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Leading NGO ends cooperation with ‘whitewash’ Israeli army probes

May 25, 2016 at 11:41 am

Leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem will cease cooperation with military investigations into alleged abuses and crimes against Palestinians, condemning the process as a “whitewash.”

In its announcement Wednesday, accompanied by an 80-page report into the Israeli military’s failure to provide accountability, B’Tselem accused the current investigations mechanism as creating a “mere semblance of justice.”

In figures provided by the NGO, since 2000, B’Tselem has demanded an investigation in 739 cases in which “soldiers killed, injured, beat or used Palestinians as human shields, or damaged Palestinian property.” Of these 739 cases, only 25 – 3 per cent – resulted in indictments.

Based on its years of experience, the NGO has concluded that “cooperation with the military investigation and enforcement systems has not achieved justice,” but rather has lent “legitimacy to the occupation regime and aiding to whitewash it.” B’Tselem will thus “longer play a part in the pretense posed by the military law enforcement system and will no longer refer complaints to it.”

The statement is damning in its verdict of an internal investigations system it whose “real function” is described as “measured by its ability to continue to successfully cover up unlawful acts and protect perpetrators.”

B’Tselem concludes by affirming its commitment to documenting and reporting on Israeli authorities’ human rights abuses, but that “the fight for human rights will be better served by denouncing this system and exposing it for what it is.”

Shawan Jabarin, director of Palestinian human rights NGO Al Haq, told Israeli news site 972+ that B’Tselem’s decision “will help show that there is no will, that [the military investigation system] is not effective, and that it is not an independent mechanism.”

According to 972+, the developments could “very well affect processes already in place in bodies like the ICC [International Criminal Court]”, with the Office of the Prosecutor likely to take note of “B’Tselem’s message that it has lost so much faith in the Israeli military’s investigative mechanisms that it no longer believes it is worth engaging with.”

Responding to the news on Twitter, Amnesty International researcher Jacob Burns similarly praised B’Tselem’s “principle”, and expressed agreement that Israel’s military investigation system “is for whitewashes.” According to Burns, “in most cases” where Amnesty “has found evidence of serious wrong doing by Israeli forces, the military has failed to investigate.”