Aletho News

Injured Palestinian Worker Arrested When Trying to Raise Complaint Against Soldiers Who used Dogs to Attack Him

Ahmad Jaradat and Emma Mancini for the Alternative Information Center | 17 April 2011

During the morning hours of Sunday 10 April, three Palestinian workers were attacked by Israeli soldiers, southwest of Hebron. The three men were walking to work when the army stopped them  near Ramadin, a village in Area C adjacent to the Green Line. The soldiers attacked the workers with the dogs.

One of them, ‘Ala Adel Hawwarin, a 21 year old resident in the village of Dahirriya, was seriously injured in his left hand by a dog. The other two men, Mohamed Majed Abu Cawud, a 20 year old from Ramadin, and Raed Ismail Najjar from Yatta, suffered lower body injures.

‘Ala was brought to the hospital in Hebron, where he was treated.

Three days later, on Wednesday 13April, ‘Ala Adel Hawwarin went to the police station in the settlement of Kiryat Arba to make an official complaint against the soldiers. The Military Police denied the complaint, treating ‘Ala as a criminal. The police arrested the young man, accusing him of attempting to enter the Israeli State illegally, without permission. ‘Ala called his family from the prison and told them what’s happened. The worker was in prison for two days. He was just released by the police after paying 1000 shekels.

During the days before the soldiers’ attack on the three workers, on Saturday the 9^th and Sunday the 10^th, several Palestinians were threatened and injured by army dogs. This is a systemic act on the part of the Israeli soldiers in South Hebron Hills in order to scare Palestinian residents.

Furthermore, the Israeli Military Police usually denies the complaints of Palestinian residents against the settlers’ violence and the army’s harassment.

Refusing this kind of complaint is a common practice, according to human rights organizations and international humanitarian associations. But now the behavior has also been admitted by the Police. On Thursday 14 April the Brigadier Meir Ohanna, commander of the Israeli Military Police, testified in front of the Turkel Committee that “most of the complaints that the Palestinians did against the Israeli soldiers end without investigations. Most of the complaints die without any accusation or any disciplinary measure against the soldiers.”

Ohanna, who was assigned by the Committee to investigate the practices of the Israeli Military Police, said that only 6-9% of the complaints by Palestinians are taken into consideration and followed by official accusations. The rest are totally ignored. Thus, hundreds of cases of abuse, harassment and attacks against Palestinian people aren’t punished: only a few soldiers have gone in front of a court to be judged.

Those kind of attacks and intimidation are forbidden by international law. The military occupation of a population is regulated by the fourth Geneva Convention: the international humanitarian law signed in 1949 establishes that “the persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any matter whatsoever, find themselves in case of a conflict or occupation in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals” (art. 4).

Thus the Geneva Convention establishes that in Occupied Territories, as is Palestine, the protected persons are entitled to respect for their persons, family rights, religious convictions and practices; they shall at all times be humanely treated, especially against violence or any kind of threats and insults (art. 27).

The article 32 prohibits any measures of brutality applied by civilian or military agents against protected people: applying the international law to the case of the three workers in Ramadin, soldiers should be punished for the attack they committed.

Further, the Convention forbids collective penalties and all measures of intimidation carried out by the army of the Occupying Power, like Israel in the Occupied Territories. But in the South Hebron Hills and in the rest of West Bank, collective punishments and threats are the systematic way of intimidating Palestinian people. House demolitions, illegal searches and arrests used by the army, are also helped by the Israeli Military Police, who do no investigate and punish the guilty soldiers.

April 20, 2011 - Posted by aletho | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture