Soldiers can open fire on stone throwers and molotov cocktails, even after the facts. A change that delighted the right.
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By allowing its soldiers to shoot real bullets on stone throwers or molotov cocktails, even if they no longer constitute an immediate threat, the Israeli army has considerably relaxed its rules to shoot in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank . The information, revealed by the Kan public television channel on December 19, has been confirmed by several spokespersons of the military forces under cover of anonymity. In its public statements, the army maintains a form of blur: “the operational procedures are regularly updated if necessary. Being classified secret-defense, they can not be published.”
So far, the rules allowed the use of the lethal force only to prevent an imminent attack. But according to this new procedure, the soldiers could shoot and “neutralize” a Palestinian civilian who would put the life of Israeli civilians in danger the only fact of his presence in the “combat zone”. It does not concern Israeli civilians: these benefiting from the protection of the civil judicial system, while it is the military regime that applies to the Palestinians of the West Bank.
The Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, Mohammad Shtayyeh, who described these new rules of “implementation policy”, called on the urgent intervention of the international community. In theory, this fire authorization would oppose international laws as well as the overall framework of Israeli law, which formally authorizes its soldiers to make use of their weapons only if they believe that a life is in danger. .
“Transposition of reality on the ground”
This new rule “does not constitute a change, but rather a transposition of reality on the ground”, criticizes the organization of human rights b’tselem. “In fact, the situation is already catastrophic: we are continually documenting cases of civilians killed, even children, while they were no danger,” Yael Stein denounces, NGO’s research director.
“The principles of the commitment rules are very clear. They are learn by heart, they are recalled before each transaction, says Nadav Weiman, a former sniper who today militates with Breaking The Silence, an organization former soldiers who testify to their service within the armed forces. But, on the ground, there is what is called “the spirit of the commander”. In the end, we do what we want. All Is based on the officers’ behavior. “With little consequences at the key – the Israeli soldiers implicated in indiscriminate shots are only very rarely sanctioned in the face of the facts. “The military authorities protect themselves behind pages and pages of opaque legal language, that no one understands,” adds me Stein, of B’Tselem.
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