JERUSALEM, April 27, (Agencies): Two senior Israeli officers were reprimanded and a sergeant demoted over the killing of four Palestinians during clashes in the West Bank in March, the military said on Tuesday.
“The investigation shows that the incident could have ended differently and with better results and seemingly could have avoided causing harm to civilians,” the statement said.
Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi summoned two regional commanders and reprimanded them for the conduct of the forces under their command in the West Bank in two separate incidents, it said.
A teenager and a 20-year-old Palestinian were killed in March when soldiers opened fire on a group of protesters in the West Bank village of Iraq Burin.
The army said the troops moved in to the village south of Nablus to prevent clashes between Palestinians and Jewish settlers from the neighbouring settlement of Bracha. They said the protesters hurled rocks at them.
Officers on the ground said they fired rubber-coated steel bullets, and the army said it was unable to verify Palestinian claims the two were hit by live rounds.
Ashkenazi also decided to demote a first sergeant, determining he could no longer serve in a commanding position after the squad he commanded shot dead two Palestinians at the Awarta checkpoint, also near Nablus, last month.
One of the soldiers at the military post fired at a Palestinian who had assaulted him with a bottle during a “security inspection,” the statement said.
“At that point, the second suspect, who was a few metres (yards) away, raised his hand holding a sharp object,” the statement said.
“As a result, the soldier fired and killed the Palestinian,” it said.
“It was decided that the lessons learnt from the incident would be taught and implemented by the various forces,” the statement said.
Ashkenazi reprimanded a brigade commander, who is a colonel, and a battalion commander, who is a lieutenant-colonel, and ordered a squad leader, a first-sergeant, to be removed from operational duties, the statement said.
“The chief of staff determined that from a professional standpoint, the events could have ended differently,” the statement said.
Ashkenazi, it said, “ordered the implementation of the lessons learned in the investigation so that incidents of this kind can be prevented in the future”.
Palestinian officials and Israeli and international human rights groups have long accused the Israeli military of failing to take tough action against soldiers suspected of improper conduct towards Palestinians. The Israeli military insists its rules of engagement — troops are under orders to use non-lethal riot control methods unless their lives are threatened — are rigorously enforced and that any alleged violations are investigated properly.
Meanwhile, Israeli security forces have demolished an illegal West Bank building that settlers had named after President Barack Obama in a symbolic show of defiance.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says security forces tore down the wooden bunker known as “Obama’s Shack,” north of Jerusalem, on Tuesday.
He says the structure violated a 10-month freeze on new construction in West Bank settlements.
Israel announced the freeze last November under pressure from Obama, who opposes settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem — lands that the Palestinians claim for a future state.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the order doesn’t include east Jerusalem. But this week, municipal officials said that area is also under an unofficial freeze.