An Attack on IDF Probes
The army's culture of investigation is defective and there have been a number of cover-ups and attempts to whitewash facts, a defense subcommittee concluded recently.
Three years ago, early in the morning of March 3, 2002, a lone Palestinian sniper, using an outdated rifle, killed 10 soldiers and civilians at an Israel Defense Forces checkpoint in Wadi Haramia, north of the settlement of Ofra, and left the place without a scratch. The sniper, who was equipped with a telescopic gunsight, arrived at night at the hill that overlooks the checkpoint. He placed himself behind a terrace next to an olive tree and carefully kept track of the movements of the soldiers. First he shot at a soldier who was checking an Israeli car that had come from the north, and killed him and the driver. Next he shot two soldiers at the outpost and killed them. At the sound of the shots, one of the soldiers emerged from the building next to the checkpoint that housed the soldiers. He was also shot, and wounded in the hand.
The platoon commander, First Lieutenant David Damelin, who heard the shots, emerged from the building, and was shot and killed on the spot. Then the paramedic emerged from the building to help the injured, who were groaning in pain, but he was also shot and killed. The soldiers remaining in the building understood that if they went outside they would be killed, and so decided to return fire from inside. But they didn't get the sniper. The bloody affair was not over yet: The seventh casualty was a civilian who arrived at the checkpoint from the north: The sergeant major of the reserve company that was manning the checkpoint, who had come to help the soldiers, was also shot, as were two people who had come to the spot in civilian vehicles.
The results of the attack were severe: 10 soldiers and civilians were killed, six were injured. The Palestinian sniper left the place on foot, without his rifle, and walked to one of the nearby Palestinian villages. At first it was thought he was a member of the Irish underground who had come to help the Palestinians, but last October, Tha'er Kayed Hamed, a 24-year-old from the village of Silwad north of Ramallah, was captured. He confessed to the killings, and said that in 1998 he had found an old Mauser rifle and 300 bullets, and he would go out to the wadis and practice firing. Hamed said he had chosen the hill because it offered a good viewpoint, and that he left the place because the old weapon, with which he fired about 30 bullets, fell apart in his hands.
Serious questions
The attack aroused very angry reactions among the public, primarily among the bereaved families, and raised some serious questions: How did one Palestinian manage to kill 10 soldiers and civilians without being harmed? Why was the source of fire not identified by the soldiers for 25 minutes? Why was the checkpoint placed at a low spot, surrounded by hills? How did the sniper manage to escape from the place without being caught? Why were the soldiers' warnings about the dangerous location of the checkpoint ignored?
The deputy commander of the brigade whose soldiers were manning the checkpoint, an officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel, was appointed to investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident. One would have expected an investigation on such a sensitive subject to be carried out by a senior officer from a different unit, especially in light of the fact that the brigade commander at the time, Colonel Ilan Paz, bore ultimate responsibility for what was happening at the checkpoint.
MK Roni Bar-On (Likud), who brought up the subject in the Knesset plenum in June 2003, pointed out that "18 days after the massacre, the investigation had already been concluded, but an entire year passed until it [the report] was sent to the bereaved families, in March 2003." Bar-On emphasized that the investigation was riddled with errors: "The investigation report, of the person who had the ultimate responsibility for the checkpoint, is a work of art of evasion of responsibility. After the investigation, further investigations were carried out by the battalion commander, the division commander, the head of the command and the chief of staff, but in none of them were the soldiers questioned. The five witnesses who remained alive were not asked to submit their versions." The families were also shocked by the findings of the investigation, which found the commanders and the soldiers in the field responsible for the disaster. The mother of checkpoint commander David Damelin told Bar-On that eight hours before he fell in the battle her son had told her: "Mom, we feel like sitting ducks."
Under pressure from the bereaved families, Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon decided, in June 2003, to carry out an additional investigation of the incident in Wadi Haramia. Major General Eyal Ben Reuven was appointed to head the commission of inquiry. This time the findings were completely different: "Shortcomings were found in the preparation of the force for the task, in implementation of the lessons learned from earlier incidents, in the absence of contiguous protection in the area surrounding the checkpoint and in the lack of sufficient monitoring and guidance of the functioning of the force."
