Israeli soldiers tell of their army operation in the West Bank: Search, detain, humiliate and beat

Hares, West Bank – The wounds inflicted by the Israeli soldiers on Palestinians in Hares village two months ago are almost entirely invisible. Indeed, it is not until Ihab Shamlawi holds his hands out that one notices they are trembling from a tremor.

The problem began on March 26, when hundreds of soldiers– their faces daubed with black camouflage paint– took over Hares with search and detain raids on houses at three in the morning. The stated purpose as told to troops: to stop stonethrowing at settler roads by youths from the village. Soldiers blindfolded Shamlawi, a soft spoken 25 year old university student, and fastened plastic hand restraints on him very tightly “I said they are too tight,but the soldier did not respond.” He recalled.

Palestinians begging to have their restraints loosened, the blows and kicks some endured while bound and blindfolded, being forced to stand in the sun for much of the 3 am to 3 pm operation, being cursed at by soldiers–these were the hallmarks of the Hares operation, according to testimonies of two soldiers whose accounts were made available by the anti-occupation soldiers’ and ex-soldiers group Breaking the Silence.

The Hares operation appears to have been one of the “daily humilitations-large and small” in the words of Barack Obama’s Cairo speech, that Palestinians endure and that, in Mr. Obama’s view, help make continuation of the status quo of occupation “intolerable.”

The Israeli army spokesman says an investigation has been opened after complaints from Palestinian residents of Hares and that soldiers have received clear instructions not to use violence against detainees.

One soldier, a sargeant, described how the severe hand-tying continued for seven hours despite pleas of Palestinians.

“There are people who think you need to tighten the restraints all the way, until no drop of blood will pass from here to there,” the soldier said.” It doesn’t take much time until the hands turn blue. Not everyone had a blue hand, but there were a lot of people that you know weren’t feeling anything,” A second soldier told Breaking the Silence that he loosened the restraints of some Palestinians.

The first soldier said about 150 Palestinians were bound, blindfolded and detained at the village school in the operation It was clear that many of the people detained had not done anything wrong but that they were held to gather intelligence from them, he said.

The worst beatings were in the bathrooms , he said.“The soldiers who took [detainees] to the toilet just exploded them with beatings, cursed them with no reason,” the first soldier said. “When they took one Arab to the toilet so that he could urinate, one of them gave him a slap that brought him to the ground. He had been handcuffed from behind with a nylon restraint and blindfolded, he wasn’t insolent, he didn’t do anything to get on anyone’s nerves, just like that, just because he’s an Arab. He was something like fifteen years old.” The first soldier said he saw a lot of soldiers “just knee [Palestinians] because it’s boring, because you stand there ten hours, you’re not doing anything, it’s boring so they beat people up.”

“There were a lot of reservists that participated, and they totally had a celebration on the Palestinians: curses, humiliation, pulling hair and ears, kicks, slaps. These things were the norm, this was the whole batallion. The incidents in the toilets were extreme. But slaps and curses, humiliation and kneeing and things like that were, like, the norm.”
The bathroom beatings were “not beatings that drew blood, they were dry beatings but still a beating.”he said

The soldiers’s testimonies are likely to add fuel to a controversy over remarks by the commander of their brigade, Colonel, Itai Virob, who testified in a military court case last month concerning a separate incident that hitting detained Palestinians is justified to accomplish missions. “Standing them against walls, pushing them, a blow that doesn’t cause injury. These are things that are certainly commonly used in an attempt to accomplish the mission.” He said. Despite a reprimand of Col. Virob by West Bank commander General Gad Shamni and a disavowal by army chief of staff Lt. Gen Gabi Ashkenazi, his remarks raise doubt about whether the abuses in Hares can be dismissed as an isolated occurrence or low-level improvisations. Gen Shamni issued a pamphlet recently stressing “when someone is detained stopped or held by IDF soldiers they are absolutely and clearly forbidden to use any force or violence towards them.”

Mr. Shamlawi’s blindfold was lifted when an interrogator from the Shin Bet intelligence agency tried to enlist him as a collaborator and offered him a rare permit to work in Israel, he recalled He declined. Afterwards, he watched as a high school student he knew, his hands bound and his blindfold slightly lifted, asked soldiers to go to the bathroom, and said he wanted water. “They put him on the floor, they kicked him on his legs and beat him,” he said. Ten or fifteen other soldiers were watching, Mr. Shamlawi recalled. “They all laughed,” he said.

“This was humiliation of him and of me,” he said. “ I couldn’t do or say anything because if you say anything they will hit you.”

Later he was brought into a room holding about fifty youths. “A soldier called out on a microphone: “You are all children of prostitutes.” He said an officer came in and removed the soldier. But another officer made jokes about several of the detained youths not being in the room anymore because they had been sent for five years to prison.

In the soldiers rest area the mood was upbeat after the operation, the second soldier told Breaking the Silence. He recalled hearing some soldiers voice disappointment that the villagers were so poor there was nothing to steal from them. “There was a lot of joy at other people’s misfortune,” the soldier said.

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