No Justice for Palestinians, Activists Say

The recent acquittal of a Jewish settler in the 1996 death of a Palestinian boy has renewed long-standing concerns among human rights advocates about discrimination against Palestinians by Israel’s law enforcement and justice systems.

The settler, Nahum Korman, was acquitted of manslaughter Aug. 16 by a Jerusalem district court judge who ruled that there was insufficient evidence to convict him in the death of 11-year-old Hilmi Shousha of the West Bank village of Hussan.

Judge Ruth Orr wrote that the prosecution had failed to prove its case that Korman, 35, a security guard from the Hadar Beitar settlement near Hussan, beat and kicked the child, knocked him down, stepped on his throat and struck him with a pistol.

The judge said she found the eyewitness accounts by two young cousins of Hilmi’s to be unconvincing. She also dismissed the findings of Israel’s chief coroner, Dr. Yehuda Hiss, that the cousins’ testimony was largely consistent with the injuries found on the child’s body.

As Korman’s family reacted to the acquittal with relief and Hilmi’s with sadness, human rights advocates said they could not prove that the judge’s decision was incorrect, although one organization collected its own evidence after the boy’s death and strongly supported the prosecutor’s case.

But, as one said, “we have a very bad feeling” about the verdict.

Studies Suggest Discrimination

The reason, they say, is that studies by several groups over more than 10 years suggest a history of discrimination and negligence by Israeli authorities in cases involving Israeli civilians accused of killing or injuring Palestinians or of damaging their property.

“Unfortunately, and I say this with a lot of sorrow, despite all the years of evidence, of the peace process and all the agreements, the Israeli government has failed in one of the main functions of a state: to enforce the law and protect the lives of civilians under its authority,” said Eitan Felner, director of B’Tselem, an independent Israeli human rights group.

Felner and other human rights advocates, Israeli and Arab, assert that the bias exists throughout Israel’s law enforcement and justice systems, from police officers and investigators to prosecutors and judges. He said little improvement had been made over the years despite a number of critical reports, including some from the affected ministries themselves.

“There is a very deeply ingrained pattern of discrimination,” Felner said.

Ido Baum, a Justice Ministry spokesman, denied that there is “any systematic discrimination” against Palestinians by officials of the ministry.

“Every case is tried on its merits,” Baum said. “We get the evidence and weigh it and take it to court. There is no discrimination.”

Spokesmen for the Israeli police declined to comment on the advocates’ concerns. Aides to Internal Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, each of whom has been on the job less than two months, said the ministers considered themselves too new in their positions to address the issue.

A spokesman for the courts administration also said he could not comment on the Korman verdict.

Human rights organizations acknowledge that Israeli investigators working in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are often hampered by the reluctance of many Palestinian witnesses and even victims to come forward to offer testimony, evidently out of fear of arrest or retribution. Others fail to show up for meetings or court dates.

The investigators also must cope with a confusing patchwork of Jordanian, Egyptian and Israeli laws, both civilian and military, that govern the occupied areas and the Israelis and Palestinians who live in them.

And yet, the advocates declare, the statistics and testimony they have gathered over 11 years, since the beginning of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in December 1987, paint a disturbing portrait of Israeli law enforcement and justice as experienced by Palestinians in the occupied areas.

Statistics kept by B’Tselem, for example, show a sharp disparity between the results of investigations and trials in cases in which Palestinians were alleged to have killed Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza and those in which Israeli civilians, mostly settlers, were implicated in the deaths of Palestinians. The Palestinians were treated far more severely.

Since the end of 1987, B’Tselem’s figures show, Israeli civilians have been implicated in the deaths of 113 Palestinians, while Palestinians have been implicated in the deaths of 90 Israelis.

According to the records, 32 of the Palestinian suspects were convicted of murder and sentenced to life terms; six others were found to be accomplices and received sentences ranging from 11 years to life. (In 14 cases, the homes of suspects or their family members were demolished or sealed.) Indictments have been filed against 14 suspects and are pending against others.

Among the rest, 15 Palestinian suspects were killed by Israeli security forces during or after the incidents; 10 more were tried and convicted by the Palestinian Authority, against Israel’s wishes.

Among the Israeli suspects, however, only four were convicted of murder. Two of those received life sentences, which were later reduced; the others got lesser terms. Six suspects were convicted of manslaughter and three others of being accomplices; their sentences ranged from 18 months to seven years in prison.

