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DOUBLE STANDARD JUSTICE in ISRAEL: the CASE of the JEWISH TERROR ORGANIZATION Lea Tsemel*

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DOUBLE STANDARD JUSTICE in ISRAEL: the CASE of the JEWISH TERROR ORGANIZATION Lea Tsemel* DOUBLE STANDARD JUSTICE IN ISRAEL: THE CASE OF THE JEWISH TERROR ORGANIZATION Lea Tsemel* * Lea Tsemel is an Israeli attorney. She graduated from the Hebrew University School of Law in Jerusalem, with an LL.B., in 1969; and obtained a Diploma in Criminology in 1970. She is a member of the Israeli Bar and has been a practising lawyer based in Jerusalem since 1971. she is the author of You Have The Right Not to Say Anything (in Hebrew and Arabic, 1978), a book which deals with the rights of political prisoners. I Introductory Note On 27 April 1984 a group of Israeli Jews were arrested in the act of planting explosives in Palestinian-owned buses in East Jerusalem. The detentions led to a further wave of arrests which ended with 27 men facing trial on a variety of charges stemming from the activities of the Jewish terrorist organisation, also known as the Jewish Underground. The 27 men were found responsible for a series of violent acts in the Israeli occupied West Bank over the previous four years. The 27, two of whom were serving army officers, the rest residents of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Golan Heights, were brought to trial for involvement in planting bombs in the cars of two West Bank mayors in 1980; planting hand grenades in mosques and in a football stadi- um ; murdering three and injuring thirty three students in the Islamic College of Hebron; attempting to plant explosives on five buses; membership of a terrorist organisation; conspiracy to destroy the Dome of the Rock mosque on the Temple Mount; stealing weapons and explosives from the army and other minor charges. The case of the Jewish Underground was the largest case involving Israelis accused of attacks on Palestinian Arabs.' It attracted a lot of media coverage and was taken as a test case of Israeli justice. The charging of the terror group, the conditions under which they were held, the legal grounds and conduct of the trial, the sentencing and the privileges extended to the convicts in jail provide an opportunity to examine and compare the way in which two systems of legal administration operate in practice. The serious offences the Jewish Underground were charged with have direct counterparts under the military courts system applicable to Palestinians. The sanctions in terms of sentencing and prison conditions of Palestinians, however, do not match with the lax treatment and low sentences passed on the Israeli Underground. This, it has been suggested, provides grounds for the contention that there exists in practice, a dual system of justice. This will be supported by providing 1. See also TheKarpReport, in I Pal. Y.B. Int'l. L., at 185 (1984), which deals with the criminal activities of Jewish settlers in the West Bank. There are other cases of organized terror by Jewish settlers against Palestinians, such as the Mazra'a AI Sharqiya case (SC 556/84). In that case the defendants were members of the Jewish Defence League. They were charged with conspiracy to physically attack Palestini- ans and destroy property. They set fire to several vehicles in Hebron and Jerusalem, threw Molotov coctails into the offices of Al Fajr Arabic daily in Jerusalem and at the house of one Hussein Awadallah in Shu'fat, and on March 4, 1984 they ambushed a bus loaded with workers from Mazra'a Al-Sharqiya. Six men were injured. One of the defendants, Khazem Levi, was on active army duty at the time he opened fire on the bus. He was sentenced by the Jerusalem District Court to 21 months actual imprisonment and 27 months suspended term. The High Court increased the sentence to three years and a further two years suspended term. Two other defendants, were sentenced to 39 months imprisonment with 33 months suspended term, and five years imprisonment with a three years suspended term respectively. .
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