Lack of Accountability Charged : Deaths in the Intifada: Questions Persist on Israeli Military Role

Everyone, witnesses and military prosecutors alike, agreed that Iyad Aqel, 17, was badly beaten by Israeli soldiers in an empty lot near his house in the Gaza Strip.

But more than a year after the incident, military officials say his death, which occurred early the next day in a hospital, was not necessarily caused by the beating. Instead, four soldiers are being charged only with causing “severe injury,” an indictment that avoids the severe charges of manslaughter or murder.

The decision by military prosecutors is raising questions about the firmness of Israel’s repeated pledges to curb military abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. There is some unease inside Israel over a string of unexplained deaths in prison and at the hands of soldiers in the field trying to suppress the Arab uprising.

Army Lacks Credibility

“The army is coming to the conclusion that the cause of every death is natural,” said Felicia Langer, an activist lawyer who has taken up the beating and shooting cases of many Arabs. “They have no credibility. None at all.”

“If the army investigates at all, it takes forever and the conclusions are questionable. It is very suspicious,” said Dedi Zucker, a member of a faction in the Knesset that is highly critical of the government’s handling of the uprising.

The U.S. government, Israel’s staunchest ally, has noted a trend toward indulgence and a lack of accountability. A recent State Department human rights report remarked that “there were many cases of unjustified killing which did not result in disciplinary actions or prosecutions.” In those that did, the report added, “punishments were usually lenient.”

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was in Washington for his first face-to-face meeting with President Bush on Thursday. Shamir rejected American calls for Israel to ease its military occupation as a good-will gesture to the Palestinians.

Israel’s efforts to subdue the uprising has eroded its image abroad. In recent weeks, a parade of visiting U.S. members of Congress has told Shamir that Israel’s support among the American public--and by implication, Congress--is waning.

Shamir argues that Israel is forced to take tough measures against the Arabs because they are viewed to be as much of a security threat as the armies of hostile Arab nations.

The Israel Defense Forces maintain that all cases of wrongdoing are looked at carefully and that if investigations appear to drag or skirt the most severe judgments, it is only because of thoroughness and the special difficulties of suppressing the uprising. Soldiers are provoked verbally and assaulted with hails of rocks and gasoline bombs, putting them under unusual stress, army officials point out.

“In some cases, soldiers have acted so far below military standards that there is no alterative but to prosecute,” said Col. Uri Shoham, the deputy advocate general of the army. “But in all cases, you have to take into consideration all the factors. We don’t want to bring a maximum charge that may not hold up in court.”

600 Cases Investigated

The army has investigated about 600 crimes alleged during the intifada, everything from theft to causing bodily injury to killings, Shoham said. About 55 have been brought to trial and 36 have reached a verdict, including 19 that involved death by shooting or beating, the army spokesman said. Scores of others have been reprimanded in their units without going to courts martial. The longest sentence given out in court was one and a half years in jail.

Final arguments in the most notable case--of four soldiers of the Givati Brigade charged with beating Palestinian Aqel to death in his home--have been heard, and a verdict is pending.

The Aqel inquiry went through a prolonged period of delay before last week’s decision to prosecute was reached.

In February, 1988, Aqel and a cousin, Khaled, were dragged from their home in the Bureij refugee camp, taken to a field, beaten, then told to run, according to a parliamentary report.

But when Aqel tried to leave, the soldiers grabbed him and hit him again, the report said. He died shortly after midnight the next morning after passers-by had rushed him to a hospital.

At the time, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin had authorized troops to beat protesters and rioters in a policy he called one of “force, beatings and blows.” The army dismissed original allegations of undue force, saying the complaints were a publicity stunt. Later, as the Aqel case simmered in the Israeli press, the army said the soldiers involved could not be located.

Finally, the case was reopened and charges were brought against the four yet-unnamed soldiers. Manslaughter charges were considered but rejected for two reasons, military sources said: no thorough autopsy was made, and the hour’s trip from the vacant lot and Shifa Hospital in Gaza left open the question of whether, somehow, Aqel was further injured along the way.

The case is only the latest to be revived after being all but forgotten in the daily stream of news about the uprising. Peace activist Zucker published a list of 13 such instances of wrongful death that have gone unpunished.

Zucker charged that in its investigations, the army rarely talks to Arab witnesses, the inquiries are delayed unreasonably and results, if any, are often kept secret.

Last week, in a decision without precedent, Israel’s Supreme Court ordered that the body of Ibrahim Matur, 32, a West Bank prisoner who died in his jail cell last October, be dug up and re-examined.

Prison authorities said that Matur hanged himself after having been on a hunger strike. An autopsy showed that besides having marks on his neck that indicated hanging or strangulation, Matur also bore lacerations on his wrists and ankles showing that he had been bound. Traces of morphine were also found in his liver, evidence that he had been drugged about 48 hours before his death.

Cell Not Inspected

The investigators never produced the actual instrument--a cord, strip of cloth or belt--that Matur might have used to hang himself, nor was there any inspection of the cell where he was kept to see whether there existed a pipe or bar from which he had hung.

The official report states that Matur’s body showed signs of being beaten, particularly on the back. His family believes that he may have been strangled or beaten to death and then made up to look like a suicide. In any case, they want to know how, if Matur had been bound and drugged, he was also capable of killing himself.

Last month, a prisoner in Gaza died after suffering repeated beatings; prison officials said he died of an ulcer. The explanation has not been widely accepted. Lawyers pressing for the case to be reopened argued that if the prisoner, Mahmoud Masri, had been suffering from ulcers that could have led to his death, he would have complained of great pain several days before dying. In that case, they point out, he should have received medical treatment.

The independent newspaper Haaretz criticized the government for putting the inquiry in the hands of the prison authorities themselves.

“Had the authorities wanted a serious investigation, had they really been striving to thoroughly investigate the truth and to learn lessons from it, they would not have given the investigation to a body connected to the institution being investigated,” Haaretz said.

Although the army routinely announces inquiries into shootings and other violence in the West Bank and Gaza, the probes often seem superficial.

Last September, for example, a teen-ager died during unrest in the Jebel Mukaber neighborhood of Jerusalem. The army said he was killed when struck in the mouth by a tear-gas canister fired by a soldier. Witnesses saw snipers shooting from a nearby hill. The army announced an investigation but never interviewed any member of the victim’s family or anyone else in the neighborhood.

l Col. Shoham said that the army runs into numerous difficulties when trying to look into such incidents. First, Arabs are sometimes unwilling to give testimony. Hostility toward Israeli officials make interviews in Arab neighborhoods dangerous. In addition, the family prefers a quick burial that makes post-mortems impossible. Finally, it is sometimes difficult to locate the units involved even a day after the event.

“We don’t have anything to hide. I think that even our soldiers expect us to look into cases when something goes wrong. We set high standards,” Shoham said.

Other high-ranking officers, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the need to protect military morale is a factor. Many soldiers find their police role in the occupied land distasteful and the military hesitates to feed discontent by looking over their shoulders too closely, the officers said.