The Israel Policy Center has just posted what will likely be the definitive report on systematic violations of the civil rights' of opponents of the withdrawal from Azza. The authors did a bang-up job, reviewing all the relevant court protocols, seeking out and interviewing all alleged victims, tracking down all relevant media reports, etc. The report should scare the hell out of anybody who wishes Israel were a democracy. Here are a few excerpts:

Since the passage of the Law on Evacuation and Compensation (“The Disengagement Law”) by the Knesset in February 2005, the civil rights of opponents of disengagement have been subject to extensive violations. These include the suppression of legal dissent, widespread police brutality, false arrest and the harsh use of punitive detention to deter and intimidate...

Justices of the Supreme Court ... viewed the opinions of protesters, rather than anything they may have done, as a threat to state security justifying inflated criminal charges and pre-trial detention... Pre-trial detention was used for purposes not authorized by law: As a deterrent to others, to intimidate defendants and coerce them to compromise their legal rights and their defense, and to erode the legal guarantee of the right to remain silent. We have documented at least 97 cases of indictments filed against minors and 68 against adults in which pre-trial detention or other limitations on the liberty of defendants appeared to be unwarranted by law... Neither the law nor any other consideration justified holding seven minors, most not yet 15 years old, in prison for five weeks...

The GSS was also used to harass opponents of the Prime Minister engaged in legal protest...

The phenomena documented in this report did not occur in a vacuum, were not the acts of rogue cops, rogue prosecutors, or rogue judges, but were the consequence of the policy of Israel’s law-enforcement and judicial systems.

Read the full report here.

(This will be my last post on the withdrawal unless something happens.)