As soon as State Prosecutor Eran Shendar announced his decision to step up in August 2007, both the public and commentators began to shower him with praise. They extolled him for the bravery and professional integrity with which he had led the law enforcement system and the battle against corruption, together with Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz, and for his moral integrity.

Shendar’s supporters preferred to ignore the events and affairs of the not-so-distant past, in which Shendar and Mazuz not only failed to fight for the rule of law, but even damaged it. The reason is that those events involved the interests of Arab citizens in Israel. Shendar, who was the head of the Ministry of Justice’s Police Investigations Unit (“Mahash”) during the October 2000 protest demonstrations, did not order any investigation into the police officers and commanders who were involved in the killing of thirteen Arab youths and the injuring of hundreds more. Even after the Or Commission released its report in 2003, which found that the use of rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition was unjustified and in contravention of the police’s own guidelines for opening fire, Mahash failed to launch any serious investigation and released a report in 2005 which absolved all police officers and commanders of criminal responsibility.

Immediately following the release of Mahash’s report, Shendar, who was by then promoted to the position of State Prosecutor, appeared with Mazuz at a press conference and expressed his support for the report. Although Mazuz subsequently appointed a committee to examine the conclusions drawn in the report, that team was made directly subordinate to Shendar. This conduct is indisputable evidence of a violation of the due process rights of the families of those killed in October 2000, and constitutes a clear conflict of interest.

The law enforcement authorities’ negligent conduct with respect to the October 2000 events is not the only case in which they have displayed such an indifferent attitude towards Arab citizens in Israel. A further example is their treatment of the Arab Bedouin in the Naqab. In March 2007, the Supreme Court of Israel held a hearing on a petition filed by Adalah against the “Wine Path Plan”, which aims to establish dozens of private ranches known as “individual settlements” in the Naqab and to afford retroactive recognition to existing settlements. The Jewish families living in the individual settlements, which together cover over 80,000 dunams, are allocated this land without the issuing of any tenders whatsoever and in contradiction of the planning and building laws. In the vicinity of these and other Jewish towns, tens of thousands of Arab Bedouin citizens live in “unrecognized villages”. As a deliberate policy, the government refuses to grant them official status or provide the vital services needed for their basic subsistence, such as water, electricity, health services, etc., and deals with them as “trespassers” who need to be kicked off of “state land”. Rather than objecting to the breach of principles of proper administration inherent in the massive distribution of land to the “individual settlements”, the law enforcement authorities seek demolition orders against the homes of Arab Bedouin citizens in the name of the rule of law and ignore the planning and building laws for the “individual settlements”.

The fact that the media and other commentators ignore Shendar and Mazuz’s policies concerning the rule of law and the struggle for integrity when it comes to the rights of Arab citizens is not coincidental. Civil rights organizations acting to promote good governance and to root out corruption constantly file petitions to the Supreme Court against every small violation of the terms of tenders. However, they fail to approach the Court to challenge the promotion of a person who was involved in the killings during October 2000.

In the petition against the individual settlements in the Naqab, the “Wine Path Farms Forum”, a respondent which asked to join the case, was represented by the Chairman of the Movement for Quality Government, Attorney Eliad Shraga. However, in this case, Attorney Shraga did not act on behalf of the Movement for Quality Government but represented the farm holders as a private attorney. The fact that the person who, in the eyes many Jewish Israelis, symbolizes the struggle against corruption consented to undertake this task sends a clear public message: the boundaries of morality and democracy are an ethnic Jewish matter. Where the rights of the Arab minority are concerned, anyone crossing them may be forgiven.

Without a doubt the law enforcement authorities, which believe that integrity can be disregarded when it comes to the interests of Arab citizens, have also adopted a discriminatory policy in their attempts to convict Arab citizens in the courts. This is the reason for the lack of faith on the part of Arab citizens of Israel and their leadership in the impartiality of the Attorney General and the institution of the State Prosecutor.

* The author is a law student at Haifa University and works with Adalah.