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JERUSALEM,
June 14 — A formal inquiry this month into the police killing of 13 people in
violent protests by Israeli Arabs in October has raised questions about several
of the shootings, particularly whether the police needed to fire live ammunition.
It has also served as a platform to air what Israeli Arabs say is discrimination
that has gone on for decades. The
three-member commission, headed by a Supreme Court judge, Theodor Or, drew
attention last week during its inquiry into the death of Asel Asleh, a
17-year-old Israeli Arab peace advocate killed by police gunfire during a
stone-throwing protest, part of a wave of Israeli Arab protests last fall in
support of the Palestinian uprising. Asel Asleh played a leading role in Seeds
of Peace, an American-based group that promotes conflict resolution between
young Israelis and Arabs. He attended a summer camp run by the group in Maine,
was prominent in many of its local activities and had many Israeli Jewish
friends. He was killed wearing the group's distinctive green T-shirt.
At
a June 6 hearing, several police officers who were near the youth when he was
killed at his village of Arabeh on Oct. 2 testified that they did not know who
fired the fatal shots, drawing angry accusations from his parents that their
testimony was a coverup. Dressed in black, Jamila Asleh, the youth's mother,
sobbed as she listened to the officers' accounts. Outside the hearing room at
the Supreme Court, she shouted at other police officers, "Murderers, you
are murdering and lying!" Hassan Asleh, the youth's father, testified a day
earlier that he had witnessed the events leading to his son's death. He said his
son had been watching the protest when three police officers chased the youth
into an olive grove, kicking and hitting him with a rifle butt before he fell.
The father said he then heard three shots, and saw the officers leave.
Umran
Asleh, a cousin, testified that he had seen the chase and a gun pointed at the
teenager's head before hearing three shots. A doctor who treated the youth
testified that he had been shot in the neck at point- blank range, and that
crucial time had been lost when the police delayed the arrival of an ambulance.
In their testimony, police officers described a scene in which hundreds of
rioters attacked them with stones, bottles and slingshots. At one point, the
policemen said, a group of officers ran into an olive grove to arrest rioters
after an Arab was spotted hiding among the trees, and Asel Asleh was discovered
bleeding on the ground. One officer said he had seen the teenager run, stumble
and fall. Questioned by the three members of the inquiry panel about how the
teenager had been shot, the officers said that they did not know.
"I
have no explanation sir," said Avi Karasso, one of the officers who ran
into the olive grove. Another officer in the group, Ovadia Hatan, said none of
them had opened fire. "I really don't know how he was shot and from what
direction," he said. Mr. Asaleh, the teenager's father, stood up and
shouted at Mr. Hatan from behind a glass wall erected to protect the witnesses,
"Why don't you say you murdered in cold blood?" Yitzhak Hai, the
commanding officer at the scene, testified that his men, members of an antidrug
unit drafted into riot duty, were ill- equipped and untrained for the job. They
had no rubber bullets, and there was a shortage of tear gas, leading him to use
live ammunition to repel rioters, he said. Another
officer, Michael Shapshak, told the commission, "Had we used rubber bullets,
it would have prevented what happened."
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14.06.2001
