The Jerusalem Post

B’Tselem activist on trial in military court for allegedly attacking cop

NGO accuses Israel of harassment

- • By YONAH JEREMY BOB

The Judea Military Court on Wednesday held its first hearing of witnesses in the trial of B’Tselem activist Nasser Nawaj’ah for allegedly hitting a police officer.

Nawaj’ah not only denies the allegation­s, but claims that Israel as a whole is trying to punish and silence him for his work at B’Tselem in general as well as for a specific incident in which he uncovered an IDF alleged violation of its own rules regarding its use of ammunition.

Neither the IDF prosecutio­n nor Nawaj’ah have provided a fully detailed public narrative of their side of the case.

Despite repeated requests, the fact that the trial is public and the indictment is supposed to be public, the IDF failed to present a copy to The Jerusalem Post.

Instead, the IDF Spokespers­on’s Office simply stated, “Nawaj’ah was brought to trial for attacking a police officer during an incident of disturbing the peace in Sussiya in September 2021. According to the indictment, the defendant hit the policeman and afterwards fled the area. The defendant denied the charges and the hearing of witnesses started today.”

However, the IDF did not explain why Nawaj’ah was indicted over a year after the incident and why, when Nawaj’ah was questioned by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) in August 2022, they did not ask him anything about this alleged incident.

Meanwhile, B’Tselem refused to discuss the details of Nawaj’ah’s defense: whether he claims there was no scuffle

at all with police, or that there was a scuffle but he acted in self-defense or some other scenario.

In a public statement on the incident, B’Tselem simply called the allegation­s “baseless” and referred to “the prosecutio­n claims that Nawaj’ah attacked a police officer in September 2021, when settlers entered the Palestinia­n village of Sussiya, where Nawaj’ah lives, in the South Hebron Hills.”

It was unclear if the reference to Jewish settlers was part of the defense.

Back in August 2022, B’Tselem said that, “Soldiers entered Nasser’s home in Sussiya and arrested him in the middle of the night. He was then held, handcuffed, in a military camp for some 12 hours before being taken for

a ‘conversati­on’ with the ISA officer. That’s what Israel does with a Palestinia­n detainee who needs ‘softening’ before the ISA proceeds to threaten him.”

Further the human rights NGO’s Executive Director and regular critic of Israel, Hagai El-Ad, said, “’Captain Yassin’ – an ISA officer – ‘asked’ Nasser to ‘stop causing trouble’. I suppose that when he said ‘trouble,’ he was thinking of the kind of research Nasser conducted in Khallet a-Dabe’.”

In B’Tselem’s narrative, in late June 2022, IDF troops were sent to train for several weeks in Masafer Yatta, an area in the South Hebron Hills.

“During the army’s training a bullet hit the roof of a Palestinia­n home in the village of Khallet a-Dabeh” though no one was hurt, said the NGO.

Nasser went to the village the next day and he “climbed up to the roof and found something the military couldn’t, or didn’t want to find: a bullet from a heavy machine gun. A bullet of that type could only have been fired by the military, probably from a heavy tank machine gun participat­ing in the maneuver.”

The IDF had denied any bullet had been fired at or hit the relevant roof or area.

According to B’Tselem, Nasser was arrested because, “The military lied. Nasser’s investigat­ion proved that.”

The Shin Bet did not explain why it detained Nasser, but the Post understand­s that it did not view him as being “interrogat­ed.”

Rather, it viewed him as having had a much shorter conversati­on with one of its agents and in a location closer to where Nasser lived than might have occurred if the situation was a full interrogat­ion.

It was unclear why he was detained in the evening and not during the day if there was no criminal charge immediatel­y in play.

Regarding the disputed bullet, the IDF responded that immediatel­y after receiving a report of one of the rooftops being hit, it had halted its training exercise.

It also sent investigat­ors to the rooftop area and said that it probed all related issues which might clarify or prove what hit the rooftop.

After this probe, the IDF said it could not find sufficient evidentiar­y support that the rooftop had been hit.

It was unclear what dialogue occurred between the IDF and B’Tselem regarding the physical bullet found by Nasser and what proof the IDF had on hand, if any, that it deemed inconclusi­ve.

In addition, the IDF said that it set down directives for future training exercises to be more careful even though it had not found any clear proof that anything had gone wrong.

According to a mix of media reports and prior B’Tselem press releases, Nasser was arrested for six days in 2016 before being released without being charged.

In 2021, he was reportedly brought in by the Shin Bet on a different occasion for a conversati­on under suspicion of having been conducting work in an IDF firing zone.

He was then hassled multiple times at border crossings for murky reasons which have not been publicly disclosed.

 ?? (Mussa Qawasma/Reuters) ?? PALESTINIA­NS from the villages around Masafer Yatta near Hebron, present papers to Border Police officers in January.
(Mussa Qawasma/Reuters) PALESTINIA­NS from the villages around Masafer Yatta near Hebron, present papers to Border Police officers in January.

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