Ben Reuven pointed out that Ilan Paz, who since then has been promoted to the rank of brigadier general and appointed the head of civil administration in the West Bank, had "failed morally" in his attitude toward the bereaved families. He also mentioned to the commander of IDF forces in the West Bank at the time, Brigadier General Yitzhak Gershon, that his words implied that he too was placing the responsibility on the soldiers who served at the checkpoint and were injured. The commission of inquiry determined that in spite of the heavy fighting during that period, the brigade could have been expected to prepare itself better for the threat to the checkpoints. In the wake of the findings, the chief of staff reprimanded Brigadier General Paz and Brigadier General Gershon.
Secret committee
In a discussion held by the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the subject, after it was raised in the plenum by MK Bar-On, committee chair MK Yuval Steinitz (Likud) asked the subcommittee on strategic planning and preparedness, headed by MK Omri Sharon (Likud), to carry out a thorough investigation of IDF probes. The subcommittee, whose members included Uri Ariel (National Union) and Shaul Yahalom (National Religious Party) studied the subject for about a year.
Its activity was carried out clandestinely, far from the eyes of the media. Omri Sharon stubbornly refused to submit details about the work of the committee: "The details are secret. I am not in the habit of submitting information from subcommittee proceedings." Shaul Yahalom also refused to submit any details. Steinitz, who participated in some of the discussions of the subcommittee, says that "the members of the committee reexamined a series of investigations that had been carried out in the IDF in recent years. They did very serious work."
At the conclusion of the discussions of the subcommittee, the plenum of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee held a summarizing session about two months ago, in which the chief of staff participated. At the discussion it was reported that the main conclusion of the subcommittee is that the IDF culture of investigation is defective, there is no system of punishment for acts of fraud and deception by those responsible for carrying out the investigations, and there have been quite a number of cases of cover-ups and attempts to whitewash facts.
The chief of staff said that the forum of reserve brigade commanders and battalion commanders had proposed the establishment of a body headed by a major general, which would be responsible for supervising IDF investigations, but that he had found the proposal unacceptable. On the other hand, he did accept the forum's proposal to the effect that in cases where a serious investigation is required, a team that is not part of the command in which the defect or failure took place will be appointed, to avoid pressure on those involved in the affair.
Most of the members of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee supported the notion that investigations should be carried out by the IDF rather than by an outside body. Only MK Yossi Sarid (Yahad) supported taking the investigations out of the army's hands: "There is no doubt that having investigations carried out by an outside body will add to their credibility and purity. As long as the investigations are not taken out of the hands of the IDF, it will be difficult to get to the truth."
`Army manipulation'
Sarid's colleague in the Yahad faction, MK Ran Cohen, believes that "the investigations should not be taken out of the hands of the IDF, but we must insist that at least one of the members of the investigating team be a civilian. The IDF has a large bank of reservists who have a great deal of experience and a high level of security classification, and they have the ability to carry out the investigations."
MK Bar-On claims that "the very use of the term `investigation' is a type of manipulation on the part of the army. When it comes to failures or negligence that lead to casualties, it must be called an inquiry rather than an investigation." As to who should be responsible for carrying out the investigation, Bar-On believes that "the army has a sufficiently large reservoir of professionals in the reserves, from which a reservoir of investigators can be established to conduct the major investigations."
He emphasized that to date those who lied in the investigation about the incident in Wadi Haramia have not been brought to trial. The head of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Brigadier General (res.) Avriel Bar Yosef, who served for many years in senior positions in the Israel Navy, believes that "without the insistence of the MKs that there is a serious problem when it comes to the IDF culture of investigation, and without their demand for significant changes in the existing procedures, in order to cause a shake-up in the way of thinking, it is doubtful whether any change at all would have been implemented."
In a meeting of the committee that took place about two weeks ago, Ya'alon announced that the IDF had adopted the recommendations of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the subject of the investigations, and they are being revealed here for the first time:
l Any officer or soldier to be investigated will know that if he submits false information or covers up for his friends or tries to mislead the investigators, he will be punished severely and can expect a prison sentence.
Ya'alon said that recently a soldier stood trial and was sentenced to five months' imprisonment because it turned out that he had lied during an investigation.
l The IDF standing orders will state that investigations will be treated like the implementation of any other military task. In other words, if an officer is asked to carry out an investigation or to be a member of an investigative team, and he doesn't do his job reliably and defects are discovered in the work of the team, it will have consequences for his promotion in rank and in position, and will be recorded in his personal file.
l In cases of serious mishaps that lead to death or injury, or in cases of an operational failure, the investigation will be carried out only by officers from the command or from another branch of the IDF. In addition, a reservoir of reserve officers with a great deal of experience will be established, and they will be called on from time to time to carry out investigations in the IDF.
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