This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 TEL AVIV 005848 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PINR SOCI IS ISRAELI SOCIETY GOI INTERNAL
SUBJECT: ADDING INSULT TO INJURY: THE OCTOBER 2000 RIOTS AND 
THE FAILURE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF POLICE INVESTIGATIONS. 
 
REF: 2004 Tel Aviv 3331 
     2003 Tel Aviv 5405 
     2003 Tel Aviv 5283 
     2003 Tel Aviv 4989 
 
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SUMMARY 
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¶1.  The mid-September decision by the Department of Police 
Investigation in the Ministry of Justice to pursue no 
indictments in the police killings of 12 Israeli Arabs and 
one Palestinian during the October 2000 riots has given rise 
to embarrassment in official circles, and little public 
expression of support.  The angry response of Israeli-Arab 
leaders is not, however, echoed by the majority of the 
Israeli Jewish public.  Failure to apportion responsibility 
for the Arab fatalities may reaffirm the October 2000 riots 
as an emblem of Israeli-Arab inequality rather than as the 
positive turning point it might have provided for Jewish- 
Arab relations in Israel. 
End Summary 
 
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POST MORTEM: THE AUTOPSY AND BALLISTICS ARGUMENT 
--------------------------------------------- --- 
 
¶2.  The Department of Police Investigations report   claimed 
that lack of evidence prevented it from identifying as 
culpable in the October 2000 killings any one of several 
police snipers videotaped by news organizations on the scene 
of the riots.  Department Director Herzl Shviro told a 
September 18 news conference that refusal by victims' 
families to allow exhumations and autopsies deprived the 
Department of essential ballistics evidence that might have 
linked individual snipers to specific fatalities.  The day 
after the publication of the Department's final report, the 
Hebrew-language Ha'aretz newspaper revealed that autopsies 
had been performed on at least four victims of sniper fire - 
- without, officials said, yielding decisive information as 
to the identity of the responsible sniper.  Regarding other 
fatalities, a former Israel Police commander told Israel 
Radio that in his opinion, the Department had yielded 
somewhat too readily to the refusal of some families to 
allow autopsies.  Police and academic experts specializing 
in the history of investigations into police conduct in 
Israel asserted to the media that the Department is inclined 
to indict only when conviction by a court is a near- 
certainty.  They added that the lack of readily available 
evidence for such convictions should not have closed the 
door to investigation. 
 
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THE ORR COMMISSION SOWED THE SEEDS OF FAILURE 
--------------------------------------------- 
 
¶3.  One of the arguments leveled by the Department of Police 
Investigations at its critics was that it was instructed by 
the Attorney General not to embark on an investigation until 
the completion of the Orr Commission inquiry.  This 
directive, the Department says, prevented it from 
functioning for almost three years and resulted in the loss 
of evidence that might otherwise have been collected from 
the scene of the riots and from eyewitnesses who were later 
reluctant to testify.  In a lecture marking the second 
anniversary of the Orr Commission findings, however, former 
Commission member and expert on the Israeli Arab community 
Shimon Shamir told a Tel Aviv University audience that the 
Department could have gathered preliminary evidence during 
the several weeks that elapsed between the riots and the 
start of the Orr Commission's inquiry.  Once the Orr 
Commission concluded its report, the recommendation for 
action was weak: 
 
"Recommendations to initiate an investigation: 
The committee recommended that the Ministry of Justice 
Department for the Investigation of Police investigate a 
number of incidents so that the proper authorities can 
decide whether to initiate criminal proceedings against 
anyone allegedly involved." 
 
¶4. Shamir also noted that the generally poor level of the 
Department's investigations had been the subject of 
criticism in the August 2005 State Comptroller's report on 
the Department.  The author of that report, retired Judge 
Micha Lindstrauss, revealed that only a small percentage of 
the many cases submitted to the Department are actually 
investigated.  Of those investigated, he found that only 
four percent had resulted in indictments. 
 
