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Photos:
A Palestinian B’Tselem volunteer documents a protest in the South Hebron Hills, June 14, 2008. (Oren Ziv/Activestills) Published by 972Mag

Israeli soldiers arrest a Palestinian youth, who shows signs of being beaten, following a demonstration against the occupation, Hebron, March 1, 2013. (photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org) Published by 972Mag

Palestinians inspect damage to a destroyed ambulance in Shujaiyeh, a neighborhood in eastern Gaza City that was the site of some of the 2014 war’s heaviest fighting, July 27, 2014. (Photo by Anne Paq/Activestills.org) Published by 972Mag

An Israeli soldier shoots tear gas into a crowd of Palestinian protesters in Hebron. March 31, 2013 (Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org) Published by 972Mag

Israeli soldiers arrest a Palestinian youth following clashes on Nov. 11, 2008 (AFP/Hazem Bader, File) Published by Maan News
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By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man for 972Mag

The Israeli military justice system acts only to ‘cover up unlawful acts and protect perpetrators,’ B’Tselem says, citing 25 years of experience working with the military. Palestinian rights expert welcomes the move.


Israel’s best known human rights organization, B’Tselem, has lost all faith in the Israeli military justice system and will stop cooperating with it on behalf of Palestinian victims, the organization announced Wednesday.

A quarter century of experience working with the army “has brought us to the realization that there is no longer any point in pursuing justice and defending human rights by working with a system whose real function is measured by its ability to continue to successfully cover up unlawful acts and protect perpetrators,” the organization wrote in an 80-page report that accompanied the announcement.

B’Tselem’s decision is particularly significant because Palestinian victims of violence by Israelis security forces largely rely on Israeli human rights groups to file complaints on their behalf. On a most basic, logistical level, the IDF’s Military Police Investigations Unit (MPIU, sometimes referred to as MPCID) does not have any bases in the West Bank where Palestinians can physically go to file complaints, and the army does not issue them entry permits for the purposes of filing complaints against its own soldiers.

But it is the army’s utter ineffectiveness at investigating its own that is most striking. Out of 739 cases in which B’Tselem demanded that the IDF investigate soldiers killing, injuring, beating or using Palestinians as human shields since the year 2000, only 25 (3 percent) resulted in indictments. At least 70 percent of those cases ended without military investigators taking any action whatsoever, the organization reported, describing the process as riddled by “systemic failures which are neither random, nor case specific.”

Data compiled by Yesh Din, another Israeli human rights group that represents Palestinian victims of crimes by security forces, is even more troubling. According to Yesh Din, in 2014 military prosecutors filed indictments as a result of only 3.5 percent of criminal investigations into offenses committed by soldiers against Palestinians. The indictment rate presented by B’Tselem is relative to all complaints filed, while Yesh Din’s refers only to criminal investigations initiated by the army. (Full disclosure: my wife serves as a legal advisor to Yesh Din, and is the coordinator of its “criminal accountability of Israeli security forces project.”)

None of this, however, is new. Nearly two years ago B’Tselem declared the military law enforcement system “a complete failure,” and announced that it would refuse to assist the IDF in investigating suspected crimes committed by its soldiers during the 2014 Gaza war.

“Based on past experience, we can only regretfully say that Israeli law enforcement authorities are unable and unwilling to investigate allegations of breaches of international humanitarian law committed during fighting in Gaza,” the organization wrote at the time, noting that if Israel were to establish an independent investigative body it would gladly cooperate.

Wednesday’s announcement broadens that move and applies it to all military investigations.

The other major factor behind B’Tselem’s announcement is what the organization describes as the military law enforcement system’s role in undermining the chances of any real accountability of the upper echelons of the military and its political command structure, and creating a sense of legitimacy for and ultimately propping up the occupation itself.

“The semblance of a functioning justice system allows Israeli officials to deny claims made both in Israel and abroad that Israel does not enforce the law on soldiers who harm Palestinians,” the B’Tselem report released Wednesday argued. “These appearances also help grant legitimacy – both in Israel and abroad – to the continuation of the occupation.”

B’Tselem says its move is not meant to shift efforts for holding Israeli security forces accountable into external bodies like the International Criminal Court (ICC). “We don’t think that the current international situation provides other, better avenues for [promoting accountability],” spokesperson Sarit Michaeli told +972. “We’re not going to go to other bodies, but we assume our decision will resonate internationally, and in Palestinian society.”

Which is to say that B’Tselem’s decision may very well affect processes already in place in bodies like the ICC. One of the key factors that ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda must determine when deciding whether to open a full-fledged investigation into war crimes in Palestine is whether Israel is willing and able to investigate and hold its own security forces accountable, and whether it does so in good faith — known as the principle of complementarity. If it does, then the court has no jurisdiction.

But if the ICC determines that Israel is unwilling or incapable of investigating itself, then it may indeed have jurisdiction over war crimes committed by Israeli citizens, ranging from individual soldiers to generals and politicians. Bensouda will certainly take notice of B’Tselem’s message that it has lost so much faith in the Israeli military’s investigative mechanisms that it no longer believes it is worth engaging with.

Shawan Jabarin, director of Palestinian human rights organization Al Haq, congratulated B’Tselem for its decision to disengage from the military justice system, and told +972 he believes B’Tselem’s decision could help the ICC conclude, directly or indirectly, that complementarity does not pose an obstacle to the international prosecution of Israelis. “I think it will help show that there is no will, that [the military investigation system] is not effective, and that it is not an independent mechanism.”

