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Two
Eyewitness Accounts of Israeli Military Violence Against Palestinian Children
by
Adi Dagan and Peleg Levy
Dissident Voice
May
14, 2003
Two Israelis who witnessed Palestinians
being shot by the IDF could not believe their eyes.
In recent weeks, columnist Gideon Levy of
Ha’aretz described two violent incidents
in the territories in which a Palestinian boy was killed and a Palestinian girl
was injured. In the wake of these articles, two eyewitnesses sent their
testimonies on the circumstances of the shootings. Both raise serious questions
concerning the behavior of IDF soldiers
1.
Deliberate shooting at children
I
read Gideon Levy's article about the death of Omar Matar ("The 144th
Child," Ha’aretz Magazine, April 11) following my own personal familiarity
with the events that are described in it. As someone who personally witnessed
the incident at the Qalandiyah checkpoint, on Friday, March 28, I can say that
it was a traumatic, terrible, unimaginable experience. My girlfriend and I
arrived at the site as members of WATCH, a group of Israeli women who oppose
the occupation and who observe the checkpoints every day in the area of
Jerusalem and the West Bank.
This
was not the first time we have seen what has become routine at the checkpoints:
Children throwing stones at the fence near the Qalandiyah neighborhood and
burning tires. Within a few minutes, a group of about 10 soldiers advanced in
the direction of the children and began shooting at them. Stunned by what we
were seeing - soldiers armed with rifles, wearing helmets and flak jackets
shooting at a small group of schoolchildren - we immediately called the Benjamin
Brigade commander, who told us that the orders to the soldiers that we had seen
were to shoot rubber bullets in the air. I told him that I could see with my
own eyes that they were not shooting in the air, but that they were shooting
right at the children and that it is known that rubber bullets (which are
really steel bullets covered in rubber) can kill. Within a short time, an
ambulance came to the neighborhood's main street and we learned that a boy,
Omar Musa Matar, had been shot in the head.
Our
warnings to the army had fallen on deaf ears and failed to prevent Omar's
death. This incident brings a number of difficult thoughts to mind - thoughts
about the imperviousness, cruelty and total contempt for Palestinian lives,
which is reflected in the fact that after years of intifada, the Israel Defense
Forces and the police have not yet found ways to disperse civilian riots that
comply with international law; about the soldiers armed with rifles facing off
against little children with stones; about the horrific disparity between the
orders given by senior commanders and the reality on the ground, in which each
soldier acts as he sees fit in the full knowledge that he will not be tried for
murder, abuse, robbery or any other trampling of the law and human rights.
According
to figures provided by B'Tselem [The
Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories], the
number of incidents in which the Military Police launches an investigation
following the killing of innocents by soldiers is minimal, the manner in which
the investigations are conducted ludicrous and the number of the convictions
negligible. Consequently, I will not be surprised if the murderer is not
brought to justice in this case either. This is not a trigger-happy soldier,
but rather a group of soldiers acting like a murderous gang, storming a group
of children that do not represent a genuine danger.
Adi
Dagan
Herzliya
Questions
to the IDF Spokesman: In Gideon Levy's article about the incident, he quotes
the eyewitness testimony of Walid Zawawi, the deputy director of the Qalandiyah
camp for UNRWA, who said that a soldier shot the boy while in a kneeling
position, that two bullets hit the boy, one in the head and the other in the
neck, and that afterward, the soldiers also shot a Palestinian who tried to
evacuate the wounded boy. The response of the IDF Spokesman at the time was:
"The Military Police is investigating the incident." Has the
investigation been concluded? What were the findings and what steps, if any,
have been taken against the commander/shooter(s)?
The
response of the IDF Spokesman: The investigation is still ongoing.
2.
No danger to the soldiers
In
the article about the Tul Karm refugee camp (Haaretz Magazine, March 28),
Gideon Levy mentioned a 15-year-old girl "who apparently tried to stab a
soldier" at a checkpoint. She was shot and "has been lying wounded in
Meir Hospital, handcuffed, for a few weeks now." On February 20 of this
year, I was serving in the reserves at the checkpoint between Taibeh and Tul
Karm. At about four o'clock in the afternoon, I went up to my post. About an
hour and a half afterward, a girl of about 15 arrived, walked behind me and
continued in the direction of a group of soldiers at the main area of the
checkpoint. She stopped and at a certain point, took out a knife and stood
without moving for quite a while. True, she did wave the knife in the air, but
what she did was far from endangering the soldiers.