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A DEMOCRATIC STATE OF ALL ITS CITIZENS 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶5.  Prominent Israeli Arabs say they were for the most part 
not surprised by the decision, having had few expectations 
and therefore little disappointment.  Faisal Sawalha of the 
Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages in the Negev told 
POL "The Arabs citizens should find a mechanism to tell the 
world this is not a democratic state.  It is democratic for 
Jews, not Arabs."  In addition to plans for domestic protest 
such as strikes and rallies, local Arab leaders are talking 
about taking their protest to international forums and 
foreign states.  Dr. Hanna Swaid, director of the Arab 
Center for Alternative Planning and a former mayor of the 
Arab-Israeli town of Eilaboun, sketched a familiar scenario: 
"Justice is better done internally, but if not, then Arabs 
will look internationally."  Together with Dr. Phabet Abu 
Ras, a Negev region mediator, Swaid told POL that the drive 
for legal recourse by Israeli Arabs would draw inspiration 
from the recent arrest warrants issued against IDF generals 
in London.  Dr. Abu Ras also said Israeli-Arab leaders plan 
to meet with an upcoming delegation of Jewish Americans to 
protest the Department's decision. 
 
 
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FOLLOW THE CHAIN OF COMMAND 
--------------------------- 
 
¶6.  The Department's decision not to indict anyone in the 
October 2000 killings elicited scant official government 
response.  The Minister of Internal Security, Gideon Ezra, 
predictably upheld the conduct of the Israel Police and the 
decision of the Department.  In a strenuous defense of the 
forces responsible for domestic security, Ezra praised the 
ways in which the Orr Commission recommendations have been 
implemented in regard to the handling of riot situations, 
use of live ammunition and rubber bullets, and the 
deployment of snipers.  Ezra argued that the conditions that 
combined to produce the bloodshed of October 2000 cannot 
recur because the rules of engagement have been changed. 
While insisting that the Department of Police Investigations 
had been professional in its approach, however, Ezra stopped 
short of discussing their decision not to indict. 
 
¶7.  Subsequent media condemnation of the decision sparked 
angry reaction from the previously silent Justice Ministry. 
In a hastily called September 21 news conference, Israel's 
Attorney General, Meni Mazuz, said he was enraged by 
allegations that the decision not to file indictments 
demonstrated racism within the law enforcement system. 
Mazuz said no one wanted to live in a country in which 
indictments are filed in the absence of evidence merely to 
gratify an individual or a public sector.  Anyone, Mazuz 
said, who believes the Department's decisions were wrong can 
submit an appeal or petition the Supreme Court.  In the 
interim the Israeli Arab human rights monitoring group 
Adalah has written to the State Comptroller to protest the 
Department's report. 
 
¶8.  Initiating the legislature's inevitable discussion of 
the decision was the Knesset Interior Committee, which has 
held a first session to consider the Department's report and 
its decision not to indict.  It remains to be seen whether 
the Committee will ask the kind of questions cited by 
Professor Shamir as answerable without benefit of autopsies 
or ballistics data:  Why were police snipers deployed at the 
scene of demonstrations by Israeli citizens?  Why were they 
equipped with lethal rubber-coated bullets and live 
ammunition?   Who gave the order to deploy them?  Who gave 
the order to open fire? 
 
¶9.  While the Orr Commission report was specific in naming 
names, it did not produce any disciplinary proceeding to 
implement its recommendations in regard to police personnel. 
This was particularly glaring in the case of northern 
District Police Commander Alik Ron, whom the Orr Commission 
recommended for early retirement from the Israel Police. 
Ron's retirement did transpire, but because it did not take 
place as the result of a disciplinary proceeding, it was not 
perceived by the Israeli-Arab community as redress of a 
wrong. 
 
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THE MEDIA TAKES THE LEAD 
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¶10. Amid the anger of Israeli Arabs, the Israeli media 
prefigured what observers say may develop into a long- 
overdue public debate on the disciplinary and judicial 
options available to law enforcement and those investigating 
its functioning.  The op-ed pages of the daily papers 
largely reflected the lack of credence the pundits gave to 
the Police Investigations Department. Mainstream media 
support for the Department's decision was tardy and took the 
form of isolated op-eds from far-right columnists.  Yisrael 
Harel, in Ha'aretz of September 22, justified the lethal 
fire of the Israel Police as "the only way left to policemen 
to save themselves and perhaps not only themselves... until 
reinforcements arrived."  A day earlier, September 21, The 
Jerusalem Post's Yossef Goell argued that "... it is obvious 
to me why the police resorted to live fire.  Just imagine 
the consequences had the police failed to put down riots by 
a radicalized Arab population."  For the most part, the 
media was not captive to hypothetical doomsday scenarios. 
Rather than give the last word to such speculative analysis 
it focused instead on what was known for certain -- that as 
Israeli-Arab Knesset member Mohammed Barakeh said "people 
had been killed and justice had yet to be seen to be done." 
END