IDF Court holds first hearing against B’Tselem activist, NGO accuses Israel of harassment

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 for 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.

No detailed explanation by the IDF

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 Susiya in September 2021. According to the indictment, the defendant hit the policeman and afterward 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 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’Tstelem simply called the allegations “baseless” and referred to that, “the prosecution claims that Nawaj’ah attacked a police officer in September 2021, when settlers entered the Palestinian village of Khirbet Susiya, 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 Susiya 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 ad-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 ad-Dabe,” 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: 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 Jerusalem 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.

The IDF says it investigated the alleged bullet

Regarding the disputed bullet, the IDF responded that immediately after receiving a report of one of the rooftops being hit, it 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 training firing zone.

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