Really? Don’t expect anything to come from it (the original title ended, West Bank shootings).
Reuters (not carried by the American press) reporting:
Israel’s army chief has reprimanded two senior officers over the killing of four Palestinians in two separate shooting incidents in the West Bank last month, the military said on Tuesday. Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi determined after military investigations of the incidents that commanders and soldiers could have behaved differently to avoid the killings.
In the first incident, two teenagers were shot dead in the village of Iraq Burin on March 20 as troops moved in to protect Jewish settlers from Palestinians protesting against Israeli settlement policy.
A day later, soldiers near the village of Awarta fatally shot two Palestinian youngsters who they believed were trying to kill them, a military statement said.
Just how old were these ‘youngsters’?
Bethlehem – Ma’an – Israeli occupation soldiers shot dead two Palestinians near Nablus in the northern West Bank on Sunday. Palestinian security sources identified the victims as 19-year-old farmers Muhammad Faysal and Salah Muhammad Qawariq. Both were from the Awarta village, southeast of Nablus, and were en route to farmland carrying agricultural tools and pesticide, the same sources said.
The Israeli occupation army claimed (falsely as it did yesterday after killing the two boys in Nablus) the two attempted to stab a soldier who was on a “routine patrol” near the Awarta military checkpoint. “In response, forces opened fire and identified a direct hit,” an army spokeswoman told Ma’an. (snip)
They were the third and fourth killed in 24 hours in the northern West Bank. A teenager died early Sunday from injuries sustained at a protest a day earlier, when another boy was shot dead. Ussaid Qadus, 16, was shot in the stomach by Israeli occupation forces, medics said, and Muhammad Qadus, also 16, died of a gunshot wound to the chest shortly after the a protest in Iraq Burin, a village south of Nablus.
The Israeli military said its forces opened fire with riot-control means to disperse a violent riot, denying allegations its soldiers used live ammunition against the two teenagers.
The Palestinian Monitor carried the same story on two of the victims: Two Palestinian Teenagers Killed In Iraq Burin: Army Denies Using Live Ammunition. They were 15 and 19 years of age, the former shot in the chest, the latter in the head.
Well it is obvious that the soldiers used live ammunition in what was essentially a turkey shoot. But just what are Israeli soldiers told in regard to using live ammunition against Palestinian children and teenagers?
B’tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights, documents Palestinian killings and has done so for years. Israel’s regard for the lives of Palestinian children changed with the second Intifada (and is apparently continuing).
Unlike past practice, since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada the IDF has not issued soldiers serving in the Occupied Territories booklets containing the Open-Fire Regulations. However, soldiers’ testimonies to B’Tselem and information published in the media provide numerous examples of the changes in the Regulations which greatly increased the range of situations in which soldiers are allowed to use their firearms. Examples of the changes are:
*The term “life-threatening” is expanded to include situations not previously considered life-threatening, such as stone throwing; (ASIDE: can you imagine sighting the head of an 8 year old “Arab” boy and pulling the trigger?)
*Firing without warning (at certain times and in certain areas) at any Palestinian bearing arms is permitted;
*Soldiers are allowed to fire live ammunition to enforce curfew;
*Soldiers are required to open fire whenever Palestinians enter places defined as “dangerous areas” (primarily around the Gaza Strip fence);
*The IDF is allowed to assassinate Palestinians suspected of having committed attacks against Israelis.
In addition, soldiers are allowed to use ammunition capable of killing at very long range. Such ammunition includes bombs weighing hundreds of kilograms which are dropped by aircraft, and flechette shells (composed of darts) which are fired by tanks.
These and other changes in the Open-Fire Regulations led to the killing of hundreds of civilian Palestinians who were not taking part in the fighting. These killings violated IHL (international humanitarian law) as it relates to occupied territory.
Lawrence of Cyberia researched the specific nature of these ‘death’ policies by the IDF toward Palestinian children. Many Palestinian children have been killed and wounded during the Palestinian fight for freedom and independence. Israel’s attitudes toward these children, however, have been no less violent than toward Palestinian militants, and they are apparently being continued today.
This material, quoted by Lawrence of Cyberia is about Israel’s targeting of civilians especially children in the West Bank and Gaza. Here we have a weaponized occupying army colonizing Palestinian lands, and Israeli soldiers given orders to take out civilians who protest it including children.
