IDF More Dangerous Than Ever: Dramatic Increase In House Demolitions
Ha'Aretz | 18.06.2006 21:52 | Repression | World
Eight months after High Court bans use of 'neighbor procedure,' Arabs are more at risk than before
Huge rise in number of houses IDF is razing during arrest ops
By Amos Harel
When the High Court of Justice decided to ban the use of any form of the "neighbor procedure" eight months ago, in which Palestinian civilians were forced to enter homes of barricaded fugitives, senior Israel Defense Forces officers warned that this would likely endanger soldiers' lives.
A Haaretz inquiry has shown that since the court's decision, the new arrest procedures are not any more dangerous to soldiers, but that is because the IDF is using more aggressive tactics during the actual operations. It turns out that the end result of the decision is different from the original intention: both the army and human rights groups, who closely follow developments in the territories, agree that the risk to the lives of Palestinian civilians is greater today. Furthermore, the new procedures result in more extensive damage to Palestinian homes in the territories.
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In early October 2005, the High Court justices accepted the petition of human rights organizations against the "neighbor procedure." This tactic, employed hundreds of times in the territories during the first intifada, involved forcing the Palestinian neighbors of wanted militants to enter the homes of the barricaded fugitives in an effort to convince them to surrender, and consequently, also bring out information for the army on the conditions inside the home.
This forcing of Palestinian civilians to act as "agents" for the IDF drew intense public criticism, especially when a Palestinian from a village in the northern West Bank was shot and killed by his barricaded neighbor during the application of the "neighbor procedure."
Early warning
The IDF then employed a more complicated version of this tactic, called "early warning procedure," in which the neighbor could not be forced to enter the house in question unless it was done with his consent, and similarly the neighbor could not be forced to wear an army bullet-proof vest and helmet.
To the chagrin of the IDF the justices shot this procedure down as well.
Senior General Staff officers tried to convince the court of the necessity of the tactic, and even Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz volunteered to testify before the court. The justices were not impressed.
The current tactic is called "outstretched arm." This allows the army to use an interlocutor, someone who normally lives in the house, and only if they are still in the house at the time the soldiers arrive. In most cases the fugitives allow the civilians inside to exit the house, and in that case the army can ask a family member to use a bullhorn to call out to the fugitive to surrender, so long as this is done at a safe distance.
So, does the use of the new procedure endanger soldiers' lives?
"No, because they take no chances," says a senior IDF officer serving in the West Bank. "Not one of us will send a soldier to check a home in which it is known that a living, armed fugitive is barricaded, before we have carried out very aggressive action."
The operation is as follows: If the fugitive refuses to exit, warning shots are fired around the house and then at points in the home that appear suspicious. If the fugitive continues to refuse to surrender, a bulldozer is brought in and begins to pound the walls of the house. The final stage is for the bulldozer to raze the home with everyone in it. Only then are troops sent in to search for survivors.
Quick escalation results
In the army they complain that the outright ban on any form of the "neighbor procedure" diminishes the tactical options of the officers. "The result is that very quickly we escalate in means, in other words, we use the bulldozers," one officer says.
"More homes are damaged. In some of the cases the damage is not total because after a number of bulldozer blows, the fugitive realizes that he has no way out and opts to surrender," the officer added.
Data from the human rights group B'Tselem appears to confirm this trend.
More important, however, is whether the new procedures have made it safer for Palestinian civilians. In one incident, a 43-year old woman was killed when shots fired at a home of a fugitive strayed into her home. The soldiers say that the conditions at the site made accurate shooting difficult. An internal probe concluded that the soldiers violated safety regulations, but no Military Police investigation was initiated.
In the IDF they know that they have lost the battle over the "neighbor procedure." But in conversations with Haaretz the officers maintain that the court's decision reflects a certain dislocation from the operational realities in the territories, and that the moral argument accepted by the court has resulted in graver danger to the lives of Palestinian civilians and their property.
But there are those at the General Staff who say that "over and over [Supreme Court President] Aharon Barak has saved us from ourselves. Against rampant terrorism there were times when we lost our sense of judgment and brought excessive means to bear. The High Court, by intervening in matters such as the route of the separation fence and the neighbor procedure, brought us back to a rational state, even if the officers in the field may not like it."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/726988.html
Huge rise in number of houses IDF is razing during arrest ops
By Amos Harel
When the High Court of Justice decided to ban the use of any form of the "neighbor procedure" eight months ago, in which Palestinian civilians were forced to enter homes of barricaded fugitives, senior Israel Defense Forces officers warned that this would likely endanger soldiers' lives.
A Haaretz inquiry has shown that since the court's decision, the new arrest procedures are not any more dangerous to soldiers, but that is because the IDF is using more aggressive tactics during the actual operations. It turns out that the end result of the decision is different from the original intention: both the army and human rights groups, who closely follow developments in the territories, agree that the risk to the lives of Palestinian civilians is greater today. Furthermore, the new procedures result in more extensive damage to Palestinian homes in the territories.
Advertisement
In early October 2005, the High Court justices accepted the petition of human rights organizations against the "neighbor procedure." This tactic, employed hundreds of times in the territories during the first intifada, involved forcing the Palestinian neighbors of wanted militants to enter the homes of the barricaded fugitives in an effort to convince them to surrender, and consequently, also bring out information for the army on the conditions inside the home.
This forcing of Palestinian civilians to act as "agents" for the IDF drew intense public criticism, especially when a Palestinian from a village in the northern West Bank was shot and killed by his barricaded neighbor during the application of the "neighbor procedure."
Early warning
The IDF then employed a more complicated version of this tactic, called "early warning procedure," in which the neighbor could not be forced to enter the house in question unless it was done with his consent, and similarly the neighbor could not be forced to wear an army bullet-proof vest and helmet.
