Friday, April 07, 2006

"B'Tselem today urged IDF Chief-of-Staff Dan Halutz and Judge Advocate General Avihai Mandelblit to make public immediately the open-fire regulations that have been given to soldiers in the Occupied Territories. The request follows publication of an IDF report that verifies human rights organizations' repeated claims that the regulations are unclear and can be understood in different ways. B'Tselem contends that the secrecy enables the senior IDF staff to avoid responsibility for the killing of innocent persons, and to divert the criticism to the soldiers in the field. Since the beginning of the intifada, the IDF has related to the open-fire regulations applying in the Occupied Territories as "confidential information," which are provided to soldiers verbally, and not in writing, as was previously the case."