The manslaughter indictments of six Israelis were knocked down to negligent homicide; five other Israelis, also indicted for manslaughter, were found guilty on unrelated charges. Five were acquitted.

And in 38 cases, B’Tselem found, the files were closed with no action taken.

“In some of these cases, Israeli authorities did virtually nothing to try to apprehend the suspects or investigate,” Felner said. “On the other hand, when you’re talking about Palestinian suspects, you see many murder convictions and not a single acquittal. The figures speak for themselves.”

Said Dedi Zucker, a former Israeli parliament member and longtime human rights activist: “There is no reasonable excuse for any of this. I have come to believe that cases like this show that after so many years of occupation, we cannot judge Palestinians, or treat Palestinians, with any real justice.”

Korman’s case began on the afternoon of Oct. 27, 1996, when the settlement guard drove into Hussan in search of a group of Palestinian youths who had been throwing stones at Israeli cars on a road near Hadar Beitar.

A few minutes later, Hilmi Shousha was badly hurt, suffering head and neck injuries. He died the next day. His cousins Ibrahim and Tahrir Shousha, 12 and 14 at the time of the incident, testified that Korman had chased the boy down, beaten and kicked him, and then tried to administer first aid.

Korman, who refused to discuss the case with investigators for 18 months, testified in court that the boy tripped and fell while running away and did not respond to the guard’s frantic efforts to save him. He did not touch the child until he began trying to revive him, Korman said.

Orr, a veteran of 28 years on the bench, exonerated Korman, ruling that she had “no credible evidence that the defendant even touched the deceased, not to mention the horrific acts attributed to him.”

The judge concluded that various villagers, including Ibrahim and Tahrir, had collaborated on a version of what happened, and that Hiss, for whom she expressed respect, had been “distracted” by their story after he watched a reenactment of the events.

In an interview after the verdict, Hiss, the director of the national coroner’s office, said the testimony from the two boys contained small inconsistencies, which he said were natural under such stressful circumstances. But in general, “their story was compatible with the injuries” on Hilmi’s body, he said.

Of the fatal injury to the child’s neck, Hiss said, “in 90% of the cases involving this type of injury, it’s caused by a blow, and 10% by a fall. I felt it was caused by a blow, and this was reinforced by the scene examination and eyewitnesses. The judge didn’t agree.”

Baum, the Justice Ministry spokesman, said prosecutors were disappointed by the verdict and are considering taking the case back to court. They have 45 days to appeal.

After the verdict, Korman’s wife, Rachel, criticized Hiss, accusing him of “working for the prosecution” and trying to steer the witnesses.

Hilmi’s father, meanwhile, expressed sorrow at the verdict, which he termed a “terrible injustice.” But he said the family has been comforted by supportive calls from many Israelis, including human rights activists and others he works with as a truck driver on the West Bank.

Salim Shousha, 55, said he was not surprised at the verdict, which “showed that Arabs do not get justice in Israel. There is no value for the Arab as a human being.”

Khader Shkirat, who heads the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, agreed.

He recalled a 1987 case in which an Israeli military court convicted four soldiers of negligently shooting to death an 18-year-old Palestinian. Their sentence was one hour in jail, suspended, and a fine of one Israeli agora--then about one-third of a U.S. penny.

“We have come to expect such discrimination,” Shkirat said.

Group Questions Investigations

In a separate report, the Assn. for Civil Rights in Israel looked at the cases of 23 Palestinian children killed by Israeli civilians, and raised questions about the investigations, prosecutions and results.

Setting aside six cases that could not be prosecuted because the suspect--Hebron massacre gunman Baruch Goldstein--was dead, the association found that 10 others were closed because police “could not locate” the suspect. In another, police apparently lost the file.

And in two of the remaining six cases, the defendants won on “technicalities”: The trials were held during a period of enforced closure of the occupied territories, and the Palestinian witnesses were unable to reach the court to testify, said Miriam Leedor, the spokeswoman for the civil rights group.

“The fact that 17 children have been killed and not even one person was convicted of murder, and that many of these cases were just closed or even lost, makes us very, very worried,” Leedor said. “Obviously, there’s a problem here.”

Batsheva Sobelman and Maher Abukhater of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.