TEL AVIV, July 7, 2010 (WAFA)- A reserve staff sergeant was indicted yesterday in the military court of the IDF's Central Command for the manslaughter of two Palestinian women during Operation Cast Lead, Anshel Pfeffer wrote in Haaretz.
The soldier, who can only be identified as S, was indicted as part of the Military Advocate General Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit's investigation into several suspicions of deviation from orders during the operation, and in the wake of accusations of war crimes voiced in the Goldstone report.
Staff Sergeant S, from the Givati Brigade's Rotem battalion, was summoned to a hearing ahead of his indictment two weeks ago. The indictment concerns the killing of a mother and daughter - Riyeh Abu Hajaj, 64, and Majda Abu Hajaj, 35. The two women were in a group of civilians who were ordered to leave their homes. When interrogated by the Criminal Investigations Division of the Military Police, S said he fired in the direction of a Palestinian woman and saw her fall after the shot.
Prosecutors remain convinced that S killed the two women, but as conflicting evidence does not connect him directly to the case, he will be charged with killing an anonymous civilian, based on his admission.
'The Military Advocate General decided not to charge S specifically with the Hajaj killing because of evidence we presented at the hearing,' said attorney Oded Savoray, who represents the soldier together with Meir Klinger. 'The evidence shows unequivocally that on the day on which the women were allegedly killed, no similar incidents occured in S's unit. No charges of manslaughter can be based on my client's testimony, and so we are sure he will be acquitted.'
Meanwhile, following a prolonged General Staff inquiry into one of the worst incidents during the operation, Brig. Gen. Mendelblit decided to open a criminal investigation into the killing of 29 civilians, all members of the Al-Samouni family from the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza. The family members died as a result of three separate aerial attacks on nearby targets. The Criminal Investigations Division will look into the decision-making on all levels that first allegedly led to the concentration of 100 family members in one home, and then aerial attacks on nearby buildings and the house itself.
This investigation could potentially result in the gravest charges yet to result from Operation Cast Lead, and may touch upon soldiers and officers of different ranks from both the ground forces and the Air Force.
Mendelblit confined himself to disciplinary proceedings against officers in two other cases cited in the Goldstone report.
In the case of the Air Force attack on the Ibrahim al-Maqadma mosque in the Jabalya refugee camp, in which 15 Palestinians were killed, it was found that a captain in a command outpost made a professional mistake in authorizing the strike. As reported by Haaretz four months ago, the IDF had intelligence on Hamas members involved in launching rocket attacks against Israel meeting near a building in the neighborhood.
The Israeli Army was not aware at the time that the building was a mosque with people inside, and the captain received permission from the combat director, a colonel, to order an air strike. Minutes later, he was informed that the building was a mosque, but did not change the order or update his superiors. Of the 15 people died in the attack, about half were Islamic Jihad or Hamas militants.
The captain was removed from his post and reprimanded for not seeing fit to inform the combat director that the building was a mosque. However, no evidence was found of the Goldstone report's claim that this was a deliberate attack on civilians praying.
In another case, Military Police found that Majdi Abed Rabbo, who complained of being used as a human shield by Golani troops, had actually offered the soldiers to persuade the Hamas unit holed up inside a house to surrender before the house was demolished. After Abed Rabbo went into the house four times and failed to persuade the militants to surrender, the house was destroyed with rockets and bulldozers, and the militants were killed.
The military advocate general ordered a disciplinary hearing despite concluding that Abed Rabbo volunteered for the role, since the incident was in a violation of a Supreme Court ruling on the 'neighbor procedure.' The battalion commander was tried by GOC Northern Command Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, and received a warning.
Mendelblit yesterday voiced his gratitude to human rights organization B'Tselem, thanking the organization for testimonies its activists passed on to the IDF and for assisting in coordinating the questioning of Palestinian eyewitnesses at the Erez crossing.
'The indictment in the Abu Hajaj case is important, but there are other cases still being investigated, 18 months after the operation,' B'Tselem said in a statement. 'B'Tselem believes that the investigations of Operation Cast Lead should not be confined to specific complaints, and reiterates its call to set up an Israeli investigative body, independent of the military, to look into questions of policy and the responsibility of the senior command and political leadership for the extensive killing of civilians.'
