Last update - 02:38 16/10/2006
Uproar continues over police snipers in October 2000 riots
By Yoav Stern
Alik Ron, a retired major general in the Israel Police, commanded the force's Northern District during the October 2000 Israeli Arab riots, and most of the clashes between police officers and Arab citizens took place in areas under his command. As a result, his testimony before the Or Commission, which investigated the riots, covered 801 pages. The inquest of the riots that was conducted in 2005 by the Justice Ministry's Police Investigations Department (PID), however, sufficed with only a single page of testimony from him.
Adalah - the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, claims that Ron is personally responsible for the decision to use snipers against the protesters. As reported in Haaretz last Friday, the organization contends that the PID ignored the Or Commission's recommendations by failing to investigate thoroughly the deaths of five of the 13 Arabs killed in the riots.
Adalah charges that the PID in effect accepted all Ron's arguments, even when they contradicted the position taken by the Or Commission.
Ron said his testimony was only one page long because the PID inquiry focused on whether he stood behind the testimony he gave before the Or Commission - which he said he does - rather than on rehashing the events themselves.
After a police officer was wounded by a stone hurled by a protester during the riots, Ron gave permission for snipers to open fire on certain protesters, he told the PID. The shooting lasted about two hours, during which one protester was killed and seven others were wounded by the gunfire.
The use of snipers against citizens is quite rare, having occurred in extreme cases where the people involved were bearing weapons. Although police guidelines state that snipers cannot be used unless lives are at risk, in the case of the Umm al-Fahm riots, the Or Commission said that the purpose of the shooting as Ron saw it was to deter the rioters. In addition, he made the decision on his own, without consulting his superiors.
"No proof is needed that a stone can kill," Ron told Haaretz.