A motion to discuss opposition charges that Israeli authorities have failed to investigate or prosecute attacks by armed Jewish settlers on West Bank Arabs was defeated by a vote of 41-32 in the Knesset yesterday.
The motion stricken from the agenda was presented by Shulamit Aloni of the Labor Party’s Civil Rights Movement (CRM) faction. Aloni cited hundreds of cases in which, she said, Jewish settlers attacked Arabs or damaged their property. In five of these cases, Arabs were killed by settlers, Aloni said but no arrests were ever made.
She noted that by contrast, when an Israeli woman, Esther Ohanna, was killed by a stone thrown at her vehicle in the Arab town of Dahariya several months ago, the police had no difficulty apprehending five Arab suspects who were swiftly tried, convicted and sentenced to prison terms.When Arabs are killed or injured by Jews, the investigation drags on and comes to nothing, Aloni charged.
KARP REPORT CITED
She brought the matter to the Knesset following the resignation of Deputy Attorney General Yehudit Karp from a Justice Ministry committee she headed which was set up to investigate alleged Jewish settler assaults on Arabs or their property in the territory. Karp said she resigned because the Justice Ministry failed to act on her committee’s recommendations.
Aloni told the Knesset that the Karp committee had managed to “remove the mask from the Military Government and to show that it was pressure from above that prevented the police from solving cases and from taking effective action against Jews who take the law into their own hands. “
Replying for the government, Defense Minister Moshe Arens challenged Aloni to prove that the government was dropping its investigations of alleged illegal acts by Jewish settlers. He recalled that when he took office he promised that the law would be applied equitably in the occupied territories and that he intended to carry out that promise. Arens made no reference to the specific cases cited by Aloni.
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