"Human
rights activists and military specialists say the high rate of civilian
casualties is the result of a military that has not properly
investigated civilian deaths and has created an atmosphere in which
soldiers are not held accountable," said the Globe.
"The
lack of investigations into civilian deaths has given soldiers a strong
sense of impunity, that they can do pretty much whatever they want
without having to answer any questions," Lior Yavne, a senior
investigator for the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem and author of a
report published in March that examined Israeli soldiers' actions during
the current Palestinian uprising, told the Globe.
In
recent months, Israeli human rights groups, leading Israeli newspapers,
and even retired high-ranking officers have denounced the number of
Palestinian civilian deaths in the West Bank and Gaza and contended that
the Israeli army has not fully investigated them, the U.S. paper added.
General
Amnon Strashnov, who was the Israeli military attorney general during
the first Intifada in 1987 and until recently a judge in the Israeli
civilian judicial system, made a rare public criticism of the military,
saying that the current army attorney general "should show more
initiative" in investigating Palestinian civilian deaths.
"All
the immoral and illegal deeds done in the checkpoints, the abuse against
Palestinians and the holding of ambulances deserve strong condemnation
and criticism," Strashnov told Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahranot
in an interview published Friday, December 27. "There is a need for
deeper investigations. When kids are killed by a tank there has to be a
deep and thorough investigation."
The
Globe also cited a December 5 lead editorial in the Israeli
newspaper Ha'aretz which wrote of the "proliferation of
cases of innocent people killed" and cited the Israeli army’s
easing of its own rules of engagement during complex military missions
in which soldiers search for wanted people in densely populated
Palestinian cities and towns.
A
military attaché to a Western embassy in Tel Aviv, who has had a long,
distinguished military career and directed several military inquiries in
his own country, said that the Israeli military's system of
investigating non-Israeli deaths was "shallow and inadequate by the
standards of any professional military," said the paper.
 |
|
Ha'aretz
wrote of the "proliferation of cases of innocent people
killed"
|
"The
main problem is that the soldiers are not held accountable for their
actions," the Globe cited the attaché as saying, speaking
on condition of anonymity. "Ammunition expenditures, for example,
are not thoroughly checked. The system through which field reports make
their way to the higher levels for scrutiny is badly flawed."
Asked
specifically about the investigations into the killing of the
95-year-old Palestinian woman, Captain Sharon Feingold, an Israeli army
spokeswoman, said, "You want answers too quickly."
When
asked about other cases - some dating back as much as a year ago with
none of them resulting in a full inquiry - she added: "We have a
very hard time investigating because of the situation, that is sometimes
true."
When
asked about the case of the woman and her two young children who were
killed by Israeli tank fire, Jacob Dallal, another army spokesman, told
the Globe, "that was looked into. The procedure is to shoot
in the area of where the device exploded."
But
when told that Israeli army found only a blown tank tread, Dallal added,
"The soldiers believed there was a device. So they followed
procedure. What don't you understand about that?"
In
the case of the five men killed trying to scale the Gaza border fence,
an Israeli army official told the Globe that even though the
victims were unarmed there was "no violation of regulations."
When asked whether firing a tank shell loaded with hundreds of deadly
flechettes, or small darts, on five unarmed people was an appropriate
response, the official replied: "We believe the soldiers' judgment
was right."
The
Israeli army rarely comments on the use of flechette shells, which are
implicitly banned under international law, said the Globe.
Because the shells inflict widespread casualties, they are classified as
"indiscriminate" weapons, which are banned in civilian areas.
The
army official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said only, "We
never specify our weapons."
"The
Palestine Human Rights Monitoring Group, estimates that there were 1,751
Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the period from September 29,
2000, to December 21, 2002. Of that number, 1,272 were considered by the
group to be ‘unarmed civilian casualties,’ including 314 children.
The Red Crescent Society and the Palestine Monitor, two other
organizations in the West Bank and Gaza, place the number of Palestinian
civilian casualties significantly higher," reports the Globe.
"The
Israeli organization B'Tselem, which is widely credited for having the
most meticulous and fair counting of deaths on both sides, reports that
1,727 Palestinians were killed in the same 26-month period. B'Tselem
estimates that at least 450 of those were women, minors, and elderly
men," the paper added.
On
the ground, Israeli forces killed an 11-year-old Palestinian boy in the
town of Tulkarm Sunday. They shot him in the head during a
stone-throwing clash. He was the second child shot dead in as many days,
said The Telegraph.
