Dear friend,
On 30 March 2018, Gaza residents held the first Great March of Return protest along the perimeter fence with Israel. Demonstrating almost every week until the end of 2019, tens of thousands of people demanded the right of return and an end to Israel’s blockade, which has trapped the two million residents of the Gaza Strip in the world’s largest open-air prison.
Israel announced in advance it would not allow the protests to go forward. The military positioned dozens of snipers along the border, and officials declared the forces would shoot live fire at protestors. The death count soared from one protest to the next, as did the number of demonstrators injured. Most of the casualties posed no threat to any one at the time they were shot. In total, Israeli security forces killed 223 Palestinians and injured some 8,000 with live fire.
Despite this horrifying outcome, the illegal open-fire policy was not changed and officials continue to defend it. All the military did was promise to “investigate” the incidents, stating that the General Staff Mechanism for Fact-Finding Assessments (FFA) would look into cases brought before it and make its recommendations to the Military Advocate General (MAG).
Driving this promise was Israel’s desire to stave off a real investigation by the International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC), which would seek to uncover the truth, identify the persons responsible and bring about their prosecution and punishment. The ICC does not intervene when a country genuinely investigates human rights violations taking place in its territory. There is no need for a double effort – one genuine investigation is enough, either here or in The Hague. When a country is unwilling or unable to investigate violations, the ICC takes over.
Can what the military did amount to ‘investigating’? The name means little if it is not accompanied by meaningful action. This means, first and foremost, investigating the policy makers – in this case, the officials who formulated and approved the regulations ordering snipers to shoot live fire at unarmed protestors from a distance. Israel has never investigated the policy makers, nor does it have any intention of doing so. Therefore, it cannot be said to have carried out a real investigation.
A report we released last week along with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights looked exactly at that question – Israel’s pseudo-investigations regarding the Great March of Return protests. The IDF Spokesperson’s response simply proves our point: again, claiming the policy was legal and does not need to be investigated; again, flaunting the FFA-Mechanism’s investigation of “exceptional cases”, with the meaningless addition that our figures on the number of investigations are out of date. Even if the Mechanism passed several more cases on to the MAG, or the MAG closed some others without no further action, this does not prove Israel truly investigated the weekly shooting of protestors by snipers. All it proves is that the show goes on.
Israel’s attempts at whitewashing will not stave off the ICC. There is one simple way for Israel to keep the ICC out: prosecute the individuals responsible for this illegal policy – and end its human rights violations.
Sincerely,
Yael Stein
Director of Research