Or Commission

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The Or Commission (Hebrew: ועדת אור; full name: ועדת החקירה הממלכתית לבירור ההתנגשויות בין כוחות הביטחון לבין אזרחים ישראלים באוקטובר 2000,) was a panel of inquiry appointed by the Israeli government to investigate the events of October 2000 at the beginning of the Second Intifada in which 12 Arab citizens of Israel and one Palestinian were killed by Israeli police amidst often violent demonstrations. (One Israeli Jew was killed by a stone thrown from a bridge onto her vehicle near one such demonstration; however, it is not clear that the incident was linked.)^{[citation needed]} The commission released its findings on "the clashes between security forces and Israeli civilians"^[1] on September 2, 2003. The chief investigator was Theodore Or, a judge at an Israeli High Court.

1 Main conclusions of the Or Commission
2 Reception
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Main conclusions of the Or Commission

[edit] Police responsibility

The governmental body of inquiry criticised the Israeli police for being unprepared for the riots and using excessive force to disperse the protesting and rioting citizens. Eight policemen were reprimanded by the commission, most of them after they had retired from the police force. Two police officers were released from the force due to the conclusions.

[edit] Official responsibility

All Jewish politicians, most notable among them former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, were untouched by the commission. However three ranking Arab citizens of Israel, including two Arab members of the Knesset, were charged with inciting the riots.^[2] Shlomo Ben-Ami, the Internal Security Minister at the time, was found partially responsible and the commission recommended that he not hold that post again. Ben-Ami later became Foreign Minister.

[edit] Background to the demonstrations

The Or Commission found that Arab citizens suffer discrimination in Israel and leveled criticism at the government for failing to give fair and equal attention to the needs of Arab citizens of Israel. The commission found that frustration with discrimination led to the outpourings of frustration in October 2000.^[3]

[edit] Reception

The commission's report was highly controversial on all sides, both gravely disappointing the families of the victims and angering those who blamed Arab citizens for the unrest of October 2000.

Arab advocacy organizations such as Adalah,^[4] the Arab Association for Human Rights, and Mossawa argued that the report exonerated Jewish Israeli political figures who played a central role in mishandling the crisis around October 2000, and gave slap-on-the-wrist treatment to those who fired the shots, while severely censuring Arab political figures for incendiary speech. Some commentators believed this amounted to virtual circumvention of due process for Arab citizens.^[5]

At the same time, the Or Commission's statements were perhaps the first public official acknowledgment of discrimination faced by the Arab citizenry of Israel; Adalah and Mossawa commended the Or Commission for this admission. One year after the release of the commission report, Theodore Or publicly attacked the government for failing to implement its recommendations.