Images from another place, another time
By Akiva Eldar
Haaretz, November 30, 2004
Horit Herman-Peled, a volunteer for Machsom Watch, (an organization known in English as Women for Human Rights) will not forget the afternoon of Tuesday, November 9. While she was standing her watch at the Beit Iba checkpoint on the outskirts of Nablus, a Palestinian reached the front of the line, with a violin case in his hand. Apparently in an effort to ascertain that it was indeed a violin, and not explosives, the soldier at the roadblock demanded that the young man open the case and remove the violin. The soldier then asked the young man with the violin to play for him.
Herman-Peled, a lecturer in art, could not believe her eyes, or her ears. On the video footage she managed to capture (viewable on the www.horit.com Web site), the young man can be seen propping the violin on his shoulder and playing a sad tune. All the while, a long line of Palestinians continued to trail behind him, while on the other side of the counter another soldier, apparently an officer, walked about absent-mindedly, talking on a cell phone.
Herman-Peled recalls being utterly shocked, and not even having the strength to speak with the soldiers, or the violinist. As the child of Holocaust survivors, she was bothered more than anything else by the demand that a Palestinian play music for a Jewish soldier.
Private police, government funds
Last week, while Ariel Sharon was talking about the importance of democratization in Palestinian society, the Knesset Finance Committee approved an additional NIS 380,000 on top of more than NIS 32 million that has already been allocated this year to funding security for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem. MK Haim Oron (Yahad), who has for years kept track of the private security arrangements for the Ateret Cohanim and Elad association settlers that are paid for from the state budget, calculated and found that each Jewish settler in East Jerusalem costs the public coffers approximately NIS 18,000 a year. The settlers are the ones who give the orders to the security firm, making the guards into their private militia, underwritten by the Israeli public.
Oron and the Ir Amim organization, which promotes coexistence in the capital, claim that the additional allocation was granted, in part, to pay for the cost of guarding buildings that were unlawfully constructed in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods, in Silwan and Abu Dis, including a six-story structure. In a letter to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, they question how can a law-abiding state be underwriting the private security of Jewish transgressors of the construction laws, while at the same time it is sending border policemen to safeguard bulldozers razing unlawful buildings of the Palestinian neighbors. What's more, the route of the separation fence was altered in such a way that one of the legally doubtful buildings of the settlers will not be left outside the fence.
Oron and Ir Amim reminded Mazuz of his courageous stand on the transfer of public funds to illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank, and expect him to ensure that public security is placed solely in the hands of state agencies.
Mazuz has something to learn from Minister of Housing and Construction Tzipi Livni. At the end of September, not long after she replaced the patron of the settlers, Effi Eitam, in the post, she decided not to lend a hand, or her ministry's budget, to funding private militias. She contended that the settlers' private security be made the responsibility of the Ministry of Public Security.
In her written explanation, she noted that security for the settlers had in the past been assigned to the Housing Ministry, "for historic reasons." Presumably, she was referring to the period in which Sharon served as housing minister. If Livni's proposal is accepted, the Public Security Ministry - the Israel Police, that is - would be responsible for the operation of the militias.
In the meantime, Livni refuses to transfer additional funds from her ministry for guarding the settlers. The supplementary budget approved by the Finance Committee was transferred directly from the treasury to the security firm.
Wanted settlers
How might one define the denial of medical aid to an injured girl, hit by bullets fired by Jews in Hebron? A description of the incident, which appears in a report drafted by the medical officer of the Judea regional division, Captain Dr. Barak Gordon, offers a glimpse at what takes place half an hour's drive from the capital of Israel.
The document, which fell into the hands of Haaretz, describes disturbances created by participants at the funeral of Elazar Leibovich, who was killed in late July 2002 in a terrorist shooting. Participants at the funeral fired their guns indiscriminately, hit people and caused property damage. A Palestinian girl was killed, and a boy who was injured from a stabbing wound was hospitalized in moderate to serious condition. Eleven other people, including two children, an Israeli policeman, two Israeli military policemen and two settlers, were lightly injured.
The following is a brief collection from the detailed description of the chain of events that appeared in Gordon's report a few days after the incident:
13:38 - Shots were fired by Jews in the Tomb of the Patriarchs park. One Palestinian is wounded from a bullet in the hand.
13:55 - A Palestinian youth is stabbed by a Jewish youth. His condition is unknown. Members of the ta'agad (battalion medical aid station) at the Tomb are on their way.
14:00 - A Palestinian girl suffers a head injury at intersection 38; it is not known from what. The ta'agad is on the way.
14:37 - Seven injured, condition unknown, at one of the intersections. The ta'agad of the 101st battalion and the ta'agad of the regional brigade are on the way. The Tomb ta'agad has linked up with the Red Crescent and will remain in place at the funeral.
14:40 - The 101st ta'agad has set out with its equipment on foot, due to the inability to pass through with its vehicle.
15:08 - There is a Palestinian woman on the Tarpat road who is suffering from a heart ailment and is being treated by a doctor from the 101st. She requires evacuation.
16:37 - Jewish women are rioting and not allowing the ta'agad to remove the elderly patient. The assistance of military policewomen is required.
17:04 - A military policeman has been beaten by settlers and is being evacuated with a minor injury.
Dr. Gordon added in his report that during the incident, participants at the funeral blocked off access routes in the area in which there were injuries. He reported "clear interference in the treatment of Palestinian injured that delayed, at times significantly, the arrival of medical teams and the evacuation."
Furthermore, he writes, "The lack of cooperation of teams from the Arba medical dispatch operator [the emergency dispatch operator in Kiryat Arba, which is funded by the state - A.E.] in evacuating the Palestinian injured raised numerous difficulties before the military establishment, which lacks rapid and available means of evacuation."
In the recommendations section of his report, Gordon wrote, "The Jews who interfered and prevented treatment of the injured Palestinians should be arrested and put on trial."
All this happened over two years ago. The spokesman for the Israel Police's Judea and Samaria District, Superintendent Shlomi Sagi, says that the file on the firing on the girl has been shelved "for now," because the assailant is "unknown."
In two of the 19 cases that were sent to the district's claims department, the suspects are declared "escaped criminals." The suspects in seven files were convicted, six files were closed for lack of evidence, two are still pending, and two suspects were found innocent. Three additional files were transferred to the State Prosecution. Two of them were closed for lack of evidence, and one is still pending.
This is the situation, 28 months after an incident in which Israeli citizens shot a Palestinian girl to death, disrupted the work of medical teams, and denied first aid to injured children and an unwell elderly woman.
Insensitive conduct
"An examination of the incident reveals that this was a case of insensitive conduct on the part of the soldiers at the checkpoint, who contend with a complex and dangerous reality," a statement from the Israel Defense Forces Spokesman's Office said.
"The Israel Defense Forces does and continues to do all it can to improve the situation at checkpoints. As part of this effort, the IDF makes efforts to enhance sensitivity toward humanitarian and humane issues at checkpoints.
"The IDF continuously employs educational, command and disciplinary tools to emphasize to the soldiers and commanders at the checkpoint both the importance of the mission and the need to show sensitivity and consideration in the execution of the mission.
"The incident described here was examined and dealt with by the senior command levels.
These sort of incidents point to the need to continue the effort to have the message absorbed by the commanders and soldiers.
