Former prime minister Ehud Barak failed in his handling of the Arab riots of October 2000, but is not barred from holding political office in the future, the state commission of inquiry that investigated the riots said in its conclusions, released yesterday.
Advertisement
The Justice Ministry responded to the commission's recommendations yesterday by ordering its department for investigating policemen to launch a probe into the deaths of the 13 Arabs - 12 Israeli citizens and one Palestinian - who were killed during the riots. The commission, which recommended the probe, was able to definitely assign responsibility for only three of the deaths.
Senior legal sources warned that the investigation would be very complex, and could take several years. State Prosecutor Edna Arbel is considering requesting additional budgets and manpower for it.
Two of the deaths were investigated in the past, but the probes were frozen when the commission, headed by Justice Theodor Or, began its work.
The commission's scathing report covered issues ranging from Israel's treatment of its Arab minority to the police's preparedness for serious civil unrest. It also recommended sanctions against some, though not all, of the 14 people to whom it had earlier sent warning letters.
The 781-page report described Israel's treatment of its Arabs as "the most important and sensitive domestic matter on the state's agenda" and lambasted what it described as a consistent policy of discrimination against this sector by all Israeli governments. "The establishment did not show sufficient sensitivity to the needs of the Arab population, and did not take enough action in order to allocate state resources in an equal manner," it wrote. "The state did not do enough or try hard enough to create equality for its Arab citizens or to uproot discriminatory or unjust phenomena. Meanwhile, not enough was done to enforce the law in the Arab sector, and the illegal and undesirable phenomena that took root there. As a result of this and other processes, serious distress prevailed in the Arab sector in various areas."
At the same time, it said, Israeli Arab leaders, both political and religious, contributed to the "ideological-political radicalization of the Arab sector" and to its increasing recourse to violence as a means of obtaining its ends. "Despite the fact that the slide from orderly demonstrations to unrestrained riots consistently reoccurred, the Arab leadership took no precautions to prevent the deterioration into violence, and did not warn against violating the law at demonstrations and processions it had initiated," the report said.
As for the police, the commission said, it frequently treats Israeli Arabs as "enemies," and is consequently perceived by them not "as a body that renders service but as a hostile force serving a hostile regime." The police, it said, "must instill in its people that the Arab public is not an enemy and should not be treated as an enemy."
It also slammed the police on an operational level, for everything from its widespread use of rubber-coated bullets instead of nonlethal methods of crowd dispersal, such as water cannons and tear gas, to its culture of failing to learn from past mistakes.
On the personal level, the commission recommended sanctions against several senior police officers and one politician. The politician, then public security minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, should not be allowed to occupy this post again because of his "substantive failure" during the riots, it said, and two senior police officers, former police commissioner Yehuda Wilk and former Northern District commander Alik Ron - both of whom have since retired - should be barred from any position of responsibility in the field of domestic security because of their own failures during the riots. It also recommended the dismissal of two officers involved in the riots - Commander Moshe Waldman and Superintendent Guy Reif - and recommended that two other officers be temporarily denied promotion.
But while the report criticized Barak for his shortcomings - ranging from insufficient awareness of what was happening in the Arab sector to his failure to demand detailed reports from the police during the riots - it did not make any recommendations regarding his political future. It also recommended no sanctions against the three Israeli Arab leaders to whom it sent warning letters - MK Abdulmalik Dehamshe, MK Azmi Bishara and Sheikh Ra'ed Salah, the head of the Islamic Movement's northern branch - even though it criticized them for inflaming passions both before and during the riots and for sending the message that violence was an acceptable way to achieve the community's goals
Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, offers real-time breaking news, opinions and analysis from Israel and the Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense, diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora.
