Israeli Rights Group Denounces Army

JERUSALEM -- Israeli human rights advocates on Wednesday blasted the Israeli army for imposing curfews on the West Bank and Gaza Strip that deprive Palestinians of their ability to earn a living and at times their lives.

The report released Wednesday by B’Tselem, a human rights organization headquartered in Jerusalem, focused on the recent deaths of 15 Palestinians, eight of them children, who were killed by the army in its efforts to enforce the curfew.

“Shooting a person simply because he left home during curfew constitutes an excessive use of force,” the report stated. “Curfew is no longer a tool to meet specific security needs, but a sweeping means of collective punishment. The prolonged curfew has made Palestinian life in the West Bank intolerable, forcing the residents to violate the curfew on occasion.”

In a written response to the report, the Israeli army said that its regulations do not permit soldiers to shoot at curfew violators unless the soldiers are in danger and that any allegations of such shootings were under investigation.

“The curfew causes suffering. There is a dilemma here. On the one hand we want to ease the suffering of the Palestinians. But we must defend ourselves,” Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, the army’s coordinator for the Palestinian territories, told a meeting of diplomats and journalists.

The most dramatic of the shooting incidents took place in the West Bank city of Jenin on June 21 when hundreds of residents rushed into the downtown market to do some shopping in the erroneous belief that the curfew had been lifted, according to the report. As in many of the incidents, Palestinians had not been clearly informed that there was a curfew.

Four people were killed, a 60-year-old schoolteacher and three children, when a tank opened fire.

Ahmad Shohaneh, a Jenin resident, had gone so far as to call a friend downtown to verify that the curfew had been lifted before venturing there with his children, one of whom was killed and two others injured.

“I got out [of the car] to buy bread and potatoes, and the children stayed in the car,” Shohaneh told the human rights investigators. “Suddenly, around noon, I heard intense gunfire. The kids began to scream.... I saw that my son Nail had been injured and was bleeding. I did not stop, and continued driving to get out of the gunfire range. When I left the market, I stopped to see how Nail was

In an incident in Nablus on Aug. 11, Ahmad Qureni, a 54-year-old widower with seven children, was shot to death as he drove a truck for the municipal electric company during a curfew, despite a supposed exemption for municipal employees.

A colleague who was in the truck said that an Israeli soldier fired directly at the windshield from a distance of 25 yards. Video footage obtained by B’Tselem showed that the truck had a blinking orange light clearly identifying it as a municipal vehicle, according to the report. The army said in its statement that disciplinary action had been taken against an officer and a soldier.

The B’Tselem report also complained that the Israeli army was shooting tear-gas canisters at close range at curfew violators “simply to abuse the Palestinians ... [with] no security objective in mind.” In the most recent incident, Sept. 26, the report said an Israeli soldier fired at a women carrying her 14-month-old grandchild as they got out of a taxi in Hebron. The baby choked to death from the fumes, and the grandmother was injured by being struck in the back of the neck.

In other developments, hundreds of Jewish settlers confronted the Israeli army at two small illegal outposts in the West Bank that are to be removed under orders of the Defense Ministry. The incidents were resolved without violence.

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Times staff writer Laura King contributed to this report.