Rights groups condemn deadly force

LONDON - Two of the world's leading human rights organisations have accused Israel of using excessive force to control rioting across the occupied territories and in Arab towns.

The reports, published by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, both said many lives had been lost unnecessarily because of the methods used by Israeli forces. Amnesty also pointed to a failure on the part of both sides to investigate the events of the past three weeks.

Elizabeth Hodgkin, one of two Amnesty members who visited Israel and the occupied territories between October 4 and 13, said: "There may have been one or two points where Israeli soldiers had the right to return fire because they were fired on. But really there was practically no occasion that we visited that could not have been solved by other policing methods ... without the loss of life."

Hodgkin said the team "found the mindset of the policing of demonstrations and riots in the occupied territories and in Israel was that of using military methods; that is to say, of eliminating an enemy, rather than policing methods of serving the community and preserving lives.

"On almost every occasion we saw an extremely rapid escalation to the use of firearms," and the scenes of demonstrations showed evidence of random shooting.

She criticised both Israeli and Palestinian authorities for failing to investigate the deaths and take lessons for future policing and urged a review of riot control methods. "The failure of both sides to investigate has led to the kind of breakdown in the rule of law which is now leading to a greater deterioration."

In a more strongly worded assessment, Human Rights Watch said it had found "a pattern of repeated Israeli use of excessive lethal force ... where demonstrators were unarmed and posed no threat of death or serious injury.

"Where gunfire by Palestinian security forces or armed protesters was a factor, use of lethal force by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) was indiscriminate and not directed at the source of the threat.

"In Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the IDF regularly used rubber bullets and plastic-coated metal bullets as well as live ammunition in an excessive or indiscriminate manner.

"A particularly egregious example of such unlawful fire is the IDF's use of medium-calibre bullets against unarmed demonstrators in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and in some instances ... against medical personnel. These military weapons, which inflict massive trauma when striking flesh, are normally used to penetrate concrete and are not appropriate for crowd control."

Responding to the Amnesty report, Tuvia Israeli, Israel's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, said: "We tried to control an eruption of violence ... at the beginning trying to be restricted. [But when] there was shooting and Molotov cocktails, bottles thrown at civilians and soldiers, we had to react ... [or] the violence would have gone further."

The 53-nation UN Human Rights Commission convened in emergency session yesterday - only the fifth such meeting in its history - to discuss the violence.

Arab states demanded an international probe into Israeli "crimes against humanity," but came under pressure from the West to back down after a summit agreement to end the bloodshed.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

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