Israel army admits blindfolding Palestinians against protocol
Blindfolded Palestinian detainees
Middle East Monitor reports:
A petition to Israel’s Supreme Court has forced the Israeli army to admit that its soldiers break protocol by blindfolding Palestinians in their custody.
At the end of May, a petition was filed to Israel’s Supreme Court by a group of left-wing activists who had compiled two and a half years’ worth of evidence from Palestinians in the occupied West Bank’s Jordan Valley who were routinely detained by Israeli army soldiers.
During their detention, the Palestinians were handcuffed and often blindfolded for several hours, a practice the Israeli army has now been forced to admit breaks the institution’s own protocol, Haaretz reported yesterday.
The petition argued that the large number of cases of detention and blindfolding points to “an obscene habit of the Jordan Valley Brigade [of the Israeli army], aimed at punishing the Palestinian shepherds and/or simply abusing them.” It also stated that in some cases, Israeli activists accompanying the shepherds were also detained, but unlike the Palestinians they were not blindfolded, indicating a clear policy of discrimination, the Israeli daily added.