Alwaght- B’Tselem, The Jewish Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, announced on Wednesday that it is stopping filing Palestinians’ complaints against Israeli Regime forces with the military justice system, arguing that these petitions cause the plaintiffs more harm than good.
According to Israeli regime-based Haaretz, the human rights group acknowledged that filing petitions for investigating incidents in which Israeli forces harm Palestinians, and of assisting military police in collecting testimony or in submission of medical documents, has not brought justice to affected Palestinians.
After 25 years of working with Tel Aviv regime's, the human rights organization issued a statement, reading “B’Tselem will continue to document human rights violations carried out by Israel in the territories and to report on them, but will no longer file complaints, coordinate meetings between Military Police investigators, victims and Palestinian witnesses, and acquire various documents for the investigatory authorities."
"The organization does not wish to assist authorities in their attempts to create a false picture of justice being served. B’Tselem has decided to no longer approach the military law enforcement system. This also applies to cases in which soldiers are suspected of violating the law, even with the understanding that Palestinian victims have no other recourse for filing a complaint against those who harm them”.
B’Tselem activists say that since the group’s founding in 1989, they have approached military legal authorities with requests to investigate hundreds of cases in which soldiers allegedly broke the law. According to figures published in a report called “A Fig Leaf for the Occupation,” B’Tselem filed 739 such requests since 2000. In 75 percent of these cases investigations were opened, but only in 25 percent were indictments filed against the soldiers involved. The actual number of soldiers prosecuted for transgressions against Palestinians is higher, since the report only refers to indictments made after a petition by B’Tselem.
According to the NGO, the military law enforcement system suffers from a systemic flaw which prevents the undertaking of more than a small number of prosecutions. The report notes as an example that in several cases, mainly until the policy regarding investigations was changed in 2011, a criminal investigation was opened only after a military debriefing. This reduced the chances of a successful investigation, by allowing soldiers to coordinate their testimonies.
While B’Tselem cooperated with the IDF for years, hoping this would lead to improvements, it now says that “In reality... B’Tselem’s cooperation with the military investigation and enforcement system has not achieved justice, but instead lent legitimacy to the occupation regime and aided in whitewashing it.”
