Israel Defends Force Used Against Rioters

JERUSALEM —  Israel is fending off accusations that it has used excessive force in its attempt to quell a weeklong rebellion that has claimed dozens of Arab lives.

The perceived brutality has fueled Palestinian demands for revenge and further stoked violent demonstrations that continued Wednesday night.

In fighting that has raged through the Palestinian-controlled West Bank and Gaza Strip and inside the Jewish state’s Arab villages, Israeli forces have opened fire with high-velocity ammunition and sporadically launched combat helicopters, tanks and missiles. This is in addition to the more extensive use of tear gas and rubber-coated bullets.

Palestinian demonstrators have thrown rocks, chunks of concrete and firebombs. In the most violent hot spots, they have been joined by Palestinian police and paramilitary forces armed at times with automatic weapons.

The death toll as of Wednesday night stood at nearly 50 Palestinians, 10 Israeli Arabs, a Druze and two Jews (a soldier and a civilian). The vast majority of the reported 1,300 or more injured people also are Arabs.

That lopsided tally has prompted cries of outrage from Palestinian leaders and human rights activists here and abroad. Citing the “devastating” loss of civilian life, Amnesty International accused Israel of “excessive and indiscriminate use of force” in violation of international human rights standards. Human Rights Watch said it was “deeply disturbed” at the numbers of unarmed civilians and medical workers who have been killed or injured.

Israeli political and security officials say their actions are justified and that they have used restraint and followed clear rules of engagement. Soldiers deployed in Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as police officers deployed within Israel, follow virtually identical regulations: Lethal force is justified only when an officer’s life is in danger.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak refused a Palestinian demand Wednesday to allow an international investigation into the past week’s unrest but said his government will conduct its own probe.

“What happened in recent days was not just a protest demonstration, but rather a phenomenon of unprecedented degree,” Shlomo Ben-Ami, internal security minister and acting foreign minister, said Wednesday as he likened the violence to a volcanic eruption. “The problem is the character of the confrontation, the degree of confrontation between [protesters and] the police, who are entitled, if there is real danger to life, to shoot.”

Victims have included a 12-year-old Gaza boy whose death in an apparent cross-fire was captured on television; a 10-year-old shot from a helicopter as he stood on his roof in the West Bank town of Nablus; and a 17-year-old Israeli Arab peace activist shot by Israeli police, his blood discoloring his Seeds of Peace T-shirt.

Hadas Ziv, projects director for Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, said the killing of a Palestinian ambulance driver who attempted to rescue the slain 12-year-old in Gaza was especially alarming, as were the shootings of other ambulance and medical personnel.

Palestinian doctors report a high percentage of child victims, lost or damaged eyes and upper-body wounds, which they say suggests shooting for maximum harm.

The Israeli government blames the high Arab toll on Yasser Arafat, accusing the Palestinian Authority president of failing to halt the riots and placing children in harm’s way for propaganda purposes.

The first fatalities in the current violence came on the second day, when Israeli police stormed a site in the Old City here known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Arabs as Haram al Sharif, or the noble sanctuary. Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said officers burst into the compound to stop “thousands” of Palestinians who had attacked officers and thrown stones at Jews praying beside the Western Wall.

He acknowledged limited police sniper fire using high-velocity bullets, followed by barrages of rubber-coated bullets, a less lethal but by no means harmless ammunition. Palestinians who were present Friday, emerging from noon prayers at the Al Aqsa mosque, said officers fired indiscriminately, wounding many passersby. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem concurs.

Ben-Ruby defended the use of force to stop and disperse the stone-throwers. “If we hadn’t, they would push through to kill the Jews [praying] below,” he said.

One of the men wounded that day was 70-year-old Mohammed abu Libdeh, who has a bad heart and Parkinson’s disease, walks with a cane, is partially deaf and mentally retarded. He was wounded in the chest and one leg by rubber-coated bullets.

“This old man, throw stones?” his brother, Issa, said from Abu Libdeh’s bedside in Mekesset Hospital in East Jerusalem. “He can’t even walk!”

The heaviest firepower has been used near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in Gaza and in Nablus, site of Joseph’s Tomb, a tiny Jewish holding.

Col. Daniel Reisner, head of the international law division of the Israeli army, said the weapons used in those areas, such as missile-launching helicopter gunships, are authorized under rules of engagement because lives are in danger and Palestinians escalated their weaponry. The gunships are especially accurate and allow pinpoint strikes, he said. Israelis have used them to take out Palestinian sniper positions in several apartment buildings.

“We are trying to use the weapons system most likely to cause the minimal amount of collateral damage,” Reisner said.

Nowhere has the debate over the use of force been more painful and disheartening than in Israel’s minority Arab community. Unlike the Palestinians, about 1 million Arabs in the northern region of Galilee and elsewhere have chosen to live within Israel as its citizens. When Israeli police opened fire on them during demonstrations Sunday and Monday, it was a devastating blow. They are taxpaying citizens, they said, and are being treated as though they too live under military occupation.

The Israeli Arabs slain over the past week include 17-year-old Asil Asliyh, who died Monday after border police cracking down on a demonstration shot and beat him, according to witnesses.

For the last three years, Asliyh had participated in a program known as Seeds of Peace that attempted to foster Arab-Jewish coexistence. His sister, Nardeen, accused the authorities of brutality and scoffed bitterly at his dedication to pacifism.

“I’ve never seen policemen use bullets in a protest that had Jewish people in it. Water hoses, [tear] gas, but never bullets,” said Nardeen, a medical student in Jerusalem. Now the blood on his T-shirt “shows all this thing they call peace is a big lie.”