By Guevara Samara
RAMALLAH, January 17, 2017 (WAFA) - The camera that captured the moment when Qusai al-Imour was shot and then beaten and dragged while injured was not recording an execution carried by ISIS in Syria or Iraq.
Rather it was documenting a crime taking place in the town of Taqou, near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, perpetrated by Israeli soldiers, who, according to the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, their crimes were covered by what it called was the “fig leaf” that covers Israel’s institutions that facilitate execution of Palestinians based on suspicion.
Because it was not able to get the Israeli military prosecution to investigate cases it has presented to it over the past 25 years, B‘Tselem decided to boycott the Israeli prosecution and not file any more complaints.
Around the year 2000, when the second Palestinian uprising started, B’Tselem called on the Israeli prosecution to probe 739 cases of Palestinians who were either killed, detained, assaulted, used as human shields, and whose property was damaged by the Israeli forces. However, the prosecution’s response was more than disappointing, it said.
The Israeli prosecution did not investigate 182 cases, while 343 cases were closed without any result. Indictments against soldiers were presented in only 25 cases, 13 of which were moved to disciplinary courts. In addition, 132 cases are still under investigation, while 44 cases the Israeli prosecution was not able to track back, said B’Tselem.
Sha’wan Jabareen, a legal expert and director of the Palestinian human rights group, al-Haq, said that the Israeli crimes and persistence to execute Palestinians have increased and became clearer in the aftermath of the wave of attacks that started in late 2015.
The Israeli government eased open fire policy, which B’Tselem described as “permission for field executions” of Palestinians.
Jabareen said that Israeli soldiers have become more brutal and more comfortable in killing Palestinians.
He said that many executions, some documented by camera such as the execution of Abdul Fattah al-Sharif shot dead in March in Hebron by an Israeli soldier while lying severely wounded on the ground, leave no doubt that the intention of Israeli soldiers is to shoot to kill.
K.T./M.K.
