‘We became subcontractors to the occupation’: B’Tselem ends work with Israeli army
BETHLEHEM – After 25 years of accountability work in the occupied
West Bank, Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem announced on
Wednesday its decision to discontinue their strategy of holding Israeli
forces accountable for their crimes against Palestinians through
internal military mechanisms.
Representatives of the organization, which focuses on collecting
information and documenting Israeli human rights violations against
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, called their complicity in
Israel’s military mechanisms “morally unacceptable,” in a press briefing
on Tuesday.
According to a new report released by the organization, the
inefficiency of Israeli military mechanisms to provide justice for
Palestinian victims led the organization to label their accountability
activities as a “whitewash machine” for the continuation of the nearly
50-year Israeli military occupation of the West Bank.
“B’Tselem has gradually come to the realization that the way in which
the military law enforcement system functions precludes it from the
very outset from achieving justice for the victims. Nonetheless, the
very fact that the system exists serves to convey a semblance of law
enforcement and justice,” the report stated.
The report argued that the veneer of legal legitimacy “makes it
easier to reject criticism about the injustices of the occupation,
thanks to the military’s outward pretense that even it considers some
acts unacceptable, and backs up this claim by saying that it is already
investigating these actions.”
“In so doing, not only does the state manage to uphold the perception
of a decent, moral law enforcement system, but also maintains the
military’s image as an ethical military that takes action against these
acts,” the report added.
Since the start of the second intifada in late 2000, of the 739
complaints filed by B’Tselem of Palestinians being killed, injured, used
as human shields, or having their property damaged by Israeli forces,
roughly 70 percent resulted in an investigation where no action was
taken, or in an investigation never being opened.
Only three percent of cases resulted in charges being brought against the soldiers, according to the report.
Field Researcher for B’Tselem Iyad Haddad told
Ma’an on
Tuesday that Israeli and Palestinian NGOs worked for many years to
create a “culture” of accountability in Palestinian communities plagued
with deeply-rooted mistrust for Israeli military bodies, convincing
Palestinians to submit complaints to the Israeli military when faced
with human rights violations.
However, the organization became complicit in the violations by
reinforcing the credibility of a system incapable of providing results
or any semblance of justice for individuals or their families, Haddad
said.
Kareem Jubran, field research director of B’Tselem, said he was
“ashamed” of B’Tselem’s engagement with the military occupation during
the press briefing, adding that the process forced victims to become
victims a second time, as Palestinians are commonly mistreated by
military investigators while their cases rarely result in accountability
or justice.
“We became subcontractors to the occupation,” Yael Stein, a research
director of B’Tselem, said in the conference, adding that the
organization’s accountability work served to “legitimize the whole
occupation.”
The decision has led the group to redesign its strategy from direct
accountability to working in the “public arena” through a launch of a
public awareness campaign that can “rob the system of its credibility,”
Executive Director Hagai Elad said.
B’Tselem’s disengagement with internal mechanisms of the Israeli
military occupation comes in the midst of an increasingly right-wing
government and renewed attacks on Israeli human rights organizations.
Newly appointed ultra-right Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused B’Tselem
earlier this year
of being funded by the same groups financing Hamas — the Palestinian
movement leading the besieged Gaza Strip’s de facto government, which
has been designated a “terrorist” organization by the Israeli government
— while calling B’Tselem “traitors” to the Israeli public.
In December, Ayelet Shaked, leader of the ultranationalist Israeli
Home Party, pushed for a so-called “transparency” bill that would compel
NGOs to reveal their sources of funding if more than 50 percent of
their funding came from foreign entities, in a push to crack down on
groups who receive foreign funding in order to criticize Israel.
Critics have
slammed
the bill, which passed its first reading in the Knesset in February,
with the chairwoman of the left-leaning Meretz party Zehara Galon
calling it a “continuation of the witch hunt, political persecution, and
censorship of human rights groups and left-wing organizations that
criticize the government’s conduct.”
Since organizations in Israel which rely on foreign funding also tend
to oppose the government’s right-wing policies against Palestinians,
the potential legislation is widely considered discriminatory and an
attempt to weed out human rights groups working to end the large-scale
human rights violations that occur in the occupied territory.
B’Tselem’s recent decision to focus on public awareness in Israeli
society marks a unique shift in Israeli human rights approaches to
violations against Palestinians, in a political climate where far-right
views are increasingly becoming mainstream, and concerted attacks on
human rights groups could be considered government policy.
Jaclynn Ashly contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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