12 Years Since the October 2000 Killings: Adalah and the Victims’ Families Continue to Demand Accountability
(Haifa, Israel) This week marks the 12th anniversary of the events of October 2000, when the Israeli police and security forces killed 13 young Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel during demonstrations against the Israeli military’s violent repression in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). These protests followed Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound accompanied by a large police. October 2000, the killings and the injury of hundreds more, have formed a foundational cornerstone of Arab collective memory and consciousness in Israel.
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Following the protests and their violent repression, the government established a committee for public examination that lacked independence; however, after the outcry of the families of the 13 killed, the High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, Arab political parties, NGOs and some academics, on 8 November 2000 the government appointed "the Official Commission of Inquiry into the Clashes between Security Forces and Israeli Citizens in October 2000." This commission, known as the "Or Commission", worked for the next three years. Adalah represented the victims’ families and Arab political leaders before the Or Commission.
The Or Commission published its report in September 2003 (Summary of the Or Commission Report in English), after hearing hundreds of testimonies, examining thousands of exhibits, and reading tens of thousands of pages of evidence. The Or Commission determined that the opening of fire in all of the death cases was carried out by police officers and that the opening of fire was not legal. The Israeli security forces used snipers during the protests in Israel to disperse demonstrations for the first time since 1948, in violation of the law and open-fire regulations. None of the protestors constituted a real danger to the lives of the security forces that justified their lethal shooting.
The Or Commission Report also revealed the violent treatment of Arab citizens of Israel by the police. A substantial part of the Report also related to the negative and illegal role of the General Security Service (GSS or Shabak) in setting government policy towards the Arab minority. The Commission ordered the Police Investigations Department (Mahash) to thoroughly investigate the circumstances of the killings in order to determine criminal responsibility, issued recommendations to the political and operational leaderships concerning their involvement in the events. Adalah takes the position that in spite of reservations regarding certain issues and deficiencies, the Or Commission’s report constitutes an important document, the recommendations of which should be acted upon and promoted. See Adalah’s statement following the issuance of the report.
In September 2005, nearly five years after the October 2000 events, Mahash published a report finding that there were no grounds to submit indictments for any of the 13 killings. Public criticism called the report radically extreme, justifying violence against Arab citizens. Many jurists maintained that the Mahash 2005 report’s conclusions were unreasonable and fundamentally contradict the recommendations of the Or Commission. Professor Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra-judicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions questioned Mahash's decision in 2005 to close its investigation into the deaths without issuing a single indictment, despite the Or Commission's conclusions and recommendations. Adalah also issued a report in 2006, entitled “The Accused”, which critically examines all of Mahash’s claims, raising Mahash’s omissions and failures in deciding to not to indict any police officers or commanders.
In January 2008, the Attorney General adopted Mahash’s recommendations and decided to close all of the files. Adalah has called for the re-opening of investigations and for the establishment of an independent committee with the power to issue indictments. Adalah published a new report in October 2011 entitled The Accused – Part II, which exposes serious conflicts of interest in Israel‘s state investigatory bodies regarding the October 2000 killings. Adalah’s full critique of the Attorney General’s decision is available in “The Accused, Part II”. Professor Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur, also criticized the Attorney General‘s decision in his report of May 2008 to the UN Human Rights Council. Professor Alston concluded that the Attorney General‘s decision not to issue indictments “would appear to fall short of international standards.”
Last year, in 2011, Adalah met with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (HCHR), Navi Pillay, during her visit to Israel and the OPT, and requested her intervention to secure accountability for the families of the 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel who were killed in October 2000. In a statement made at the conclusion of her visit, the HCHR stated that, "an overarching human rights concern is the lack of accountability." In June 2012, Adalah submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Committee, which monitors the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, (ICCPR) again raising the issue of impunity for the October 2000 killings.
See also Adalah’s Special Report on October 2000.
