ISRAELI human rights group B’Tselem said yesterday it would no longer participate in fig-leaf investigations of the murders of Palestinians by occupation troops.

B’Tselem executive director Hagai El-Ad said the group would stop pursuing prosecutions of Israel Defence Forces troops for abuses through the military courts because it has lost confidence in them.

“The system’s real function is cover-ups,” he said. Once the group had reached that “painful conclusion,” added Mr El-Ad, “we found it morally unacceptable for us to continue working in the same way.”

“We became subcontractors to the occupation,” B’Tselem research director Yael Stein told reporters, saying that the organisation’s accountability work had served to “legitimise the whole occupation.”

A damning report by the group said it had “come to the realisation that the way in which the military law enforcement system functions precludes it from the very outset from achieving justice for the victims.”

The group’s decision came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sealed a pact with the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party and appointed its leader Avigdor Lieberman as his new defence minister.

Mr Lieberman replaces Moshe Yaalon, who stepped down last week over his “lack of faith” in Mr Netanyahu
and his concerns over the government’s lurch towards extremism.

Mr Yaalon supported the IDF’s prosecution of a soldier who shot Palestinian Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi in the head as he lay wounded, unarmed and helpless on the ground following an alleged knife attack on troops in Hebron on March 24 — captured on video by a B’Tselem field worker.

But Mr Netanyahu and Mr Lieberman both backed the accused soldier, calling for the charges against him to be dropped.