Apartheid

133
gas grenades (in size and color) were used by the IDF, causing long-term injuries and
disabilities. Last but not least, syringes with unidentified contents were used on Palestinians
during interrogation by the Israeli Authority, in addition to different acts of physical and
psychological humiliation. 245
Between December 1987 and September 1988, only two soldiers were found guilty of
murder and manslaughter. One of the reasons why few trials take place is the lack of
complaints because people fear the consequences of such complaints, both for the victims and
the lawyers representing the victims. This is mainly the case with physical violence not
resulting in death. Investigations into deaths are usually carried out by military police, and, on
rare occasions, justice does prevail. The repeated abuses of human rights during the uprising
serve as a reminder that these same abuses caused the rebellion to begin with.
During the first Intifada, more than 100 internal investigations a year were opened by
the Israeli military police. In the second major Intifada, which started in the year 2000, that
number shrank considerably. At the end of 2001, a total of only 59 military police
investigations, of which only 15 involved shooting incidents, had been opened since the start
of the Second Intifada 15 months earlier. Three criminal indictments of Israeli soldiers had
been handed down, but no one had been sentenced. By mid-2003, only 35 cases had made it
to court. One might safely say that the Israeli state thus indirectly encourages its soldiers to
commit crimes against humanity. At the same time, this was a much bloodier conflict than the
previous Intifada, to a large extent precisely because of this new climate of impunity, in which
Israeli soldiers felt free to shoot first and ask questions (if any) later. 246
In what, at first, seems like an opposite development and a genuine improvement, the
Israeli Supreme Court on September 6, 1999 outlawed methods of physical force that had
been implemented legally and routinely in interrogations by Israel’s General Security Service
(GSS). It meant the end of a unique and notorious distinction of the state of Israel. Until then,
it had for some time been the only country in the world with legalized torture. The
interrogation guidelines in effect until then included the use of ‘violent shaking, holding and
tying the interrogee in painful positions, sleep deprivation, covering the interrogee’s head with
a sack, and playing of loud music’. The decision thus ended legal torture of Palestinians in
interrogation. But there were still powerful voices for an amended kind of legalized torture, as
the following account, from an Israeli human rights group, bears witness.
Israel was the only country in the world where torture was legally
sanctioned; the guidelines allowing torture were drafted by a
governmental commission headed by a former Supreme Court Justice
245 Ibid: 37. A huge number of incidents and cases such as these remain unpublished and unnoticed
internationally, a circumstance which further underscores the eventual need for a TRC in Palestine and presentday
Israel. More on Israel’s unique legalized torture below.
246 Wilkinson: Israeli Activists Urge Army to Probe Civilian Slayings, 2001; N.N.: Israel Soldier Made Woman
Drink Cleaning Fluid-Court, June 23, 2003. In this particular case a soldier stood accused of forcing a Palestinian
woman at a checkpoint in Gaza to drink cleaning liquid at gunpoint. The woman survived the poisoning after
being treated at a Gaza hospital. Another incident involved five paramilitary border policemen who were charged
with torturing two Palestinians suspected of wanting to enter Jerusalem illegally. The border guards took the
Palestinians to an abandoned building and began to beat them, according to an indictment charging them with
assault and abuse. A member of the squad then urinated in a bucket, the contents of which were then poured into
the mouth of one of the detainees as a rifle was pressed to the Palestinian’s head. The guards also stubbed out
cigarettes on the hands of both Palestinians before releasing them, the indictment said. See N.N.: Israeli Police
Charged with Abusing Palestinians, September 28, 2004. In a further case, three Israeli paramilitary officers
from a border police unit confessed to forcing two youths to eat gravel, kiss their shoes, and to severely beating
the youths. N.N: Border Policemen Indicted for Abusing Palestinians, June 2, 2004. This indictment only came
about after the results of the abuse had already been shown on television. Israeli human rights groups such as the
Association for Civil Rights in Israel also report tacit approval by the Israeli army of Israeli killings of innocent
Palestinian civilians, e.g. through use of them as human shields, and of other war crimes. See Heller, C.: Israeli
Troops Violate Palestinian Rights -Report, 2003; Nasir: Israel Airstrike Kills 5; Hamas Challenges Abbas, 2006.