Human rights groups accuse the Israeli army of investigating only a fraction of cases involving crimes against Palestinians.
An Israeli military court has sentenced three Israeli soldiers to short prison terms for abusing a Palestinian man and obstructing an investigation into the incident, an unusual punishment by the army against members of its own forces.
With hundreds of cases of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces going uninvestigated and unpunished, human rights organizations regularly accuse Israel of initiating criminal proceedings for only a fraction of the crimes allegedly committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians.
The Israeli army said in a statement on Wednesday that the soldiers were convicted of abuse and a third was additionally convicted of exceeding their authority and endangering the life or health of a man.
The indictments say the three soldiers, as well as a fourth, took the Palestinian man away in a military jeep and drove him to an unidentified “distant location.” During the tour and afterwards, “violence was used against the victim” and he was left in a remote location, the statement said.
The soldiers, whose identities were not released, then “concealed the details of the incident from their commanders in an attempt to prevent [military officials] to open an investigation and coordinate their versions of the details of the event,” the statement said.
Two of the soldiers were sentenced to 60 days in prison for abuse, while the third was sentenced to 40 days for exceeding his authority and endangering the life or health of the Palestinian man. All were demoted and received additional suspended sentences for obstructing court proceedings, according to the statement.
A fourth soldier, accused of assault, abuse in aggravated circumstances, threats and additional crimes, is still pending trial.
According to Israeli military data obtained by the Yesh Din human rights group, in the five years between 2017 and 2021, the army received 1,260 cases of alleged crimes committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians, including 409 cases involving the killing of Palestinians.
The Israeli military opened just 248 criminal investigations into cases of possible misconduct in response to those allegations: 21.4 percent of the total, Yesh Din said. Of the number investigated, only 11 cases during that five-year period had led to charges.
The Israeli army maintained that more charges had been brought against soldiers than reported by Yesh Din.
