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Does Israel have a policy of killing Palestinian civilians?
Nigel Parry, The Electronic Intifada, 13 June 2006
Stepping through the looking glass
Stepping through the looking glass
"The IDF is the most moral military in the world; there has never been - and there isn't now - a policy of attacking civilians."
-- Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's remarks at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, 11 June 2006. Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser.
n the foreground, Palestinian youths carry off an injured friend to a waiting ambulance. Al-Nakba demonstrations, Ramallah, 14 May 1998. (Nigel Parry)
When I lived in Ramallah between 1994-1998, the era of the so-called peace process, I witnessed perhaps 30 clashes between young Palestinians and Israeli soldiers to very consciously document and photograph what transpired. I was sick to my stomach with reading media reports by foreign correspondents that characterized these events along the lines of:
Israeli soldiers and Palestinians clashed today on the outskirts of Ramallah. Two Palestinians were killed and four injured.
What was problematic about these reports was the utter lack of contextual information that let you know how a stone-throwing protest routinely ended up with dead Palestinian teenagers and children.
Bar the five days of the September 1996 Clashes, which saw an escalation from stones to guns after 5 Palestinians were shot dead at the beginning of the first day, none of the Palestinians at these 30 clashes were armed with anything other than stones and the very occasional Molotov cocktail. It was simpler in those days, unlike the speedy militarization of the Second Intifada, courtesy of Arafat’s Fatah movement. With the guns on only one side, the chilling context of power disparity was out there in plain sight.
Of the several Palestinians who I saw shot dead at these 30 clashes, not a single one of them was killed within any range that they could have hit an Israeli soldier with a stone. In the single clash where I witnessed an Israeli soldier grazed by a stone, the killing that took place happened much later. At no time was there any life-threatening situation that required these soldiers to behave any differently than riot police would behave in a more civilized country.
-- Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's remarks at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, 11 June 2006. Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser.
n the foreground, Palestinian youths carry off an injured friend to a waiting ambulance. Al-Nakba demonstrations, Ramallah, 14 May 1998. (Nigel Parry)
When I lived in Ramallah between 1994-1998, the era of the so-called peace process, I witnessed perhaps 30 clashes between young Palestinians and Israeli soldiers to very consciously document and photograph what transpired. I was sick to my stomach with reading media reports by foreign correspondents that characterized these events along the lines of:
Israeli soldiers and Palestinians clashed today on the outskirts of Ramallah. Two Palestinians were killed and four injured.
What was problematic about these reports was the utter lack of contextual information that let you know how a stone-throwing protest routinely ended up with dead Palestinian teenagers and children.
Bar the five days of the September 1996 Clashes, which saw an escalation from stones to guns after 5 Palestinians were shot dead at the beginning of the first day, none of the Palestinians at these 30 clashes were armed with anything other than stones and the very occasional Molotov cocktail. It was simpler in those days, unlike the speedy militarization of the Second Intifada, courtesy of Arafat’s Fatah movement. With the guns on only one side, the chilling context of power disparity was out there in plain sight.
Of the several Palestinians who I saw shot dead at these 30 clashes, not a single one of them was killed within any range that they could have hit an Israeli soldier with a stone. In the single clash where I witnessed an Israeli soldier grazed by a stone, the killing that took place happened much later. At no time was there any life-threatening situation that required these soldiers to behave any differently than riot police would behave in a more civilized country.
For more information:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article48...
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