From a distance of 70
metres and through the sight of his machine gun, Assaf could
tell that the Palestinian man was aged between 20 and 30,
unarmed and trying to get away from an Israeli tank. But the
details didn't matter much, because Assaf's orders were to
"fire at anything that moved".
Assaf, a soldier in the Israeli army, pressed the trigger,
firing scores of bullets as the body fell to the ground. "He
ran and I started shooting for a few seconds. He fell. I was a
machine. I fire. I leave and that's that. We never spoke about
it afterwards."
It was the summer of 2002, and Assaf and his armoured unit
had been ordered to enter the Gaza town of Dir al Balah
following the firing of mortars into nearby Jewish
settlements. His orders were, he told the Guardian, "'Every
person you see on the street, kill him'. And we would just do
it."
It was not the first time that Assaf had killed an innocent
person in Gaza while following orders, but after his discharge
he began to think about the things he did.
"The reason why I am telling you this is that I want the
army to think about what they are asking us to do, shooting
unarmed people. I don't think it's legal."
Assaf is not alone. In recent months dozens of soldiers,
including the son of an an Israeli general, all recently
discharged, have come forward to share their stories of how
they were ordered in briefings to shoot to kill unarmed people
without fear of reprimand.
The soldiers were brought into contact with the Guardian
with the assistance of Breaking the Silence, a pressure group
of former soldiers who want the Israeli public to confront the
reality of army activities. The group insisted on anonymity of
its witnesses to protect the soldiers from persecution and
prosecution.
Although those speaking out are a tiny proportion, their
testimonies reflect a widespread culture of impunity,
according to Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human rights group
B'Tselem.
"During the first intifada, there were printed rules of
engagement. In the second there are none and what rules exist
are kept secret. This leaves a wide scope for interpretation
for officers and soldiers," she said.
According to B'Tselem, 3,269 Palestinians have been killed
by Israeli security forces in almost five years. About 1,700
are believed to have been civilians and 654 minors.
According to the army, over the same period it has
investigated 131 cases of soldiers misusing firearms,
resulting in 18 indictments and seven convictions. As a result
of the testimonies received by the Guardian and Breaking the
Silence, army prosecutors are looking at a further 17 cases of
alleged criminal activity.
The death toll, the testimony of the soldiers and the small
number of convictions appear to contradict the Israeli army's
stated aims. "Soldiers will not use their weapons and force to
harm human beings who are not combatants or prisoners of war,
and will do all in their power to avoid causing harm to their
lives, bodies, dignity and property," the Israeli Defence
Forces website says.
The doctrine of the IDF clearly places the rule of law
above military expediency. "IDF soldiers will be meticulous in
giving only lawful orders and shall refrain from obeying
blatantly illegal orders."
Despite his qualms about legality, Assaf says he would
carry out the same orders again when he returns to reserve
duty.
Another soldier, Moshe, told the Guardian he and his
colleagues came under pressure to obey illegal shoot-to-kill
orders. As part of his sergeant's training course, he and his
fellow trainees were ordered to set up ambushes in Jenin in
May 2003. He said there was "pressure to get kills".
Before the operation, the soldiers were briefed that they
were on the lookout for armed men. But their targets also
included children and teenagers who habitually climbed on
armoured personnel carriers as they lumbered through the
narrow streets. On a few occasions, machine guns had been
stolen from APCs.
"We were expressly told that we were just waiting for
someone to climb on an APC, and ordered to shoot to kill,"
said Moshe. "After a day or two, a 12-year-old climbed on one
of the APCs. There were a lot of guesses about his age. First
they said he was eight, later that he was 12. In any case, he
climbed on an APC, and one of our sharpshooters killed him.
The neighbouring company also had an incident with a kid or
teenager who was killed."
The statistics collected by the Palestinian Human Rights
Monitoring Group show that on May 14, Diya Gawadreh, 13, was
killed by a live bullet. Kamal Amjad Nawahda, 13, was shot by
Israeli soldiers on May 22. He died on May 27.
After Moshe returned to his paratroop unit, he said there
were several incidents when children and teenagers were killed
after bullets aimed at their legs hit their chests. The
attitude was, he said, "so kids got killed. For a soldier it
means nothing. An officer can get a 100 or 200 shekel
[£12.50-£25] fine for such a thing."