To the chagrin of the IDF the justices shot this procedure down as well.
Senior General Staff officers tried to convince the court of the necessity of the tactic, and even Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz volunteered to testify before the court. The justices were not impressed.
The current tactic is called "outstretched arm." This allows the army to use an interlocutor, someone who normally lives in the house, and only if they are still in the house at the time the soldiers arrive. In most cases the fugitives allow the civilians inside to exit the house, and in that case the army can ask a family member to use a bullhorn to call out to the fugitive to surrender, so long as this is done at a safe distance.
So, does the use of the new procedure endanger soldiers' lives?
"No, because they take no chances," says a senior IDF officer serving in the West Bank. "Not one of us will send a soldier to check a home in which it is known that a living, armed fugitive is barricaded, before we have carried out very aggressive action."
The operation is as follows: If the fugitive refuses to exit, warning shots are fired around the house and then at points in the home that appear suspicious. If the fugitive continues to refuse to surrender, a bulldozer is brought in and begins to pound the walls of the house. The final stage is for the bulldozer to raze the home with everyone in it. Only then are troops sent in to search for survivors.
Quick escalation results
In the army they complain that the outright ban on any form of the "neighbor procedure" diminishes the tactical options of the officers. "The result is that very quickly we escalate in means, in other words, we use the bulldozers," one officer says.
"More homes are damaged. In some of the cases the damage is not total because after a number of bulldozer blows, the fugitive realizes that he has no way out and opts to surrender," the officer added.
Data from the human rights group B'Tselem appears to confirm this trend.
More important, however, is whether the new procedures have made it safer for Palestinian civilians. In one incident, a 43-year old woman was killed when shots fired at a home of a fugitive strayed into her home. The soldiers say that the conditions at the site made accurate shooting difficult. An internal probe concluded that the soldiers violated safety regulations, but no Military Police investigation was initiated.
In the IDF they know that they have lost the battle over the "neighbor procedure." But in conversations with Haaretz the officers maintain that the court's decision reflects a certain dislocation from the operational realities in the territories, and that the moral argument accepted by the court has resulted in graver danger to the lives of Palestinian civilians and their property.
But there are those at the General Staff who say that "over and over [Supreme Court President] Aharon Barak has saved us from ourselves. Against rampant terrorism there were times when we lost our sense of judgment and brought excessive means to bear. The High Court, by intervening in matters such as the route of the separation fence and the neighbor procedure, brought us back to a rational state, even if the officers in the field may not like it."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/726988.html
Ha'Aretz
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Indymedia UK bans comments for saying the same as this jewish newspaper
19.06.2006 17:55
Those of you that are foolish enough to think that Indymedia UK is not simply a New Reich front (as a consequence of those New Reich agents that find it all to easy to dominate editorial policy), should ask yourselves why this site encourages terms like 'muslim terrorists' and 'infected by islam' (YES, YOU READ CORRECTLY, THE NEW REICH CENSORS OF INDYMEDIA UK ALLOWED A NAZI-IDENTICAL RACIST ATTACK AGAINST IRAN TO USE THE PHRASE ***INFECTED BY ISLAM*** BECAUSE THE ARTICLE WAS BY ONE OF BLAIR'S OWN BLACK PROPAGANDA GROUPS ACTING TO SUPPORT BLAIR'S COMING WAR WITH IRAN), while at the same time automatically banning any article/comment that uses the word JEWISH in the same context.
This is even more sickening, since those that run Israel themselves state that Israel is THE jewish state, and every act of mass murder is carried out in the name of jews (not zionists, not Israelis). Of course, this is NOT the same as saying that Israel has the right to speak on behalf of all jews- it most certainly does not. However, it illustrates that 'jewish terrorist' and 'jewish extremist' MUST BE ALLOWED by any non-racist site that allows the use of similar terms refering to muslims.
INDYMEDIA UK, HOWEVER, IN COMMON WITH ALL MEDIA SITES THAT ACTIVELY SUPPORT THE AIMS OF BLAIR AND HIS ALLIES, APPLIES THE WORST OF RACIST CENSORSHIP.
It is utterly impossible to find any excuse that allows the phrase 'muslim terrorist' but bans the phrase 'jewish terrorist'. IMPOSSIBLE. But this is the racist situation on Indymedia UK.
George Orwell was all too familiar with this tactic (well, given his background, he would be) when he invented the concept of 'newspeak'- the elimination of ideas by the state by eliminating the words that expressed those ideas. You see the method in action in Communist China, where the Internet is censored by idea, so that a new generation of Chinese won't even know that certain concepts are missing from their mental development.
Indymedia UK underlies its racist policy on the editorial page, with the racist term 'anti-semitism', a phrase predicated on the idea of a 'race' (there are NO Human races, the pseudo-scientific lie that pushes this ultimate evil concept was invented by jewish so-called scientists early in the 19th century in the US in order to justify 'black' slavery), and hence the idea of a 'master-race'.
Indymedia UK SHOULD have said "no racist comments against muslims, jews, blacks etc". It doesn't take a genious to understand why this was NOT the form of wording used.
Blair has so far murdered millions of muslims, just for being muslims, during his sanctions and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. There are clear groups of people that desire and aid in any way possible such acts of genocide, and they include Israel and all those that fund and support the existence of that foul evil racist nation. Those that actively censor comments such as mine, do so in the active support of such genocide, and in the name of Israel. In the 1930's they would have been doing the same such censorship in support of the ambitions of nazi Germany, and in the name of Adolf Hitler.
REMEMBER, FOR THOSE THAT PREY UPON HUMANITY, THE NAMES CHANGE, BUT THE EVIL STAYS EXACTLY THE SAME.
twilight