http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=85371
Sharon's role in igniting intifada to be investigated
By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem
26 July 2001
The Israeli government and its law enforcement agencies are facing fresh
scandal over the part they played in detonating the Palestinian intifada.
The new embarrassment comes after a decision by a judicial commission of
inquiry to investigate the aftermath of Ariel Sharon's notorious visit to
Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount, in Jerusalem.
The Or Commission, which is investigating the death of 13 Israeli Arabs in
the Galilee area after police opened fire on
rioters, has decided to take evidence about the unrest that erupted after the
visit by Mr Sharon last September, who has since become Israel's Prime
Minister.
At least seven Palestinians from east Jerusalem were shot dead by the police.
According to the American-led Mitchell committee, the police use of live
bullets was an important factor in triggering the uprising.
Since then, more than 600 people, mostly Palestinian, have been killed. The
commission's decision to investigate one of the most fraught questions at the
heart of the intifada comes after weeks of intermittent hearings into events
known among Israel's Arabs as Black October.
These have led to some astounding testimonies, further straining relations
between the Jewish state and its million-strong Arab minority.
Arab community leaders warn of more violence if the commission's findings
fall short of expectations, or are ignored by the Israeli government.
Suhail Miari, of the Organisation of Uprooted Palestinians inside Israel,
said: "I fear there will be a new upheaval if the government rejects the
commission's findings. I don't wish for this, but you cannot control the
masses not when there is so much anger and frustration."
Relations between Israeli Jews and Arabs have rarely been worse.
In recent months, and for the first time in years, Israeli Arabs have been
subject to "administrative detention" Israel's euphemism for jailing people
without trial. Shin Bet, the internal security service, has interrogated Arab
intellectuals deemed to have published extremist views. Yet incitement and
racist invective by hardline rabbis have gone unpunished.
To this should be added chronic civil rights abuses from apartheid housing
practices, which prevent Arabs acquiring homes in Jewish areas, to unequal
investment in their local authorities, and unequal access to employment. Less
than 6 per cent of civil service jobs in Israel are held by Arabs and very
few are key posts.
Against this deteriorating backdrop, the commission reluctantly set up last
November by Ehud Barak, the previous prime minister is pressing ahead with
its task.
Truth and reconciliation have yet to prevail. Its three-person panel suspects
police officers co-ordinate their testimony in advance. Relatives of victims
were astonished as officers testified that they did not fire any live
ammunition at Kafr Kana one of the October flashpoints and wounded no one
with lethal rubber-coated steel bullets, despite abundant medical documents
about victims with rubber bullet injuries.
The police offered an explanation for the death in Kafr Kana of a 19-year-old
Israeli Arab, Mohammed Hamisi: he was, they said, shot in a violent feud
between two local families.
The inquiry has seemed at times close to collapse it was suspended for
weeks while glass protective barriers were installed after a bereaved
relative attacked a police witness on the stand. Hostility to the police was
made worse by the disclosure that a local commander had shot up his own
police station apparently in the hope of blaming it on Arabs.
Yet the inquiry has successfully shone a light into some murky areas. For
months, the Israeli government insisted the police did not use any live
ammunition during the October riots until the commission forced the release
of government post-mortem reports, which showed that at least two of the
victims were shot with regular bullets. Claims that the police fired only
when facing "life-threatening" situations have been exposed as nonsense by
testimony that police snipers were authorised to fire from rooftops at
rioters.
And, again, Arabs in Israel have had incontrovertible evidence of the yawning
double standards: while Arab protesters were shot at, injured and killed,
Jewish rioters were not.
It is chilling stuff. One of the most horrifying accounts has been that of
the death of 17-year-old Asil Asleh in the Galilee village of Arrabe.
Onlookers testified that they saw him watching the protest from an olive
grove. Three policemen chased him into the trees. Several said one of them
hit him over the head with a rifle butt. They heard a short burst of shots
Asil was found with his skull crushed and shot in the back of the neck.
The commission's findings will be crucial, and so will the response of the
Israeli authorities. It is not promising. Two police commanders in the region
have been promoted. The Public Security Minister, Uzi Landau, has called the
commission "political" and said its recommendations "may or may not" be
accepted. And the outspoken northern police commander, Alik Ron, has said his
officers made no mistakes.
But if the results are a whitewash, more trouble seems certain. Hassan Asleh,
father of Asil, said: "I can't tell you exactly what will happen, but I can
tell you we will have to stand up and struggle."
* Israeli forces fired a missile that killed a prominent member of the
radical Hamas movement while he drove along a West Bank road yesterday.
Israel said it attacked Saleh Darwazeh because he was a "senior terrorist",
but the Palestinians accused the army of assassination.
