by Ariel Kahana
Former chief financial officer for the Temporary International Presence in Hebron says the organization is tainted with corruption, anti-Israel bias
The international
observer mission in Hebron is tainted with corruption, which its
officials are tirelessly working to cover up, a former officer with
the organization recently alleged.
The Temporary International Presence in
Hebron, or TIPH, is a civilian observer mission that was established
in the wake of the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, in which
Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Muslim worshippers and
wounded 125 others as they gathered for a prayer service inside the
holy site.
The TIPH mission, which comprises personnel
from Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey, was
originally launched at the invitation of the Israeli government
and the Palestinian Authority, with the aim of monitoring and
recording any violation of international humanitarian law.
Recently, however, there has been a growing
number of complaints alleging its members are violently targeting
the Jewish community in Hebron. These allegations have been
compounded by accusations made by a former TIPH officer, suggesting
that mission officials are embroiled in fraud and perjury, which they
spare no effort to cover up, including by smuggling TIPH members out
of Israel to evade punishment.
Last week, Bennet Nygaard Solum, who served
as TIPH's chief procurement and financial officer twice in the last
decade, testified before an Oslo-based notary that "the TIPH fails to
meet its own code of ethics. It disregards Israeli and Palestinian law
in Hebron and prefers to protect its own members from any allegations
of wrongdoing, with all that that entails."
In his affidavit, Nygaard Solum admitted he had taken part of such cover-ups in the past.
"The reason for the change in my position
is that I want to bring these facts to light. I knew of some of these
things in 2011, but at the time I was advised not to say anything," he
said.
The first case that Nygaard Solum reveals
in his testimony involved the alleged embezzlement of TIPH funds in
2011, which he said was covered up by senior members of the observer
force.
"As the financial officer, I investigated
fraud allegations against three local employees who were accused of
drawing checks from the Arab Bank in Hebron. The case centered around
checks that were not delivered to a supermarket that was our main
supplier," he recalled.
Nygaard Solum's investigation found that
the local employees, who were in charge of daily procurement
operations, embezzled the money, but he was made to participate in the
cover-up.
"TIPH's legal adviser instructed me not to mention this incident in a hearing we had in 2011," he said.
He also spoke of a previous fraud case, this time in 2009.
"This case involved writing incorrect sums
in procurement orders, which didn't match what was actually received
by the purchasing department. For example, an invoice would say we
ordered 40 [cartons of] milk but only 20 would arrive," he said.
"The difference was divvied up between the
local employee and the supermarket. The procurement officer at the
time knew about the fraud but didn't report it to his superiors, so not
as to lose his job," he explained.
Nygaard Solum further said that senior TIPH
officials assured the local employee that if she pleaded guilty to
the fraud, her punishment would be mitigated, "but this was a false
promise," he said.
He also accused TIPH commanders of covering
up incidents where members of the observer force accosted Israelis,
saying they were smuggled out of the country to avoid answering for
their actions.
In one case, in which a TIPH observer
slashed a local Israeli's tires, "TIPH's deputy commander lied to the
police and said he didn't know the observer who did it, when, in fact,
he did, in order to protect TIPH," Nygaard Solum said.
"The observer was granted immunity from
the legal proceedings and sent directly home, to Italy, and the
official explanation was that he was leaving for family reasons.
A review of police records in the case
revealed that TIPH's deputy commander told local authorities he would
inform them of the observer's name within two days, but only did so a
month later, long after the offender was safely back in Italy.
TIPH commanders also protected the force's
legal adviser, Lucas Walter, from prosecution after he slapped a
Jewish boy in Hebron.
According to Nygaard Solum, "Walter was sent home, to Switzerland, without delay, to protect him from prosecution."
Nygaard Solum, confirmed to Israel Hayom that he gave the affidavit, saying he stands by his statements.
TIPH was unavailable for comment.
Israeli lawmakers seek to end TIPH mandate
Over the weekend, 15 lawmakers urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to renew TIPH's mandate in Hebron.
"It has been almost 22 years since TIPH
was deployed in Hebron, during which the observer force was discovered
to be biased, in the full sense of the word, undermining IDF soldiers
and the State of Israel," the MKs wrote in a letter to the prime
minister.
"While the Jewish community in Hebron has
suffered thousands of terrorist attacks, TIPH observers have been
careful to monitor and report only on the plight of the Palestinians in
the city, and contrary to their mandate, they host foreign diplomats
on anti-Israeli propaganda tours in the city, and participate in
activities organized by the boycott, divestment and sanctions
movement."
The observes "regularly harass the Jewish
residents of the city and their children, and recently, two violent
incidents in which they were involved were captured on camera (the
slapping of a 10-year-old boy and slashing tires)," the letter
continued.
"After 22 years, the time has come to bring TIPH's mandate, which was always intended to be temporary, to an end."
The letter was signed by Likud MKs Yoav
Kisch, Amir Ohana, Nava Boker, Yehuda Glick, Sharren Haskel, Miki
Zohar and Nurit Koren; Habayit Hayehudi MKs Bezalel Smotrich, Shuli
Mualem-Rafaeli and Nissan Slomiansky; and Shas MKs Yinon Azoulay, Yoav
Ben Tzur, Yakov Margi, Michael Malkieli and Dan Saida.
Likud MK Anat Berko also called on Netanyahu to end TIPH's mandate.
Israel would next have to ratify the
mission's mandate in January 2019. Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi
Hotovely has already called on Netanyahu to explore terminating it.
Ariel Kahana
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/11/11/hebron-observer-force-fails-to-meet-its-own-code-of-ethics-official-says/
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