A common theme in the soldiers' testimony was the desire to
avenge Israeli casualties and inflict collective punishment on
Palestinians.
May 2004 was a bad month for the Israeli army in Gaza. Four
soldiers were blown to pieces when their explosive-laden APC
hit a roadside bomb in Gaza City. As the army took over,
another seven soldiers were killed in a similar incident in
Rafah, at the other end of Gaza. In response the army launched
an operation "to secure the neighbourhood along the
Philadelphi Road [the border between Gaza and Egypt] and to
make sure they are clean from terrorists," said Major General
Dan Harel, the local commander.
Thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homes,
and around 50 died, of whom between a quarter and a half were
civilians. According to Rafi, an officer in the Shaldag, an
elite unit connected to the air force, the whole mission was
about revenge. "The commanders said kill as many people as
possible," he said.
He and his men were ordered to shoot anyone who appeared to
be touching the ground, as if they might be placing a roadside
bomb, or anyone seen on a roof or a balcony, as if they might
be observing Israeli forces for military reasons, regardless
of whether they were armed.
Asma Moghayyer, 16, and her brother Ahmed, 13, were shot as
they went to collect clothes from a rooftop washing line. The
Israeli army insisted the children had been blown up by a
roadside bomb. However, journalists visiting the morgue saw
only single bullet wounds to the head.
The truth, said Rafi, was that they were shot by an Israeli
soldier following clear orders to shoot anyone on a roof
regardless of their role in the conflict.
Rafi says that his overriding impression of the operation
was "chaos" and the "indiscriminate use of force". "Gaza was
considered a playground for sharpshooters."
Eli, a staff sergeant in the paratroopers, was sent on an
arrest mission to Askar refugee camp in Nablus on November 27
2002, during Ramadan. He saw another squad of troops notice a
man on the street in the early morning. "They shouted, 'Wakef'
[stop in Arabic]. The man started running away; they started
shooting at him, chasing him.
"They also saw this object he was carrying and feared it
was a bomb. [They] shot him and verified the kill - threw a
grenade at him, and then shot him once more in the head," he
recounted.
The man, 24-year-old Jihad Mohammed al-Natour, was carrying
a drum with which to wake the camp before dawn so that they
could eat before beginning their fast. It is a traditional
role. The drummer is known as the musaharati. "No one bothered
telling us and for that the guy died," Eli told Breaking the
Silence.
The wave of suicide bombings that began in 2001 made many
soldiers feel that their families and country were under
serious attack and helped create a culture where army crimes
were not questioned.
In testimony to the group, Avi recounted how a soldier in
his unit was allowed to get away with the murder of an
innocent Palestinian. A staff sergeant in the paratroopers,
Avi was serving in Hebron on October 13 2000 when he heard one
of his men firing from the lookout position above him. "We
knew the man was crazy ... out of his mind," he said.
The soldier denied shooting, but was contradicted by a film
made by an intelligence unit. "You see a live video recording
of someone shooting towards the square - towards someone who
was just unloading some stuff from his vehicle. A
twentysomething-year-old ... The man is being hit in the back.
A day later we were told he died."
The man was Mansur Taha Ahmed, 21, a coffee merchant, who
left a wife and three children. Avi said: "We keep our dirty
laundry inside, so the company commander decided to silence
this event. He made the [video] cassette vanish and the
soldier had to do 35 days of chores ... after which he came
back to the company."
All the soldiers, with the exception of Assaf, were shocked
by their experiences but uncertain of how to act. "The belief
in the ethics of the Israeli army is so fundamental to Israeli
society," said Rafi. "People do not want to hear the reality."
Colonel Liron Libman, the chief military prosecutor, said
testimonies brought to light by Breaking the Silence had
resulted in 17 investigations, some of which were still going
on. Investigation of the testimonies, he said, revealed that
some were exaggerated and some relied on hearsay. However, the
incidents described to the Guardian and Breaking the Silence
by the soldiers match deaths recorded by human rights groups
and in the media.
Col Libman said his department was independent of the army
and that a criminal investigation could be triggered by media
reports, non-governmental organisations, Palestinian sources
and complaints from within the army. "However, because of the
nature of the situation, which we describe as armed conflict
short of war, it is not possible to investigate the death of
every Palestinian civilian."
© Copyright 2005 Guardian Newspapers Ltd
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