Palestinian deaths during the first and second Intifadas were not unintentional collateral damage. It was terrorist murdering by an occupying force.
Israel’s claim that its soldiers adhere to a doctrine of “purity of arms” in dealing with the Palestinian civilian population has been going on for a long time. In the first intifada, Ehud Barak was the IDF’s Deputy Chief of Staff, and proclaimed: “We do not want children to be shot under any circumstances … When you see a child you don’t shoot.” That was untrue then, just as Bradley Burston’s insinuation that Palestinian civilian deaths aren’t intentional is a lie now:
The Swedish “Save the Children” organization estimated that “23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the first intifida,” with nearly one third sustaining broken bones. Nearly one third of the beaten children were aged ten and under. It also states that 6,500 to 8,000 children were wounded by gunfire during the first two years of the Intifada. Researchers investigated 66 of the 106 recorded cases of “child gunshot deaths.” They concluded that: almost all of them “were hit by directed, not random or ricochet gunfire”; nearly twenty percent suffered multiple gunshot wounds; twelve percent were shot from behind; fifteen percent of the children were ten years of age or younger; “most children were not participating in a stone throwing demonstration when shot dead”; and “nearly one fifth of the children were shot dead while at home or within ten meters of their homes.”
cited in The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (chapter 2, end note 49); by Mearsheimer and Walt.
That’s how the IDF killed Palestinian civilians – children – during the first intifada. Not through a careless use of missiles or the occasional errant tank shell, but by individual Israeli soldiers pointing their guns at children in the Occupied Territories – even children under ten, even children who had turned their backs and were running away – and shooting them dead.
And the IDF’s record in the second intifada is much worse. Firstly, because the IDF announced in March 2003 that it would no longer routinely investigate the deaths of civilians killed by Israeli soldiers, but would allow individual Israeli officers in the field to decide whether to call in the Military Police whenever their troops killed a civilian, or to simply declare the killing an “unfortunate incident of death”, which required no investigation. A policy that has had the following, entirely predictable, result:
The IDF effectively grants immunity to soldiers who open fire illegally. Since the beginning of the intifada, the IDF has ceased to automatically open an investigation into every case in which a Palestinian is killed by IDF fire. The decision as to whether to open a Military Police investigation into each incident is now made by the Judge Advocate General’s office, based on the results of the field de-briefings, which are also carried out by the army itself. In one case that was exposed by B’Tselem, it was clear that an eleven-year-old child had died as a result of the violation of procedures and illegal shooting. Despite this, the Judge Advocate General’s office decided not to request a Military Police investigation. In addition, the investigations that are opened are generally protracted and based primarily on soldiers’ testimonies, while completely ignoring the Palestinian eyewitnesses.
This policy has unavoidably resulted in a situation in which shooting at innocent Palestinians has practically become a routine. (B’Tselem)
And secondly, because at the very beginning of the second intifada, the IDF issued extremely broad open fire regulations, concerning who might be considered a legitimate target:
Sniper: “They forbid us to shoot at children”.
Journalist: “How do they say this?”
Sniper: “You don’t shoot a child who is 12 or younger”.
Journalist: “That is, a child of 12 or older is allowed?”
Sniper: “Twelve and up is allowed. He’s not a child anymore, he’s already after his bar mitzvah. Something like that”.
Journalist: “Thirteen is bar mitzvah age”.
Sniper: “Twelve and up, you’re allowed to shoot. That’s what they tell us”.
Journalist: “Under international law, a child is defined as someone up to the age of 18.” Sniper: “Up until 18 is a child?”
Journalist: “So, according to the IDF, it is 12?”
Sniper: “According to what the IDF says to its soldiers. I don’t know if this is what the IDF says to the media.”Amira Hass’ interview with an IDF sharpshooter, explaining why so many Palestinian children were killed in the first weeks of the intifada, when the IDF was largely confronted by stonethrowers. Published in Ha’aretz, Don’t shoot till you can see they’re over the age of 12, 20 November 2000.
For a more complete account of Israel’s war against Palestinian children, click HERE.
It is not enjoyable reporting on further killings of teen-aged Palestinians, but after the killing of over a thousand children during the past decade, does anyone think that these officers will receive more than a slap on the wrist?
