Gideon Levy : When the IDF Doesn't Pursue Justice, the Cycle of Death Continues
The
High Court has instructed the IDF to try two soldiers who were involved
in an incident three years ago in which a teenager was killed in the
West Bank. Last…
haaretz.com
How does the Israel Defense Forces
learn lessons, and how does its system of justice go about bringing to
trial soldiers who kill someone for no reason in order to try to prevent
the recurrence of criminal acts? Answer: It doesn't. The result is that
the cycle continues, unbroken, sometimes with harrowing similarities,
as is evident in the West Bank village of Budrus.
In
January 2013, IDF soldiers killed a 16-year-old high-school student,
Samir Awad. He had gone down to a section of the separation barrier near
his school, a definitive act of courage among the village children. He
was shot in the leg from an ambush organized by four soldiers concealed
amid prickly pear cactuses. When the wounded youth tried to escape, he
was shot again, from behind, and killed. One live bullet struck Samir in
the head, another in the back. The story of his shocking death
resonated to some extent in Israel. One IDF officer even told Haaretz
that the incident was “not good.” The military prosecution launched an
investigation.
Nearly
three years passed and, as usual, nothing came of it. But earlier this
month, the High Court of Justice, in response to a petition submitted by
the teen’s family and the B’Tselem human rights organization, ruled
that the two soldiers suspected of having carried out the killing must
be placed on trial before the end of this year. It was decided by the
Military Advocate General that they will be charged with the ridiculous
offenses of “rashness and carelessness with firearms.” In the view of
B’Tselem, “the disparity between the gravity of the soldiers’ actions
and the lightness of the [charges] is incomprehensible.”
Even
less comprehensible is that last Friday, soldiers killed a young man
from the same village, in exactly the same place, under appallingly
similar circumstances, with the same intolerably light finger on the
trigger. Twenty-two year-old Lafi Awad was shot in the leg, tried to
escape and was then shot in the back at close range. Like Samir, he was
killed; like Samir, he was unarmed and posed no danger to the soldiers
as he tried to run for his life.
The looks
on the faces of the group of young men sitting by Lafi’s newly dug
grave in the small cemetery of Budrus say it all. Every so often another
person joins them, claps his hands in disbelief and sorrow, covers his
eyes, whispers a prayer and sits down next to others on the mound of
earth around the grave. They sit in silence, gaze fixed grimly on the
burial site of their friend, who just last Friday was still with them. A
ghastly silence hangs over the graveyard. A few masked individuals walk
between the headstones, ahead of the daily clash with soldiers in
protest of the separation barrier that was built on their land and that
has choked their village.
M., the youth who was with Lafi in his final moments, will soon arrive.
Lafi
was killed on the slope of this cemetery. Memories of Samir’s death
struck us vividly when we visited the site this week. Bloodstains on a
rock, marking Samir’s route as he tried to flee, are still there, though
faded now. We didn’t see signs of Lafi’s blood, though he was killed on
the same rocky ground.
Two
fearsome electric poles are poised on the two sides of the cemetery,
cameras mounted on them to observe the goings-on here day and night. The
separation fence below is breached in several places. No soldiers are
posted there when we visit, but the local youngsters know that even now
troops are hiding somewhere in the area, lurking in ambush for anyone
who tries to approach the fence.
Last
Friday, too, the young people went down the hill toward the fence. It
was the anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death, and the village marked the
occasion with a memorial gathering in the mosque, after which the more
daring youths made their way to the fence. They threw stones at the
armored jeeps; the soldiers responded with tear gas. An easterly wind
was blowing, and initially, the tear gas drifted back toward the
soldiers. They redeployed.
Lafi
Awad, as always, was in the front row of the young people nearest the
fence. It was dusk, after 5 P.M., just before both sides would leave the
vicinity, with the fall of darkness. Again, as in the case of Samir, a
few soldiers suddenly emerged from their hiding place behind the bushes,
on the village side of the fence. On the other side of the fence were
two armored IDF vehicles.
M., an
18-year-old high-school senior wearing a hoodie, says now that he knew
someone was going to die here that day. But the truth is, he’s always
apprehensive about that.
Five
young people approached the fence but retreated, driven back by the tear
gas. A few minutes later they returned, heading for the fence. One of
them had had his hat fall off, and he wanted to retrieve it. They
thought the jeeps had left. And then the soldiers burst out from their
ambush.
According
to M., the soldiers called to Lafi to stop, then chased and caught him.
His four friends tried to free him; they were just a few meters from
the soldiers. A stone thrown by one of the youths struck a soldier’s
helmet, and Lafi managed to break away. The soldier shot him in the leg
with a rubber-coated bullet from zero range. M. remembers Lafi holding
his leg in pain.
Lafi was
able to get about three meters away from the soldiers, but then one of
them – not the one who fired the rubber bullet – shot him in the back
once with a live round. Lafi collapsed. It wasn’t clear whether he died
on the spot, certainly he was in critical condition. M.’s shock at the
death of his close friend is still very apparent.
The
soldiers immediately retreated. A Palestinian tried to rush Lafi to a
hospital in his car. But the soldiers manning the checkpoint in the
neighboring village of Na’alin refused to allow the vehicle to pass.
Finally the driver took an alternative route. By the time he reached the
hospital there was no more to be done: Lafi was dead. The bullet had
entered his back and exited via his abdomen. One bullet, two holes in
the body, the postmortem photograph shows. The IDF claimed the next day
that Lafi had tried to grab the weapon of one of the soldiers, but
eyewitnesses dismiss this out of hand.
The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit stated in response this week: “The event will be investigated.”
Yusuf,
Lafi’s bereaved father, sits in the house of mourning, shattered and
stunned. It’s hard for him to speak. “This was a son, a piece of your
heart.” He had been herding his goats when someone called to tell him
what had happened. Lafi had spent 16 months in an Israeli jail for
throwing stones and other offenses.
“Yesterday
I heard on Israeli radio that people said Lafi stole the weapon from
the soldier,” says Yusuf. “How could that be? He was wounded and he
would try to grab a weapon?”
Ayad
Murad, a village activist who was our escort in Budrus, says that during
the past few weeks, Israeli troops have entered the village almost
every night. Sometimes the soldiers throw stun grenades, or fire
tear-gas canisters into homes, causing huge fright.
Canisters,
casings of bullets and remnants of burnt tires from last Friday and
other days are scattered on the ground in the cemetery. The school that
both Samir and Lafi attended is close by, overlooking the separation
fence and the site where the two young local people were killed.
This is the Budrus triangle of death: school, cemetery, separation barrier.
Here is Samir Awad’s grave, covered by a headstone. And here, just a few steps away, is the fresh grave of Lafi Awad.
Gideon Levy
Haaretz Correspondent
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