely.â€
Hassan Asleh, the father of Asel Asleh who was killed by police in October 2000 and the head of the Committee of the Victims’ Families, also spoke at the press conference. He read out the names of the thirteen Palestinian youths killed in October 2000 and those police officers and commanders responsible for each of their deaths. He promised that the family members would continue in their struggle for justice.
Mazuz’s decision endorsed the report on police conduct during the events of October 2000 released by Ministry of Justice’s Police Investigations Department (“Mahashâ€) in September 2005. In the report, Mahash announced its decision to close all the investigation files against police officers and commanders implicated in the October 2000 deaths on the pretext of lack of evidence.
Following the release of Mahash’s report, and as a result of public pressure, the Attorney General decided to conduct a review of the decision, and to this end appointed a special investigatory committee within the State Attorney’s Office to review the files. At the time and today, Adalah argues that the decision to review Mahash’s report within the State Attorney’s Office lacked all integrity because the office is headed by current State Attorney Eran Shendar. Shendar was the Director of Mahash during October 2000 and bears direct responsibility for the failure to open an immediate investigation into the police officers and commanders responsible for the deaths.
In October 2006, Adalah submitted a comprehensive report entitled “The Accused†to the Attorney General, in which it addressed the shortcomings and failures of the law enforcement authorities – first and foremost Mahash – in investigating the October 2000 killings. The report primarily exposes Mahash’s negligent work and its failure to fulfill its duty to investigate the criminal offenses committed by police in October 2000. In addition, the report discloses how Mahash concealed significant facts from the public and issued a falsified report regarding the events. Mazuz’s decision included specific responses to “The Accused†report.
For more information, see a special web-report on the October 2000 Killings
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Published: 22 September 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2987808.ece
A Palestinian student urgently trying to get back to Bradford University has become the first test case of new restrictions on movements in and out of Gaza since Israel identified it as “hostile territory”this week.
The Israeli Supreme Court is to hear a petition tomorrow brought on behalf of Khaled Mudallal, 22, a British-educated business and management student who risks losing his third year if he does not return to Bradford next week.
The Israeli human rights organisation Gisha, which is bringing tomorrow’s case, is arguing that new restrictions which have so far prevented several hundred Palestinian students from Gaza to return to courses abroad is a violation of international law.
The students were trapped in Gaza by the closure of the Rafah crossing into Egypt in June as fighting erupted between Fatah and Hamas which ended with Hamas’s takeover of the Strip. The Rafah crossing has remained closed.
Until last week, Israel was agreeing to let students out through the northern Erez crossing into Israel and then bussing them to the Nitzana crossing from Israel into Egypt from which they were able to make their way to courses abroad.
This week, however, this procedure was halted and on Wednesday the Israeli security cabinet sanctions announced that “restrictions will be … placed on movement of people to and from the Gaza Strip” as part of its policy of declaring Gaza “hostile territory”, following rocket attacks into Israel, and putting further pressure on Hamas. Restrictions on movement were already very heavy and Israel has for example barred Palestinian students in Gaza from taking courses in the West Bank or Israel itself. But it had adopted a more lenient policy towards students on accredited courses abroad.
Mr Mudallal, who arrived in his home town of Rafah on 6 June had only intended to stay for a few days to collect his new wife, Duaa, and take her back to Britain. He and his wife – who graduated with distinction this year from university in Gaza and also hopes to study in Britain – have UK residence permits valid to November 2010.
Mr Mudallal’s problems are compounded by having missed his first semester exams earlier in the year after he was delayed for two months by the closure of Rafah when he returned to Gaza in December 2006 to get married.
Although he arrived back half-way through the second semester he passed all his second semester exams and the university told him he would be able to carry on with his third year provided he first completed his first semester exams, as he intended to do at the start of the academic year next week. Gisha is pressing the Israeli military to let him leave through the Erez crossing.
Mr Mudallal, who did his GCSEs and A levels at Bradford Technology College while his parents were living in the city, said yesterday: “It’s a disaster for me. If I cannot take the exams I may have to take another year and I don’t know whether the university will let me do that.”
Meanwhile, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that Israeli closures and roadblocks in the West Bank had increased by 52 per cent to 572 since August 2005, despite repeated calls to reduce them.
The Israeli Defence minister and Labour leader, Ehud Barak, recently promised the US to reduce the present total by 24 as a possible first step towards alleviating restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank.
PRESS RELEASE
Vienna, April 10, 2007
As Israel comes under increasing pressure over its policies against Palestinians, an independent Swedish researcher today releases an extensive analysis of the Middle Eastern conflict since the formation of the state of Israel in 1948. According to Dr. Anthony Löwstedt, the vast majority of grave violations of human rights falls under the responsibility of the Jewish state.
In the third edition of his study, ‘Apartheid: Ancient, Past, and Present’, Löwstedt concludes that no less than 97.8 percent of gross human rights violations so far committed in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are sole responsibilities of the Israeli Jews, and 2.2 percent, at the most, are Palestinian crimes.
Israel was accused of apartheid by John Dugard, the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Special Envoy to the Occupied Palestinian Territories in February this year. In a report to the Council, Dugard recommended bringing the charge of apartheid, a crime against humanity under international law, against Israel to the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Previously, two Nobel Peace Prize laureates, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and the former South African Anglican Archbishop, Desmond Tutu, had also raised accusations of apartheid against Israel.
According to all four and many others, Israel is implementing the same system of oppression that Whites used against the indigenous black majority in South Africa until 1994. And just like Blacks committed a number of violent crimes against Whites and occasionally incited people to violence against South African Whites in the liberation struggle there, Palestinians have carried out similar crimes against Israeli Jews.
However, the overwhelming majority of violent crimes as well as cases of incitement to violence are responsibilities of the privileged ethnicities in both countries, according to Löwstedt. Moreover, he points out seven kinds of systematic, racist crimes which he says are the sole responsibilities of the Israeli Jews and the South African Whites and of similar ethnic elites in other apartheid societies. These crimes include ethnically discriminatory repopulation, citizenship, land, work, access, education, and language policies and practices.
Löwstedt has worked in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as well as in South Africa as an academic and for the UN. He currently teaches at Webster University in Vienna, Austria.
Read the study:
Apartheid – Ancient, Past, and Present: Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine, Vienna: Gesellschaft für Phänomenologie und kritische Anthropologie, 2007, 3 rd edition,
http://www.dada.at/gems/gesellschaft/Apartheid.pdf
The author is available for additional comments and interviews by return e-mail at lowstedt@gmail.com.