Jabarin, whose organization long ago stopped cooperating with the Israeli military in order to seek justice for Palestinian victims, said he believes it is important for other organizations to follow in B’Tselem’s footsteps. Working with the Israeli Military Advocate General, he said, “doesn’t accomplish anything except [to allow Israeli] officials to create an illusion that there is a democratic, just system in place.”

Yesh Din, along with Adalah, another human rights legal organization based in Israel, expressed criticisms of IDF investigatory mechanisms that are nearly identical to those put forward by B’Tselem. But both organizations told +972 they will continue to file complaints with Israeli authorities, each citing their obligations to seek legal redress on behalf of Palestinian victims.

“[Although] the inherently flawed structures of Israel’s mechanisms make it nearly impossible to obtain criminal investigations, prosecutions, and punishment of perpetrators of serious violations of international law,” explained Nadeem Shehadeh, an attorney in the civil and political rights unit at Adalah, his organization will continue to file legal interventions with Israeli authorities in order to seek individual redress, exhaust all domestic remedies, and to establish and maintain formal documentation for purposes of local and international advocacy.

B’Tselem, however, is not shutting its doors anytime soon. The human rights clearinghouse, best known for distributing video cameras to Palestinians in the West Bank and publishing the video documentation of Israeli crimes and rights violations they capture, will continue carrying out those investigatory and advocacy activities. The organization’s main emphasis, however, will shift away from legal work and move toward the loftier political goal of ending the occupation itself.
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BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- After 25 years of accountability work in the occupied West Bank, Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem announced on Wednesday its decision to discontinue their strategy of holding Israeli forces accountable for their crimes against Palestinians through internal military mechanisms.

Representatives of the organization, which focuses on collecting information and documenting Israeli human rights violations against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, called their complicity in Israel’s military mechanisms “morally unacceptable,” in a press briefing on Tuesday.

According to a new report released by the organization, the inefficiency of Israeli military mechanisms to provide justice for Palestinian victims led the organization to label their accountability activities as a “whitewash machine” for the continuation of the nearly 50-year Israeli military occupation of the West Bank.

“B’Tselem has gradually come to the realization that the way in which the military law enforcement system functions precludes it from the very outset from achieving justice for the victims.

Nonetheless, the very fact that the system exists serves to convey a semblance of law enforcement and justice,” the report stated.

The report argued that the veneer of legal legitimacy “makes it easier to reject criticism about the injustices of the occupation, thanks to the military’s outward pretense that even it considers some acts unacceptable, and backs up this claim by saying that it is already investigating these actions.”

“In so doing, not only does the state manage to uphold the perception of a decent, moral law enforcement system, but also maintains the military’s image as an ethical military that takes action against these acts,” the report added.

Since the start of the second intifada in late 2000, of the 739 complaints filed by B’Tselem of Palestinians being killed, injured, used as human shields, or having their property damaged by Israeli forces, roughly 70 percent resulted in an investigation where no action was taken, or in an investigation never being opened.
Only three percent of cases resulted in charges being brought against the soldiers, according to the report.

Field Researcher for B’Tselem Iyad Haddad told Ma’an on Tuesday that Israeli and Palestinian NGOs worked for many years to create a “culture” of accountability in Palestinian communities plagued with deeply-rooted mistrust for Israeli military bodies, convincing Palestinians to submit complaints to the Israeli military when faced with human rights violations.

However, the organization became complicit in the violations by reinforcing the credibility of a system incapable of providing results or any semblance of justice for individuals or their families, Haddad said.

Kareem Jubran, field research director of B’Tselem, said he was “ashamed” of B’Tselem’s engagement with the military occupation during the press briefing, adding that the process forced victims to become victims a second time, as Palestinians are commonly mistreated by military investigators while their cases rarely result in accountability or justice.

“We became subcontractors to the occupation,” Yael Stein, a research director of B’Tselem, said in the conference, adding that the organization’s accountability work served to “legitimize the whole occupation.”

The decision has led the group to redesign its strategy from direct accountability to working in the “public arena” through a launch of a public awareness campaign that can “rob the system of its credibility,” Executive Director Hagai Elad said.

B’Tselem’s disengagement with internal mechanisms of the Israeli military occupation comes in the midst of an increasingly right-wing government and renewed attacks on Israeli human rights organizations.

Newly appointed ultra-right Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused B'Tselem earlier this year of being funded by the same groups financing Hamas -- the Palestinian movement leading the besieged Gaza Strip's de facto government, which has been designated a “terrorist” organization by the Israeli government -- while calling B’Tselem “traitors” to the Israeli public.

In December, Ayelet Shaked, leader of the ultranationalist Israeli Home Party, pushed for a so-called “transparency” bill that would compel NGOs to reveal their sources of funding if more than 50 percent of their funding came from foreign entities, in a push to crack down on groups who receive foreign funding in order to criticize Israel.

Critics have slammed the bill, which passed its first reading in the Knesset in February, with the chairwoman of the left-leaning Meretz party Zehara Galon calling it a “continuation of the witch hunt, political persecution, and censorship of human rights groups and left-wing organizations that criticize the government’s conduct.”

Since organizations in Israel which rely on foreign funding also tend to oppose the government’s right-wing policies against Palestinians, the potential legislation is widely considered discriminatory and an attempt to weed out human rights groups working to end the large-scale human rights violations that occur in the occupied territory.

B'Tselem's recent decision to focus on public awareness in Israeli society marks a unique shift in Israeli human rights approaches to violations against Palestinians, in a political climate where far-right views are increasingly becoming mainstream, and concerted attacks on human rights groups could be considered government policy.

Jaclynn Ashly contributed reporting from Jerusalem.