A report prepared by American Public Radio highlighted:NPR“Shedding light on the way in which the Israeli army conducts investigations related to the commission of any possible violations against civilians by its soldiers.
The report gave an example of an incident that occurred on April 14, when thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children, began walking from southern Gaza to the northern part of the Strip after a rumor spread that the Israeli army would allow women, children and the elderly to pass safely.
The report says that Israeli soldiers then opened fire on the crowds as they approached a checkpoint, killing five people and wounding nearly two dozen others, according to an emergency worker and journalists who were there.
The Israeli army subsequently announced that the incident was “under review.”
What does this mean?
“In general, every incident and every complaint is not investigated in a criminal way, but in an operational way,” says Ziv Stahl, executive director of Yesh Din, an Israeli organization that provides legal protection to Palestinians.
“When the Israeli military is accused of violating international laws or its own codes of conduct, an internal agency known as a military prosecutor oversees the process,” Stahl adds.
“The agency begins by conducting an interview through its lawyers with the soldiers involved in the incident, which is confidential and is not initially intended to conduct criminal investigations,” according to Stahl.
“The army gives soldiers privileges and promises that the interviews will not be material used for a criminal investigation, so the soldiers can talk freely about what happened,” she explains.
Stahl continues, “There is no collection of evidence at this stage regarding the criminal crime, if there is one… so the approach is sometimes more practical than criminal.”
Israeli officials are concerned about the possibility of the International Criminal Court investigating government leaders over possible Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
The prospect of potential arrest warrants for Israeli leaders highlights how the IDF investigates individuals accused of violating the military’s standards of conduct in wartime.
Every year, the IDF receives hundreds of complaints about wrongdoing, whereas in the past these matters usually focused on its soldiers deployed in the occupied West Bank.
But since the beginning of the war with Hamas last October, complaints have ranged from soldiers shooting defenseless Palestinian refugees, or an incident targeting a convoy belonging to the “World Central Kitchen” relief organization, causing the death of seven of its employees early last month.
What is behind the “fatal mistakes” committed by the Israeli army in Gaza?
A three-vehicle convoy was transporting workers from the World Central Kitchen organization along the coastal road in the Gaza Strip on Monday evening. At the same time, an Israeli military drone identified the convoy as “enemy forces.” The aircraft’s operators identified the convoy as a hostile target and opened fire. fire.
According to human rights experts in Israel, the Israeli army has shown a lack of transparency and the will to investigate its soldiers.
Stahl emphasizes that some of the biggest problems come during the first phase of internal investigations within the Israeli army.
One of her organization’s most pressing concerns is how long the investigation process can take, often more than a year, and sometimes much longer, which can lead to a lack of evidence due to the length of time, according to Stahl.
In addition, alleged victims in these investigations are often not interviewed until late in the process, says Israeli legal expert Smadar Ben-Natan.
Ben-Natan adds, “The victim’s testimony, in many cases, is the first thing we think about when opening an investigation, but the exact opposite happens. They (the Israeli army) usually listen first to what the soldiers say, and after that they only obtain the testimonies of some victims.”
Ben-Natan continues, “From a legal perspective, when you combine all these elements according to the way the Israeli army conducts investigations, it is difficult to reach fair results.”
In response to these data, the Israeli army said in a statement that its forces “work in accordance with the law, and therefore it is obligated to conduct a comprehensive examination of any allegation of violation of the law, and each complaint is also examined on the basis of its merits, including through a criminal investigation if necessary.”
But data from the IDF at the end of 2022 and reviewed by NPR shows that complaints to the army rarely lead to anything.
Of the 1,260 complaints related to Israeli soldiers harming Palestinians and their property between 2017 and 2021, only 11 complaints resulted in indictments, representing less than 1 percent of all complaints.
The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem is one of many organizations that worked with the Israeli army to collect evidence in its investigations.
“We were communicating with witnesses and referring them to the military police,” says Sarit Michaeli, the organization’s spokeswoman.
She added: “My colleagues would spend hours coordinating meetings between witnesses and the military police in order to take their testimony, and sometimes we would take the evidence and transmit it.”
After years of gathering evidence to assist the Israeli military in its investigations, Michaeli says the organization has rarely seen any of its cases go beyond the initial investigation stage.
“We did this for many years and eventually came to the conclusion that there was no point,” Michaeli continues. “No matter what we did, the result was always the same: lack of accountability.”
Michaeli notes that the organization has stopped referring cases to the Israeli army completely since 2016.
Michaeli stresses: “We have come to the conclusion that continuing to refer cases to Israeli investigative bodies is not only counterproductive through a lack of accountability, but it also gives a false impression of the existence of an effective system” of justice.
Michaeli explained that B’Tselem currently continues to collect evidence when Israeli soldiers kill or injure Palestinians, but instead of referring it to the army, the group now publishes it on social media and through the free press.
At the beginning of this month, Israeli officials told the New York Times that they expected the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants against members of the Israeli government and perhaps Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in connection with the management of the devastating military operations launched by Israel in the Gaza Strip.
According to the American newspaper, the International Criminal Court is also considering bringing charges against leaders of the Hamas movement.
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