The
commander of the checkpoint, who arrived meanwhile, carried out the proper
procedure for arresting a suspect and shot at her from a few meters away. The
procedure calls for a warning shot in the air; if the suspect still does not
stop, shots may be fired at the suspect's legs and only after that at the suspect's
torso. I heard three shots. After that, for a long while, she lay there
bleeding and crying, "I want my mother." It was quite a difficult
sight to see. An ambulance that arrived was not allowed to approach her until
IDF sappers had finished checking her.
I
have been doing my reserve duty in the territories since April 1988. I have
accumulated quite a bit of experience, and this time I decided to use my own
judgment during my work at the checkpoint. When I saw older people coming to
ask for permission to go through to visit their children in Taibeh, or mixed
couples, I let them go through. My behavior caused some disagreement and
consequently, the subject was brought out in the open. I explained that I was
not working from a particularly leftist position, but rather from a human point
of view.
A
number of things should be made clear about the shooter. The officer that shot
the girl is an educator in his civilian life. We have been conducting a
dialogue from either side of the line that crosses Israeli society for close to
15 years. About 13 years ago, while sitting together in a Jeep in Rafah, I
asked him if he really believes that it is a decree from heaven and that this
is how we must live with the Palestinians. Since then, the subject has remained
open between us through all the years, and here, after all these years, we end
up meeting again in a situation like this.
Let
me make it clear: this is not a matter of black and white. During our previous
reserve duty, after we once again held long discussions with one another, he
invited me to give a lecture to the 12th-grade students in his school. I
believe that those who can, must volunteer to serve in the territories in order
to be at the meeting points with the population, and do what is needed to
prevent abuse by soldiers, to treat the members of foreign organizations
respectfully and to treat the Palestinians with respect and hope. Perhaps in
this way it will be possible to have a greater influence reality.
I,
for example, appealed after the incident to the Yesh Gvul movement - although
my views on the subject of serving in the territories are different from theirs
- and they passed the information on to WATCH, which decided to send
representatives of their own to oversee what is happening at the checkpoint
near Taibeh. Naturally, I continued to take an interest in the girl who was
shot. I learned she is currently being held in the Neveh Tirza prison after
doctors in the hospital were forced to remove part of her intestines - which
shows that at least one bullet hit her in the stomach.
--
Peleg Levy
Tel
Mond
Questions
to the IDF Spokes-man: Are there orders to delay medical care until
authorization is received from the sapper that the injured suspects are not
carrying explosives on their person? Has an investigation been launched into
this case of shooting? If so, what are the findings and what steps, if any,
have been taken against the commander responsible, or the shooter?
There
was no official response from the IDF Spokesman.
Military
sources had this to say: A brigade-level investigation conducted after the
shooting showed that the Palestinian girl reached checkpoint 105 near Taibeh
with a drawn knife and advanced in the direction of the soldiers. The soldiers
called out to her to halt, shot in the air, and after she continued to approach
them, shot her when she was two to three meters away. Her treatment and
evacuation were carried out in accordance with proper procedures: The soldiers
at the checkpoint, acting beyond the call of duty, called for a Magen David
Adom (rather than a Red Crescent) ambulance to come for her. Meanwhile, an army
sapper at the site checked to see if she had any explosives on her person.
After
the sappers ruled that possibility out, the girl, who appeared to be not of
sound mind, was evacuated to the Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava, where she was
hospitalized and treated at the expense of the IDF, after which she was sent
for interrogation to the Shin Bet [security services]. After the fact, in light
of findings of the brigade-level investigation, the IDF sees no problem in the
soldiers' behavior and functioning.
Peleg
Levy testifies that he heard three shots. How many shells hit the body of the
girl? From a letter sent by Physicians for Human Rights to the director of the
hospital, it became clear that Dr. Ahmed Massarwah, a member of the
organization's board, came to visit her with a statement relinquishing the
doctor-patient privilege, signed by the family. He said he had spoken to the
surgeon who had operated on her, and from him found out that "she was hit
in one of her kidneys and during the operation, part of her large intestine was
removed. Two bullets remained, one in the body cavity and one in the leg."
Adi Dagan and Peleg Levy’s eyewitness account
was first published in the Israeli news daily Ha’aretz.
* Related article on Israeli military violence towards
Palestinian children as a matter of deliberate policy: Sunil Sharma, “Suffer
Palestine’s Children,” Dissident Voice, November 25, 2001: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/SunilSufferChildren.htm