On an unusually cold January day, hundreds of Palestinians waited to pass through the Hawara checkpoint. Snow dusted the ground, and tempers and patience rubbed raw on both ends of the lines that crept toward the soldiers of the 202nd Paratroops. A camera crew from the army's Education Corps maneuvered around the soldiers and Palestinians, collecting video footage and interviews for a training tape.
"Go home! What's your problem?" shouted the checkpoint commander, a gaunt staff sergeant whose face was partially hidden beneath his helmet. The camera focused on the sergeant -- a Bedouin, rare in the Israeli military -- as he continued yelling in Arabic at an agitated Palestinian man grasping the hand of a small child. "Shut up! Shut up! Go back, go back, everyone go back. No one through -- everyone go back."
A Palestinian woman tries to squeeze through the turnstile at the Hawara checkpoint with her son. Sometimes as many as 5,000 Palestinians a day request permission to cross at Hawara, just south of the West Bank city of Nablus.
(Molly Moore -- The Washington Post)
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The video did not capture the next exchange, but other soldiers at the checkpoint said in interviews that the Palestinian man began screaming at the 23-year-old sergeant. The sergeant handcuffed the man with disposable plastic cuffs and ordered him to sit on the ground.
Suddenly, the camera jerked toward the sergeant. He bashed the Palestinian man in the face with his fist. The man's hysterical wife and two weeping children tried to squeeze between him and the sergeant. The soldier shoved the Palestinian into a hut as the army cameraman followed close behind.
The man's toddler son clung to his father's shirttail until soldiers brushed him away like a fly. The soldier flipped a blanket over the window of the hut, and the camera's audio picked up the Palestinian's muffled cries as the soldier punched him in the stomach.
"For them, you see, they don't have a problem getting beaten up," the sergeant explained before the video camera a short time later. "It's the humiliation in front of all the people, the wife and children. I try to do it so they don't see me, so it's not in front of the people."
A soldier from the Education Corps asked the sergeant why he had attacked a defenseless, handcuffed Palestinian.
"Because he was beaten, then everybody learns and no one fools around with us," the sergeant said. As he spoke, the camera shifted to the Palestinian's wife and children sitting in the dirt. The youngsters wore colorful party hats their mother had offered to distract them.
With the army video as evidence, Israeli military officials prosecuted the soldier -- one of only a handful of checkpoint abuse cases ever brought to court, according to lawyers and military officials.
After a five-day military trial, the sergeant pleaded guilty in late September to assault charges stemming from the beating. He also admitted beating at least eight other Palestinians at the checkpoint and smashing the windshields of 10 Palestinian taxicabs as commander of the post from mid-January through the end of February.
The court prohibited the publication of the soldier's name and home town for fear of retribution against him or his family.
The military indictment accused the sergeant of habitually using violence against Palestinians who refused his orders to wait in line or who shouted at him. In as many as five incidents, he "kicked them forcefully in their buttocks and pushed them backwards or assaulted them with punches and kicks," the indictment said. Other times he took recalcitrant men into "the women's checking tent that was empty and . . . beat them either by punching them or kicking them in their stomach."
A three-member military judicial panel sentenced him to six months in jail, half of which he had already served, and demoted him to the rank of private.
Checkpoint duty "is in the hands of a very small number of young soldiers who do not have the proper training and proficiency in security checks," the judges wrote. "It is difficult and wearing, threatening and frustrating. . . . In imposing the punishment, it is difficult to escape the fact that the accused had to face a situation which was above his powers."
